Tuesday, April 17
God delights in using weak and seemingly insignificant things and people to do the mightiest works of the Almighty. The biographies recorded in Scripture that mean the most to us are those that were weak by the world’s standards and were empowered by God to do mighty things. For example: Sarah was too old to have a child, but she did! David was too young to fight Goliath, but he won! Gideon’s “300” were not large enough to win, but they did! But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. (1 Cor.1:27).
In his book, Pastoral Grit: the Strength to Stand and to Stay (Bethany), Craig Brian Larson writes:
"In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time, the satellite's primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter's magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no earth satellite had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target.
"But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter's immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion miles from the sun.
"And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio signals to scientists on Earth. 'Perhaps most remarkable,' writes Jaroff, 'those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth.'
"The Little Satellite That Could was not qualified to do what it did. Engineers designed Pioneer 10 with a useful life of just three years. But it kept going and going. By simple longevity, its tiny 8-watt transmitter radio accomplished more than anyone thought possible.
"So it is when we offer ourselves to serve the Lord. God can work even through someone with 8-watt abilities. God cannot work, however, through someone who quits.” Don’t ever think that you are too small, too weak, too young, or too insignificant for God to use. God delights in confounding the world with the evidence of His mighty power at work in those the world has counted out.
