Why me?

Why me?  Have you ever found yourself asking this question? What I mean is, have you ever found yourself questioning your qualifications for a role for which you’ve been chosen?  Why would someone pick me to take up a certain job, what qualifications do I have that would say, “Hey, I’m the perfect man for (insert random task here).”  Most of the time I focus on the things that disqualify me for a position. A great example of this is from this past summer.  I was a summer camp staffer at M-Fuge in Nashville, Tennessee. This was my dream job.  I have always wanted to work for Fuge,  but the closer and closer I got to opening day, the bigger and bigger my disqualifications seemed to be. I kept telling myself that I’m not very patient,  but I’m about to have to control a group of fifteen to twenty-five teenagers. I’m not super open or approachable, but I’m about to have to get that same group of teenagers to open up to me and each other. There were a thousand scenarios running through my head that I didn’t know how to handle. I felt unprepared, like I was not the right man for the job.

This question of why me has caused me to notice something interesting about the type of people God calls. Often God seems to call people who seem extremely unqualified for the task that he gives them. It doesn’t take very long to find plenty of examples. A group of fishermen and a tax collector were enlisted to spread the greatest news the world has ever heard;  the smallest brother out of a family with several warriors would kill a giant and save his people, and a murderer with a stutter would lead the greatest rescue mission the world has ever seen. These are just a few examples of the people God has called who, by human standards, were not qualified to do what they were called to do. The example I want to dive into is the murderer with a stutter.  Did you catch who that was? It’s Moses, and let me tell you, if you want to learn about a man who didn’t think he was qualified for the task he was given, Moses is your guy. The part of his story I want to focus on comes from Exodus 3:11-12 and Exodus 4:10-12.

Exodus 3:11-12

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” ¹² He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

Exodus 4: 10-12

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” ¹¹ Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ¹² Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

This is that mildly important conversation between Moses and God when God is speaking from the burning bush. Moses obviously doesn’t believe he should be the one to bring the Israelites out of slavery, and he tries to change God’s mind (spoiler alert: That doesn’t work!). Moses asks God the same basic question that I think many of us ask when we are called out of our comfort zones. In Exodus 11:3 he is basically saying, “Umm, hey, God, why me?” He questions why God would even use him. To be honest, I get where Moses is coming from. Moses looked at his past and at his speech impediment (4:10) and believed God had to have made a mistake choosing him. Moses didn’t believe he was qualified, and, to be honest, from my viewpoint, he wasn’t.  He murdered a guy, and then he abandoned his people and fled to the desert. He couldn’t talk fluently. I think these things are what was running through Moses’s head when he asked his question in Exodus 3:11. He couldn’t figure out what it was about him that God could possibly use. And in Exodus 4:10 Moses brings up the point that he has a speech impediment and can’t talk fluently. Who wants a leader that can’t effectively communicate? All these doubts and worries were racing through Moses’s head, and God’s response is so simple. Moses asks God,“Why me?How can I possibly be of use to you with all these disqualifications?” God responds to this in such an awesome way in Exodus 3:12. God says, “You have me.” He told Moses, “I will be with you.  What other qualification do you need?” Then in 4:11-12 God gets kind of snappy with his response by telling Moses that He knows Moses has a speech impediment!  God tells him, “I’ve got your voice, and when you need to talk, it will be me talking through you.”  God was telling Moses that when he went out to represent God, it didn’t matter whether Moses thought he was qualified or able to do his task. God was going to give Moses exactly what he needed to succeed. If you keep reading in Exodus, this is exactly what happened. God was with Moses and turned him into an incredible leader. This murderer with a stutter led God’s people out of Egypt because he let go of his disqualifications and allowed God to work through him.

This summer I had the same type of excuses Moses did.  I was like, God, there has got to be someone better qualified for this job, someone with more experience. I had to come to the realization that I was exactly where I was called to be, and, if that was true, then God would equip me to do what he needed me to do. Moses’s story is just one example of many in the Bible where God called someone to do something that by human standards they had no business doing, and every time when God called them to do something, he equipped them to do it. This summer, believe me, I was not qualified to do the job I did.  There were times that I was terrified I was going to mess something up. I have had almost zero experience or training with anxiety or panic attacks, but when one of my students had a panic attack on site one day, I had to step in to calm him down. I didn’t know what to say or what to do; I simply had to trust that God would do exactly what he promised to Moses:  He would be with me. That situation turned into one of the best conversations and one of the best moments of my whole summer. That is just one example of many from this summer in which God called me out way beyond my comfort zone to do His work. I have had to come to the realization that God has a plan, and that plan doesn’t involve a qualified Dewayne. It involves a Dewayne that has an absolute trust and faith that no matter the situations I am called to be in, God is in control, and he will equip me as he sees fit, not as I see fit. Just like God did with Moses, His promise remains. He is saying, “Calm down. I got your back, bro. I’m not leaving you out to dry.”

I want to end this by asking: Are there some areas of your life where you are asking, Why me? Are you making excuses to God as to why you are not qualified or why you can’t do a task or activity God has called you to do? If so, take a moment and pray to make sure that you are in God’s will for your life. If you are in his will, rest in the fact that the question of Why me? has an answer. The answer is this: God chose you, and if he chose you, he is with you, and he will qualify you with the skills and knowledge to complete the task. The truth is human qualifications and opinions don’t matter when it comes to what God has planned; what matters is that you have been called,  and God has a plan.