God has always delighted in using people the world would never pick. If you’ve ever sat in church or read the Bible and thought, “That could never be me,” you’re actually standing in the same place as many of the men and women God used most.
This isn’t just a Bible theme; it’s a personal invitation for you.
When you feel like Moses: “Who am I?”
Maybe you look at your past, your weaknesses, or your failures and think, “I’m the last person God would use.” Moses felt the same way.
When God called him from the burning bush, Moses didn’t stand tall and say, “Finally, my big moment.” He argued with God about how unqualified he was. He had killed a man. He had run away. He insisted he couldn’t speak well. Yet God chose him to stand before Pharaoh and lead an entire nation out of slavery.
God’s answer to Moses wasn’t, “Moses, you’re actually amazing.” God’s answer was His presence:
“Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12, KJV).
Maybe you see everything you’re not. God sees that He is with you. The same God who took a fearful, reluctant man and made him a leader can take your stumbles, insecurities, and even your shame and turn them into a testimony of His faithfulness.
When you feel small like Gideon
Do you ever feel like your family, background, or story puts you at the bottom of the list? Gideon did too. He was hiding from Israel’s enemies when the angel of the Lord came to him and called him something he absolutely did not feel like:
“The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour” (Judges 6:12, KJV).
Gideon protested. He said his family was poor and he was the least in his father’s house. In other words: “You’ve got the wrong person.” Maybe you’ve thought the same: “Lord, you must mean someone more gifted, more holy, more put-together.”
But God did not change His mind about Gideon. Instead, He promised, “Surely I will be with thee” (Judges 6:16, KJV), and through that “least” man, God brought victory with an army so small that everyone knew it had to be God.
When you feel small, God is not asking you to be impressive; He is asking you to trust that He is with you.
When your past looks like Rahab’s
Maybe your story includes sexual sin, addiction, or choices that still make you wince. Maybe people still whisper or label you by who you used to be. If so, you may find yourself in Rahab’s story.
Rahab lived in Jericho and was known as a harlot. Yet when she heard about the God of Israel, she believed. She hid the spies, risked her life, and staked her future on the God she had only heard stories about.
By faith, she and her family were spared when the walls of Jericho fell (Joshua 6:25). Even more, God wove her into the lineage of Christ Himself (Matthew 1:5). God didn’t just forgive Rahab; He honored her.
Your past does not intimidate God. The blood of Jesus is greater than your worst chapter. Where others might see only your history, God sees the story He plans to write from this point forward.
When you’ve fallen hard like David
Maybe you love God, but you carry the weight of a big failure. Something you knew was wrong, but you did it anyway. David knew that feeling.
David was a man after God’s own heart, yet he committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged for her husband’s death (2 Samuel 11). It’s hard to get darker than that. When God confronted David, he didn’t make excuses. He repented, broken and honest before the Lord.
His words might sound like your own heart cry:
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness… Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” (Psalm 51:1–2, KJV).
David still lived with earthly consequences, but God did not throw him away. God forgave him, restored him, and kept His promise that the Messiah would come through his line.
If you are truly repentant, your story does not end with your worst sin. In God’s hands, even your failure can become a place where His mercy shines brighter than your shame.
When you’ve run from God like Jonah
Maybe you’re not just stumbling—you’ve been running. You know God has tugged at your heart, called you toward obedience, toward service, toward surrender, and you went the other way.
Jonah literally ran in the opposite direction of God’s call. He boarded a ship to escape the assignment God gave him. Yet God pursued Jonah with a storm, a great fish, and ultimately a second chance.
“And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh…” (Jonah 3:1–2, KJV).
God did not discard Jonah after his rebellion. He disciplined him, yes, but He did not abandon him. And even through a reluctant prophet, God brought an entire city to repentance.
If you’ve been running, the fact that you’re even reading this is a mercy. God is still calling. His “second time” can start today.
When your weakness feels louder than your love: Peter
Maybe you really love Jesus, but you feel like you keep denying Him with your choices, your silence, or your fear. Peter’s story may feel painfully familiar.
Peter swore he would never deny Christ. Yet when the pressure came, he denied Jesus three times. When the rooster crowed, Peter remembered, and “went out, and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75, KJV).
But that wasn’t the end. After the resurrection, Jesus sought Peter out. He did not humiliate him. He restored him with gentle but probing questions: “Lovest thou me?” (John 21:15–17, KJV). Then He entrusted Peter with care for His people: “Feed my sheep.”
If you have failed Jesus, He does not meet you with, “I’m done with you.” In Christ, He meets you with forgiveness and a fresh call: “Follow me” (John 21:19, KJV).
When you think you’re too far gone: Paul
Maybe you’re convinced that what you’ve done puts you beyond the reach of God’s plan. Paul would disagree with you.
Before he was the apostle Paul, he was Saul, a persecutor of the church. He consented to the death of Christians. He dragged believers to prison. Yet when the risen Christ met him on the road to Damascus, everything changed.
Later, Paul could say with honesty:
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15, KJV).
Yet God chose that “chief” of sinners to carry the gospel across the Roman world and to write much of the New Testament. If God can redirect a man like Paul, He can reach into your story, no matter how dark, and bring life where there has been destruction.
