We often come to our discipleship broken. We can’t pretend otherwise. We’re a bundle of inconsistencies, surrounded by fear and hubris. But the Lord is calling us to follow Him.
I’m convinced that the mentally ill, the rascal, and the loser are already half-way to repentance. We have nothing to offer anyone. And in quiet moments we understand our issues. We know we aren’t prime discipleship material.
“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. 27 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. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,”
1 Corinthians 1:26-28, NIV
Honestly, I’m just one of the foolish ways God shares His love. I make no claim to perfection. I’m throughly inconsistent. And I wish it was different.
“But God chose,” and we are the chosen. We’ve the ones selected to “shame the wise;” we are called to “shame the strong.” It seems that this is more than we can handle. We are not wired for this.
The Holy Spirit comes to fill us, and when we are full we can do this. We activate the cross and humble our pride– and doing this just makes me available for Him to use, as He sees fit.
You stand in an unbroken line; centuries of believers have proceeded you. You were called to the kingdom “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). We are right where God has determined for us to be. Chosen for this very moment.
Weakness, or smallness are your only qualifications. The Lord uses the broken. It’s time to bear down broken. We’re waiting for you to take your place.
Broken Believers 
God made everything out of nothing, and he can make mighty disciples out of the raw broken material of you and me. Peace, Linda
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Using the words “shaming the wise/ strong” is a poor choice of words, when we shame someone we break our connections with them. We need the wise and the strong it is not a bad thing to be either. What we can do is through acts of love offer them an experience of how their lack of compassion hurts us. So it increases their wisdom and strength.
Shame means you are bad
guilt means you did something bad.
By making an offering of experience for compassion, the guilt can be dealt with and dropped on the side of the road. Forgiving guilty acts can increase our compassion and connection and ultimately our relationships.
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To the extent the wise and the strong think they don’t need God, they have done something wrong and should feel shame. These are God’s words and I don’t agree that He has chosen His words poorly. Although I do think it would be interesting to study the Greek word that was translated in 1 Corinthians as “shame” and see what the connotation of the Greed word is. Perhaps there is a deeper understanding that we miss because the idea of shame wounds our pride and seems too harsh.
Scripture tells us we are all born with a sinful nature and our pride is, in fact, bad because it relegates God to the realm of unnecessary. One can be compassionate and still see sin and pride for what they are.
Peace, Linda
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