1 Corinthians 1:26-31, "Musicians for God"

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? – The Message -

Well, it’s not really a way to “win friends and influence people”.

I should mention here, that Paul isn’t saying Christians are never the “best and brightest”. He's just saying the Corinthian Christians weren’t. I’d probably have felt right at home in the Corinthian church.

I don’t know that we should make this generalization for the Church in general but the implication is clear: none of (us) can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

I like how “the Message” puts this: “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” The advantage we have as an average person when we excel is…people have to ask “where did that come from?” After all, when my ability to reason exceeds that of anybody around me, it does beg the question. When my life is orderly, productive, framed by integrity and saturated with grace, people have to wonder “how does he do that”

And then…you know what? All we have to do is say “God did it!” Evangelism doesn’t get much more basic than that.

Or course, we can work hard to become the smartest person in the room…and may be successful. The problem is, people (including ourselves) will have a difficult time discerning exactly where our abilities end and God’s begin. That’s when our effectiveness for Christ begins to wane. Mostly, because we don’t mind people giving us credit for what God has done. It’s human nature.

I think we should try to excel…to be the best we can possibly be…only so we can give God credit. We need our lives to be musical instruments whose only melody sounds just like God.

Live boldly out there today…

[Chapter one synopsis: Paul is thankful for what God has done in the lives of the Corinthian Christians. He is also confident that God will continue working in their lives. He is frustrated by the divisions within their church and suggests they carefully cultivate the things they have in common as believers. This squabbling makes unbelievers skeptical that Christ is of any import. The conduct of our daily lives is the substance that will ultimately convince them. It’s possible to tune our lives in such perfect harmony with God that they cannot be ignored…as best evidence for the faith.]