Last week I preached in church on a topic that is close to my heart these days. I called the sermon ‘Cooperating with God’, but the actual underlying topic is how to deal with shortcomings in your character and in your competencies. I feel confronted with my own shortcomings a lot, these days; I hardly feel able to cope with everything that crosses my path, and at the same time I sometimes feel hopelessly weak characterwise. And probably I am not the only one. So I thought it was good to share some thoughts on that. While studying the subject, I found out that I am in good company: Abraham, Moses, David – they all had very obvious shortcomings. The interesting thing about all three of them is that God praises them in the very area they failed miserably in. See for yourself: Abraham was praised because of his faith (Hebrews 11), but his most visible fault was not trusting God for providing him with a son with Sarah; Moses was praised for being meek (Numbers 12), but he was so temperamented that he killed an Egyptian; David was praised to be a man after Gods heart, but his great mistake was to commit adultery with Batsebah. Interesting, isn’t it? I thought it would give us hope that God would be able to use us in his service as well.
The two principles that I covered were:
– God can fill you with what you don’t have
– God will multiply whatever you give to him<\/p>\n
So, don’t panic if you feel unable and unqualified: no problem for God!<\/p>\n
For dutch readers: here is the summary<\/a> in pdf (770Kb).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I preached in church on a topic that is close to my heart these days. 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I called the sermon ‘Cooperating with God’, but …","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["algemeen<\/a>"],"unlinked":["algemeen<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Geplaatst 20 jaar geleden","modified":"Bijgewerkt 20 jaar geleden"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Geplaatst op 28 mei 2006","modified":"Bijgewerkt op 28 mei 2006"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Geplaatst op 28 mei 2006 22:52","modified":"Bijgewerkt op 28 mei 2006 22:52"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p63Qy-5p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":584,"url":"https:\/\/boerenroem.nl\/wordpress\/2008\/08\/27\/when-bad-things-happen\/","url_meta":{"origin":335,"position":0},"title":"When bad things happen…","author":"Mark","date":"27 augustus 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I just read my Twitter entry from Monday, saying that I felt physically miserable but spiritually okay. 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