I was prayer walking around Burlington this past Thursday and decided to stop at Battery Park where I could gaze across Lake Champlain towards the Adirondack Mountains in the distance.  It was a perfect place to meditate on scripture and pray- early in the day and just cold enough that I had the park to myself.

I found myself thinking about the power of God.

How by His word He made the earth, created the mountains, set the boundaries for the sea…

How He delivered a tribe of slaves from the Egyptian empire…

How He directed a shepherd boy’s stone to slay a nine foot tall warrior…

How He came to this earth, died on a cross, then arose from the dead…

And then my mind jumped to a scripture that I’d been meditating on while prayer walking:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen

Ephesians 3:20

As followers of Jesus within whom the Holy Spirit dwells, that same power is in us and He desires for that power to transform us.   But there’s more: He wants that power to work through us (the church=the people of God) in such a way that we become instruments of transformation in the world around us.  Here’s what I began to realize as I continued praying and walking: I often expect God to use some people as instruments of transformation more than others based on humanistic standards and not what God can do in and through them.

I expect God to use people who seem well adjusted, well balanced, and healthy.

I expect God to use people who seem intelligent, influential, and successful.

I even expect God to use people whose own stories parallel my own.

Do I really expect that my God is powerful enough to redeem and restore those who seem furthest from Him and those who seem to be at the bottom of the culture’s social ladder?  Do I believe those are the people He invites to become His disciples and desires to equip as leaders of His mission and in His movement- the instruments for Jesus-centered transformation in our city?