Steven Brown often says, “It takes a drunk to reach a drunk.” I have always loved that because the implications are several: 1) God never wastes our pain. Whatever we have been through that didn’t kill us; God will use to bring comfort and healing to others. 2) Though you are a creature still in the process of change, you are an instrument in the hands of God to affect the same kind of change in others. 3) You are a participant with God in the restoration he started at Calvary and will complete when God makes all things new.

It is a prevailing thought that God placed the work of sanctification into the hands of trained, schooled, licensed professionals. But even a casual reading of the Bible will reveal that is not the case. Paul Tripp says that God’s plan follows an “all the people, all the time” model. The point of ministry professionals is to make this happen, not be hired mercenaries. If you think about it, you could never hire enough ministry professionals to meet the needs of people in a local church. I was away several times this summer; a couple of these were at conferences. Those times involved ministering to people I didn’t know and in each case the same thing happened. I looked out over a vast throng of people who were polished and perfumed, with easy smiles and engaging personalities, but after a couple of days and the euphoria of worship the stories would start coming in —there is brokenness everywhere. There will never be enough paid professionals to tend all these wounds.

Even the governor of Mississippi saw this. Years ago when I was pastoring in Mississippi, the governor made the statement that there was one paid caseworker for every 250 people on welfare. His intent was to reverse the trend, having 250 people to help one person. The placed he looked to fulfill this dream was the church. I don’t think this novel idea ever caught on, and I also don’t think the dent in welfare in that region of Mississippi was every helped. In a similar vein, I don’t know if the church will ever have much of a cultural impact like it did in the past till the same cultural attitudes are changed.

For me, one of the most moving passages about how God ordains ministry to work is found in II Corinthians 4. Paul says something amazing in that passage. “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” The treasure he is talking about is nothing less than the glory of God himself in our personality. He is using a metaphor to show what resources we have with which to do ministry. The glory of God, a priceless diamond he puts in clay pots. When he says he puts it is clay pots, he is not talking about fine pottery. For me pottery is poor man’s art. It is about the only thing of original creation Teri and I can afford. We actually go on pilgrimages to places where there are several potters. And, we pay good money for it, we put it behind glass, we use it to serve food in and to most people who see it, it is an atheistic feast for the eyes – good workmanship, fine lines. This is not what Paul is talking about here. When he says he puts his glory in clay pots he is talking about ugly, plain, garden-variety ware that was essentially worthless. When it broke, you didn’t lament or beat the children for dropping it, you threw it away. It would be like mounting a Rolex on a plastic band, or putting a 5-caret diamond ring on a brass band. You just don’t do that. No one would. It is not appropriate, but low and behold Paul says that God puts his glory in earthen vessels, he puts his glory in our human personalities. 2 Peter 1: 4 says something amazing. I don’t fully understand what it means, but the KJV says it like this, “You have been make partakers of the divine nature.”

Then Paul hastens to add that for this glory, the glory of the Triune God of heaven and earth to get out into the world, the jars have to be broken. Paul talks about what ministry to the church at Corinth cost him; he was perplexed, persecuted, struck down - why? So that life, the life of God himself, would be worked in the people at Corinth. He says it like this. “So then, death was at work in us, but life is at work in you.” Translation - “I was willing to say no to my rights, my will, my schedule, and my certainty, because when I did that, I saw that God’s glory was having an effect on you, your lives were being changed.”

Think for a moment of a particular time when God really helped you grow or get through a hard providence so that you came out on the other side healed, helped, restored or encouraged and I promise you there will be a human instrument, an instrument in God’s hand who was being crushed. Their schedule, their sanity, their time or their patience was being crushed so that life, the divine life of God himself could work in you. It usually wasn’t a paid professional - just an ordinary person.

The message of the cross is simple - for us to live someone had to pay. Jesus did. But notice from Paul, the story line hasn’t changed. It is still the same. We are all called to be instruments in God’s hands to spread the work of restoration. What is more, all of us are who are in dire need of change ourselves are called by God, all the time to be his instruments. We never minister from a platform of having arrived, but as C. S. Lewis says, “as fellow patients in the same hospital ward, who because we have been there longer, can perhaps offer advise.” Everyone who knows Christ is his instrument, what are you waiting for?