How God uses our best - and our worst

You just never know.

In about 45 minutes I’ll press the SEND button and this blog will go out into the world. Very occasionally I think I may be sending a masterpiece, but more often than not it is simply the best I can manage at the time. No one is paying for it, I tell myself, so they can’t complain!

That was certainly the case a few weeks ago. By any reckoning it wasn’t one of my best efforts. But it was the best I could produce that morning. Amazingly, a few days later someone wrote to say—almost in passing—that it was one of my best blogs ever. A surprise.

Then again, perhaps not really. That is often how ministry works. It is how the Holy Spirit works—in blogs, in sermons, even through our prayers. God seems quite content to use whatever we offer him to build his kingdom. As David Watsononce observed: “God has no problem with our weaknesses, just our disobedience.”

So the apostle Paul arrives in Corinth. Later he recalls, “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3). Yet by then he understood something of God’s way of working and was not fazed by his own frailties: “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.”

So what is the acid test for ministry? The other week I was chatting with one of my former curates, and he reminded me of a lesson I once shared with him—that every sermon should include, indeed emphasise, the cross of Jesus. For it is his sacrificial death at Golgotha which lies at the beating heart of our faith. No cross, no Saviour, no salvation.

So the apostle Paul shares his secret:“You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s sheer genius, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1f, The Message).

That this cruel, lingering death on a Roman cross should possess any power is, of course, entirely counter-intuitive. Had you been there, watching this so-called King of the Jews—abused and mocked, writhing in agony and gasping for breath—you would have had no sense that this moment would become the single defining event for the whole cosmos.

So the theologian Jürgen Moltmann could conclude: “The crucified Christ is the foundation and the criticism of every Christian theology.” The cross becomes our reference point for everything we do—the measure of our faith and understanding of God.

Amazingly, the cross of Jesus is also a source of power—God’s power. So the apostle writes: “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

Sadly, I have been at church services—even funerals—where no mention is made of Christ crucified. God’s wonderful love is celebrated, Jesus’ amazing teaching is shared, even the fruits of the Spirit are acclaimed. But the cross itself is absent—an embarrassment, perhaps.

As Tom Holland , the historian, not the actor! observes: “That a crucified man should be worshipped as God was utterly unprecedented and shocking.”

And it is this same Jesus who calls us to take up our cross and follow him—in his resurrection power. So we discover how God can use even our weaknesses, even those blogs which we struggle to write. Nevertheless, because we do this in his name, he deserves our very best.

Of course, the fact that God uses weakness—even failure—to advance his kingdom is no excuse for poor preparation or second-rate sermons. We offer God our best because we want to honour him. As Mother Teresa once said: “God does not require that we succeed; he only requires that you try.”

Perhaps that is the quiet encouragement for all of us who try, in whatever small way, to serve Christ.

Most ministry does not feel dramatic. There are no headlines, no crowds, no obvious moments when heaven seems to open and the Spirit descends in visible power. More often it feels quite ordinary: a sermon prepared at the kitchen table, a prayer beside a hospital bed, a conversation after a service, or a blog written early in the morning before pressing SEND.

Yet the cross reminds us that God often works most profoundly through what appears unimpressive. On Good Friday there were no cheering crowds, no triumphant music, no sense that history itself was turning a corner. Only a dying man on a rough Roman cross outside the city walls.

And yet that was the moment when the love of God was most fully revealed and the power of God most decisively at work.

Which is why, week by week, Christians keep coming back to the cross. It steadies us. It humbles us. It reassures us that the effectiveness of ministry does not depend on our brilliance, but on God’s grace.

So in a few minutes I shall press SEND again. Whether masterpiece or muddle, it will go out in the name of Christ—and that, in the end, is what matters most.