You are not disqualified.

We disqualify ourselves too often.

 

Life, for us, will only ever be normal, average, typical. We devour books and films and series saturated with lives of valor, significance, and world-altering Love; but the movie ends, the book is completed, our longing remains unfulfilled, and we assume we are only meant to watch it, to read it, not to live it for ourselves.

The sideways glance of comparison deflates us, siphoning our attention into a closed-loop of insecurity, numb entertainment, and fear-laced unbelief.

Others are doing better, bigger, more polished things.

Others have it “figured out.”

Their “yes” matters.

Our moments of surrender and faith look pale and shabby juxtaposed with the Mother Teresas of the world.

We look down at the resources in our hands and deem them embarrassingly wanting.

I’m just a community college freshman.

 I’m only a barista.

 I work at a grocery store.

 I’m a nanny.

 I’m a stay-at-home mom.

 I spend eight hours of my day in an office.

 I don’t have any particular talent.

 

Not me. 

I’m ordinary.

Our “yes” to Jesus – whispered in the midst of the mundane – feels empty, unusable.

And we’re left to wrestle with an essential incongruence: the stirring hunger – gut-deep – to do extraordinarily meaningful things in this life, and – yet – our refusal to believe we actually can.

One is true, real.

The other is a lie.

Our lives – and the lives of each person we encounter – hinge on recognizing which is which. 

So let’s get specific. Let’s focus in on you.

Are you rationalizing your disqualification?

For a moment, center your attention on the man Jesus, His eyes fixed on you – saturated with mercy, tenderness, and ferocious Love.

The Son of God – murdered for your every selfishness, rebellion, and sin, and alive again for your blameless rebirth – is telling you that your own disqualifying estimation of yourself is inaccurate.

If you’ve disqualified yourself, if you’ve hesitated and withdrawn your “yes” because you assumed it wasn’t worth much, you’re wrong.

Your unique existence – lived in every nook and cranny of the “mundane” – matters in an explosive way, beyond your most ecstatic expectations and hopes.

Your “yes” can change the course of eternity for a person, a family, a nation.

 This is not a motivational speech. This is reality.

Paul expresses it marvelously in Ephesians 2:4-10:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

In the midst of failure, rebellion, and deadly disconnection from God, He resuscitated you, carved every ounce of death and sin-identity out of you, and triumphantly lifted you to heaven, where you are seated with Christ. And He has chosen to make His immeasurable riches of grace and kindness in Jesus known through you. For ages to come.

Through you.

Linger on that thought.

And all of this is His gift! His faithfulness fully backs the gift and ensures its permanent significance!

Beyond even this, the Father emphasizes that He formed you specifically and carefully – prior to the genesis of time and reality – for good works, so you can walk in them.

How then can you sit, arguing that you aren’t qualified? Equipped? Called?

Dear friend, you are pivotal, vital, significant beyond anything you’ve imagined.

Through you the immeasurable, world-altering riches of the Father’s grace and kindness will be made known. For ages to come.

Your yes is desperately needed.

You are needed.

Your ordinary life is extraordinarily equipped with the saving Grace of God Himself.

 

You are seated in heavenly places.

Nothing could be more significant.

 

Your every yes - every single one - is inestimably valuable to Him. Whether your yes arises from the floor of your bedroom as you complete your studies, or as you trek to an unreached village in the Himalayas, the eternal value of each yes is the same. 

 

Your surrender is pivotal.

 

Will you choose to believe it, to live with the conviction of your significance in the eternal mission of Christ?

The posture of surrender to the Father, Love for Him, and a yes-soaked belief in what He says of you will alter the course of history – igniting transformation, infusing hope wherever you wander, and liberating others who come near to you.

And that posture can happen anywhere.

No life is too small.

No set of circumstances is confining.

You are not disqualified.

You are essential.

And you aren’t made to watch it.

You’re made to live it.