His Choice.

Sometimes, it shocks me to think about the kind of people God chooses.

 

I suppose, this shock has got everything to do with how we ourselves would choose people. When it comes to nominating someone to represent one’s school or organisation, or selecting a leader for a project, wouldn’t it make sense to choose the choicest candidate? Someone intelligent, eloquent, witty, full of integrity, reliable, and respectable-looking.  Why would anyone choose beneath second best?

 

Yet, it was at a two-hour missions workshop that Cliff and I were invited to conduct at Pasir Ris Bethesda Missions church last Saturday, to a group of 90 passionate youth, where I was overwhelmed with awe and humility, that God chooses to use the wretched, and to use… someone like me.

  

In the bible, the famous people whom God applauded would have been the last of our choices. Jacob was a cheat, Joseph was the least in his family, Rahab was a prostitute, Timothy was “too young”, David was a murderer, Elijah fell into suicidal thoughts, Jonah hid and ran away from God, and in spite of all his good intentions, Peter denied God, not once but three times.

 

It still boggles me to think about this.

 

Because in a season where Cliff and I have both been struggling, where I question my usefulness and doubt my abilities, where I wrestle with illness and Him,  it seems illogical that God should choose me. A day before the talk, I was a wreck. A big fight (fault lying more with me), a messy affair and one broken object later, I was ridden with guilt at the wretched wife, person and missionary-to-be I was. At that point, nothing in me felt qualified at all to deliver any speech, presentation or rousing call to a group of youth to ask them to commit to following God’s call on their lives.

 

Nothing. I only wept at the deep knowledge of my own wretchedness and wondered why God or Cliff would choose to love me.

 

It was within Cliff’s long-suffering embrace that I understood his and His forgiveness and grace, where at once I saw how truly, it is not our abilities that qualify us for God’s call on our lives, but His call itself that qualifies us. I was and am broken, I was and am ill, I was angry and I was nowhere near “qualified” or deserving to deliver such an honourable message with my honourable husband, but still, it was me that God had chosen.

 

It baffled, still baffles me to comprehend that thought.

 

Because you see, I had been hurt before by being weighed by my Usefulness. I have met scores of people who have told us repeatedly that I am throwing away my future, and that God would have Better Use of me had I chosen to study more, train more, specialise more. It has been a personal struggle to meet with mission agencies who constantly gauge our Usefulness as a couple, something I understand is perhaps necessary in a way. Yet, it has been also been His way time and time again to show me, how He doesn’t require me to prove my usefulness more to Him than I need to be His child by obeying, trusting and having faith in Him.

 

I don’t know about you- but most of the time, I feel I have little to show for, when it comes to being so-called qualified to serve God. How many of us feel that way, too?

 

As Cliff and I shared our hearts with the youth and as I listened to their fears and concerns about stepping out into the unknown to serve God and the underprivileged, it occurred to me that so many of us are hindered by our own fears, guilt, shame and anxieties, and what we think God thinks of us rather than what is actually true.

 

Had it not been for the fact that God reminded me so clearly that it is He Himself who qualifies us, and not our own good nature that qualifies us to serve Him; and had it not been for Cliff reminding me of his and His unconditional love that covers all sin, I might not have been there with Cliff that afternoon.

 

More of the time, God had chosen to use my child-like drawings and writings than medical skills to touch the lives of others; More of the time, God had chosen to use my hurts and pains in life rather than my joys and successes to heal the lives of others; More of the time, God has chosen to use me, the broken girl in tears drowning in her self-pitying wretchedness to speak into the lives of others, rather than the high-flying, award-winning doctor whose contrived image is completely incongruent with  truth.

 

God loves the broken. He loves the meek. He loves those who have nothing to hold on to but Him alone.

 

The youth asked us thoughtful questions, which reflected their maturity and love for God and others. One of the questions was, “How do you actually give up everything to follow God?”

 

Cliff had a great answer. He is, after all (to me, at least) a hero of faith. He had sold everything he had, left his home and culture behind, to follow God in a way that might have earned mockery from others around him simple because of obedience to God’s call. I, on the other hand, could only admit, that I am struggling. I am hurting from this transition and the adjustments it brings, I am hurting from the disdain and disparagement I receive very subtly in social conversations and my academic circles, I am hurting from the disappointment of finding myself feeling  more than I’d like, alone in this journey with the people I had thought would understand, but not quite comprehending any of this we are going through.

 

It is then when I put on the glasses of the world, that I see myself through filters- that I am in a rather unheroic, unglamourous position, where I begin to see how following God does come at a cost, and that this is my cost. Because subconsciously I had thought it would be easy, with everyone applauding and encouraging us. But little did I realize or expect how much going-against-the-grain this would take, how much of my own hypocrisy this process had revealed- that really, I live on men’s praises, how much my own fragmented, selfish, prideful nature would trap me.

 

Last Saturday, as Cliff and I shared our hearts with the youth, I then realized that that was not the way God saw me, how God sees us at all.

 

He uses our passions, our dreams, but He also uses our hurts and failings. His idea of Usefulness, is vastly different from the world’s definition, too. At the end of the talk, it surprised me to see and hear young people coming up to us, sharing with us something they had gleaned, something God had spoken to them, and it touched me to receive an email that evening:

 

” Managed to gather enough courage to visit Zhou Ye Ye today and he really has a lot of stories to tell.

Thank you for being able to tell me (us) about him so that I was able to be more courageous when going to him.

I would also like to thank you for sharing about your various mission trips in the different parts of the world…

… Hope to see you around when you visit Zhou Ye Ye! 🙂 “

 

So if today, in this exam season, you’re feeling awfully lost, remember that God doesn’t grade you on a report book in red ink. If today, in the midst of the organisational rat race, you’re feeling left behind, remember that God doesn’t measure His love for you with Key Perfomance Indices. If today, you’re feeling helpless among all the aid that is going into disaster relief and wishing you had some skills to help the needy, remember that God has not given you any skill too small to be a lover of souls- whether it is through a creative idea to fundraise or a simply a generous heart to donate some savings.

 

Wretched and imperfect as we are, God qualifies those He calls.

 

He will use us, not because we are Useful in the world’s eyes, but because we can have faith to look beyond our shortcomings to trust that He can use us above all than we can imagine. We can be His choice even without being Useful in the world’s eyes, when we are willing to avail our hands and feet to be a channel of His love, in ways however small, and prick our ears to His still whisper, to obey and to be used as a vessel, however broken.

 

And for that, I am filled with gratitude to overflowing.

 

 

He has saved us and called us to a holy life—

not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace.

– 2 Timothy 1:9

 

 

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called.

Not many of you were wise by human standards;

not many were influential;

not many were of noble birth. 

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.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—

and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 

so that no one may boast before him.

 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus,

who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

 

 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

^– 1 Cor 1:26-31