Christ Through Us

Sportscaster and former baseball great Ralph Kiner told the following story:

After the season in which I hit 37 home runs, I asked Pittsburgh Pirate general manager Branch Rickey for a raise. He refused. “I led the league in homers,” I reminded him. “Where did we finish?” Rickey asked me. “Last,” I replied. “Well,” Rickey said, “We can finish last without you.”

Sometimes we need to be humbled!

Before God can use us for His glory, we have to be humbled by realizing that we cannot live the Christian life by the flesh or in our own strength.

A great example of this, from the Old Testament for us believers in the Church Age, is Moses.

God had to genuinely humble him before he was used for His glory.

Moses tried to deliver his people Israel in his own strength, and he ended up killing the Egyptian and fleeing for his life.

During his years as a shepherd in Midian, God taught Him how to trust his all-powerful God.

In Exodus 2:14, an Israelite had asked Moses, “Who made you a prince or a judge over us?” 

Moses later asked the same thing of God, “Who am I that I should … bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”

Moses was humbled by God, but now he needed to learn how to trust God instead of his own flesh.

He was reluctant to serve God because he was too self-conscious and not God-conscious enough yet.

So, we also, after we are humbled by our own flesh, need to learn how to be Christ-conscious instead of self-conscious.

We need to balance the truth of John 15:5, “Without Me you can do nothing,” with that of Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The issue was not who Moses was, but who God is.

God was saying something like this to Moses,

“I am the God of your forefathers, who proved Myself long ago as completely adequate for all their needs; so it really doesn’t matter who you are, Moses, but who I Am!”

He had learned his own inability to deliver Israel, but he did not yet believe in God’s ability to do so.

Moses would learn the complete adequacy of God Himself in the events that followed.

We not only need to believe in our own inability to produce supernatural change as Moses did, we also need to believe in Christ’s ability to produce it in and through us.

Blessings!

Pastor Ken Keeler, Director of Church Ministries