In a world fixated on credentials and achievements, Jesus deliberately selected twelve ordinary, flawed men—impulsive, proud, skeptical, even a traitor and a thief—to carry His gospel to the ends of the earth. He saw their faults and chose them anyway. This should radically reshape the way we evaluate ourselves. Through their stories, we recognize our own brokenness, and we’re reminded that God delights in using unlikely people so that His power can shine through their weakness. What He did with those unlikely disciples, He longs to do with us, if only we’ll say yes to His call.
The Strange Plans of God
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As the first church began to explode with growth and unlimited possibility, one of its brightest and best young leaders–a man named Stephen–was brutally murdered for his faith. Who would have thought that something so awful and unfair would have ever been part of God’s plans for the church? And yet God used this event to scatter the church and spread the Gospel to other places. Often in life God’s plan seem so strange, even unkind, yet we must trust His plans and hold to the promise that God knows what He is doing.
