In a message on the life of Sarah, the matriarch of the Jewish people, we discovered reasons why she could have disqualified herself from doing great things for God. She was small, wrong, mean, doubting, and old. Yet God use her to bless the world.
Maybe you have disqualified yourself. But God hasn’t disqualified you.
Below is a prayer guide that might help you work through your disqualifiers so that you can see yourself as a Beloved Child who can do great things for God.
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Make a list of 8 to 10 disqualifiers that you are personally tempted to use and that sometimes keeps you from taking risks for God. Write them down on a sheet of paper or in a journal.
Choose one of the disqualifiers as the focus for this spiritual exercise. You are now going to write a brief prayer to the Lord by following the suggestions below.
- Admit to God that you have allowed a disqualifier (call it by name) to keep you from taking a risk for him – to keep you from obeying Him.
- Thank God that even though you’ve disqualified yourself and have been disobedient, that you are still His Beloved Child.
- Identify your disqualification as a weakness while realizing that in your weakness Christ’s strength can be made known. (Read II Corinthians 12:10. Your weakness is the perfect backdrop against which the Lord longs to display His strength.)
- Praise God for one of His specific character qualities or attributes that he can make known through your weakness – your disqualifier. (For example, His greatness outshines Sarah’s smallness; His righteousness outshines Sarah’s wrongness; His kindness outshines Sarah’s meanness.)
- Ask God to give you strength to display His character in spite of your disqualifier. Ask Him to use you to bring him glory by becoming a greater risk taker. Write down the specific area in which you feel He wants you to take a risk for Him.
