No One Can Take Away The Gifts God Has Blessed You With

it can be easy to fall into the Trap of thinking God cannot use you you may not feel good enough because you've previously fallen into sin maybe your backgrounds your past and upbringing makes you feel as though you're too bad too damaged to be used by the Lord however God does not use the worthy if he did there would be nobody that would qualify to make that list we're all broken sinners in desperate need of being saved by God and dear friends the good news is that God can and does turn things around he can change a cold hardened heart and fill it with love and compassion he can change the one who is angry and hateful and make them forgiving and humble now for a moment I want to highlight three biblical characters who are used by God but by today's standards many Christians would have turned these men away and perhaps even ridiculed them because of their sins but this is the point I'd like to put across to you God uses those who we consider broken God uses those who we consider weak because in him that which is broken is made whole and in him that which is weak is made strong consider Moses god stepped into Moses's life in a very Mighty way while all other male babies his age were being killed by the pharaoh God spared his life Moses was put into a river on a baby-sized boat and pulled out of the river by the pharaoh's daughter you would think someone saved in such a miraculous way would live a life entirely to God however Moses committed the most heinous sin a human can commit he was a murderer while he did not grow up in slavery due to living with the pharaoh's daughter the rest of the Israelites did as an adult Moses watched an Egyptian beat an Israelite this infuriated him he went to the Egyptian and beat him to death instead of admitting his sin he hid the dead body and fled Not only was Moses a murderer but also a coward many years later God told Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh about releasing the people of Israel from slavery and despite his hesitation despite his past God still used Moses to perform Mighty Miracles and lead the people of Israel out of Egypt next we have David David is known as being a man after God's Own Heart while he loved God he was at one point an adulterous murderer as king it was his duty to go and Lead his men while they were at War this is what all leaders of the foreign armies were doing at the time however while Israel was at War David stayed home after waking up from his midday nap he saw a woman bathing her name was Bathsheba and she was married to a man named Uriah Uriah was out at War David decided to sleep with Bathsheba and she got pregnant instead of David admitting his sin he tries to cover it up by bringing Uriah home from war to sleep with Bathsheba however Uriah is an honorable man and does not want to sleep with his wife while the rest of Israel is at War since he cannot get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba he signs uriah's death notice he gives Uriah a note that he is not supposed to read Uriah hand delivers the note to his commanding officer this note sends Uriah to the front lines and leads to his death finally we have Paul the Apostle before he was Paul the Apostle he was known as Saul from Tarsus this Saul would go door to door and beat Christians It is believed that he also killed them in the book of Acts the first person to die for following Jesus was a man named Stephen gave a speech about Jesus and called everyone to repent and trust in Jesus at the end of the speech Stephen is stoned to death it says of Saul in Acts 8 1 and Saul approved of his execution at the least Saul approved and was happy with the execution at the most he set up the execution Saul killed followers of Jesus according to our standards as humans we would have discarded these individuals we would have said that they were too far gone for committing such evil sins if they walked into the front doors of our church and asked for a job we would quickly turn them away we most likely would have called for them to be arrested kept behind bars for the rest of their days however God was still able to turn their lives completely around God was still able to use them to do extraordinary things Moses leads the people of Israel out of slavery and into the Promised Land David is known as the greatest King that Israel ever had and as a man after God's Own Heart Paul wrote over half of the New Testament and is one of the greatest Church Planters to ever walk the earth God touched and convicted their hearts and they answered the call of the Lord and repented do you feel as if you cannot be forgiven by God do you feel as if you're too far off from God that is not the truth and it's a lie straight from Satan if God can forgive David of adultery and murder Moses of murder and Paul of murder he can certainly forgive you the shame that you feel is not from God while God May convict you of sin he does not cause the feeling of Shame God offers second third and fourth chances Jesus was asked how many times we should forgive someone he answers in Matthew 18 where the Bible reads then Peter came up and said to him Lord how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times Jesus said to him I do not say to you seven times but 77 times Jesus is not telling us to only forgive someone 77 times 77 is a number that means as many times as they sin so if we are called to forgive that many times our good heavenly father will forgive us we must only trust in the blood of Jesus and turn to him in faith and repentance you are not too bad for God to use God can and will use anyone to change the world and bring his kingdom from Heaven to Earth he's calling you right now to repent and turn toward him as you do he will use a broken sinner like you in ways you would never have imagined our part is to have faith that God means what he says and he says what he means if he says all things will work together for my good then my part is not to ask how but it's simply to trust that God honors his word if the word of God tells me that many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him out of them all then my part is to Hold On by faith to his promise with the eyes of Faith you can see the hand of God the goodness of God in every situation regardless of how painful through faith you can begin to consider if you've been placed in that set of circumstances for a specific reason or specific purpose a purpose such as unlocking a stronger desire for prayer in your life a purpose such as awaking a hunger for righteousness and Holiness like never before in your life or perhaps the purpose of such a test is to expose the gifts and the calling that lays dormant inside of you too often because we're focusing on the negative we don't see the positive in that situation and we don't see what God is trying to do could it be that the reason for this difficulty is God wants to reveal to you who he really is perhaps this is a test where God wants to demonstrate himsel