Podcast Short: It’s Not About Being Ordinary

It's Not About Being Ordinary

It’s not about being ordinary, because we all are.  In talking about myself, I’m about as ‘ordinary’ as they come.  But, it’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things.  That’s the beauty of it.  We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary.  God granted you and He granted me all of the elements, all of the ingredients (if you will) to do what we never thought we could do.  You come packaged with resources that (if used correctly) can accomplish things that are greater than the sum total of those resources.  And if there’s some tragedy in all of that, it’s that people don’t use them correctly, and therefore they never accomplish the great things that were theirs to accomplish.

The incredibly disappointing thing is that people look at who they are through the lens of who ‘they’ are.  And through that lens (which is incredibly limiting) we don’t see all that we are.  We have this vague understanding of ourselves, which leaves a whole lot of ourselves unknown, or ill-defined, or misunderstood, or mis-defined altogether.  And we walk through our lives with this less-than-accurate understanding of who we are.  And that understanding (whatever it happens to be) is typically a horribly marginalized and minimized view of who we really are.  So we might be ordinary, but we diminish the incredible abilities that are inherent in being ‘ordinary.’  Remember, “being ordinary” (as much as we diminish it) “does not limit us to ordinary things.”

I think that God wants you to see who you are.  The whole of who you are.  Not just the good, but everything that’s maybe not so good as well.  Not just the stuff that we’re proud of (if we even have anything that we’d say we’re proud of) but all of the stuff.  Not just the successes, but the failures as well.  Not just the bright and shiny things within us, but the dark places too.

Because all of that is the stuff of the ordinary.  And God waits to take everything that’s ordinary within you and do something extra-ordinary with it because “We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary.”  That’s what God does.  He takes whatever we are and He makes it into everything that we are not.  He’s not looking for us to build all that up so that it eventually adds up to something that God can use.  He’s looking for us to surrender all that’s ordinary about us to Him (in whatever condition it’s in) so that He can build it up to something He can use.  “It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things,” because we have an extra-ordinary God who wants to birth a bunch of extra-ordinary things in your life.   

 

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