When your reputation is messy: the woman at the well
Maybe your story is tangled with broken relationships, shameful patterns, and a reputation you can’t outrun. The Samaritan woman in John 4 knew that life well.
She came to the well at a lonely hour, perhaps to avoid the stares and whispers. Jesus met her there. He spoke straight to her painful past—“thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband” (John 4:18, KJV)—and yet He did not walk away. He offered her “living water” (John 4:10, KJV).
After encountering Him, she ran back to the very people she’d likely been avoiding and said, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (John 4:29, KJV). Many believed because of her testimony.
Jesus sees you fully and still invites you deeply. He does not wait for you to clean up your reputation before He uses your story.
What all of this means for you
When you lay these stories side by side, a pattern rises to the surface:
- God is not looking for the most “qualified” by human standards.
- He loves to pour grace into broken places.
- He delights to show His strength in human weakness.
Scripture puts it plainly:
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27, KJV).
If you feel foolish, weak, ordinary, or ruined, you are not disqualified. You are the very kind of person God delights to work through, because then it is clear that the power, the change, and the fruit come from Him, not from you.
Where I came from to today
I’ve walked some hard and ugly roads—drugs and alcohol once had a grip on me, women were a way to numb or prove myself, and my temper burned bridges I wish were still standing. But for the last 20 years, I’ve been saved by grace, and I can see now that even my darkest seasons have been places where God has shown His mercy and patience toward me, just as He did with men like Moses, Gideon, and David, who were weak and flawed yet still called and used by God (Exodus 3:11–12; Judges 6:12,16; Psalm 51). Underneath the addictions, the womanizing, and the anger was someone who was tired of hurting others and himself, someone who felt the weight of regret and, by God’s grace, finally surrendered to that pull toward something better in Christ—just like Paul, who called himself the chief of sinners yet found mercy and a new purpose in Jesus (1 Timothy 1:15). I still carry scars that don’t show on the outside, and I’ve known what it’s like to hide behind jokes, bravado, or silence when shame gets loud, yet the very fact that I can name these things and bring them into the light is proof that my heart has been kept soft by His Spirit, much like Peter, who wept bitterly after denying Christ but was later restored and commissioned by the Lord Himself (Matthew 26:75; John 21:15–19). I am a man who has stood at the crossroads many times, and by God’s grace I keep choosing the narrow road—unknown, humbling, and often scary—but it is the road where grace, healing, and a different legacy in Jesus Christ continue to unfold in my life, a living picture of how God chooses the weak and foolish things of this world so that the glory clearly belongs to Him and not to me (1 Corinthians 1:26–29; Matthew 7:13–14).
Today, I am a Christian author of 11 books, and I walk in His glory for it daily. The same God who drew me out of addiction, lust, and anger now uses my story, my pen, and my voice to point others back to Him, and none of it is because I got my life together on my own—it is all because of His grace at work in me. Every time I sit down to write, I remember the man I was and the mercy I’ve received, and it humbles me that God would take a life so marked by sin and turn it into a vessel for His truth and encouragement. The words on those pages are not a monument to my wisdom or strength, but to a Savior who still chooses the weak and the broken, and who continues to transform me as I serve Him. Walking in His glory daily means I don’t boast in my past or my achievements; I boast in the cross of Christ, knowing that anything good flowing out of my life now is evidence that He is still writing my story for His purposes.
Stepping into God’s story with your life
So what do you do with all of this, right where you are?
- Bring your real self to God.
Talk to Him honestly about your past, your shame, your fears, and your sense of unworthiness. He already knows. “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7, KJV). - Receive His forgiveness and grace.
If you have never trusted Christ, or if you are far from Him, turn to Him now in repentance and faith. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us” (1 John 1:9, KJV). - Ask Him to use you, even as you are learning and growing.
You may not feel ready, but God often shapes us as we obey. Pray something as simple as, “Lord, here I am. Use my life, my story, my pain, my gifts, however You choose.” - Take one small step of obedience.
That step might be apologizing to someone, joining a church, serving quietly in a ministry, sharing your testimony with a friend, or opening your Bible in the morning when you’d rather hide. God can steer a moving ship more easily than one that refuses to leave the dock. - Remember who makes you “worthy.”
You will never earn a place in God’s plan by your performance. Your worthiness rests in Christ. “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6, KJV).
You might see yourself as the last person God would ever reach for, yet Scripture is filled with men and women just like you—people with messy pasts, deep regrets, and real weaknesses whom God chose to love, forgive, and use in powerful ways. The same God who met Moses in his fear, David in his failure, and Paul in his rebellion has not changed; He still steps into ordinary, broken stories and turns them into living testimonies of His grace. If you will open your heart to Him—bringing your sin, your shame, and your fears into the light instead of hiding them—He can begin reshaping your story from the inside out, one surrendered step at a time. Do not wait on a “better version” of yourself to come to Him; come as you are, right now, because the Spirit‑changed life you long for is not a distant dream, but a real work God stands ready to begin in you today.You may feel like the last person God would choose, but He has a long history of writing His glory across the lives of people the world calls unworthy. If you’re willing, He can do the same with you. Don’t hesitate, a transformed life is waiting.
Discovering the Path of Salvation series by Stephen Luckett
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