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Feature

You Are Not Disqualified

By Sharon Jaynes

My son Steven was in the ninth grade when I turned in my book manuscript for Being a Great Mom, Raising Great Kids. The book was a culmination of years of research, study and experience. At the time, I was president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, an international radio, magazine, online and speaking ministry. Steven was a great kid. I felt like a great mom. All was right with the world.

However, the day after I tied up the neatly typed pages and slipped them into the mailbox headed for the publisher’s office, my world was rocked on its axis.

The phone rang.

“Hey, Mom, this is Steven.”

“What are you doing calling in the middle of the day?” I asked. “Is everything OK?”

“No,” he said. “I’m in the principal’s office. I’ve been caught stealing.”

At that moment I felt like anything but a great mom and I felt that Steven was anything but a great kid. He got a week of in-school suspension for stealing bags of chips from the cafeteria and I got a month of house arrest. It wasn’t that I couldn’t leave the house, but I sure didn’t want to.

Doubt, confusion, anger, insecurity, uncertainty, grief and embarrassment kept me locked up. Who was I to be telling anyone about how to be a parent? Who was I to be running an international ministry? Who was I to be speaking in front of thousands of women each year?

I felt disqualified.

Some of you may be thinking, Boy, that’s nothing! So what if your son stole from the school cafeteria? I’ve stolen from my place of employment. I’ve sold my body for cash. I’ve snorted crack cocaine. I’ve had an abortion. I’ve lied to my husband. I cheated in college. I…

We can fall into a trap comparing our scars and trying to decide whose is the deepest or most severe. My pain is worse than your pain. My life was more traumatic than your life. My sin is more grievous than your sin. Regardless of the size or severity of the scar, Satan still hisses the same lie…disqualified.

Maybe you don’t feel you deserve to serve the Lord because of what you’ve done. But guess what…you never deserved to serve God in the first place. None of us do. If we think that it all boils down to who deserves to serve and who doesn’t deserve to serve, then we are placing way too much value on our part in the redemption process. It is as if we are saying we had something to do with it. Listen, it is all God in the first place and it will be all God in the last place.

If sin disqualifies us from ministry, then we would all be hiding in our houses. Just take a look at some of the men and women in the Bible. David wasn’t disqualified from being God’s choice as king of Israel because he committed adultery and murder. Rahab wasn’t disqualified from being assimilated into the Israelite nation because of her past profession as a prostitute. Gideon wasn’t disqualified from being the leader of God’s army because he was hiding like a coward in a winepress. Saul (whose name God changed to Paul) wasn’t disqualified from being a crusader and evangelist to the Gentiles because he persecuted the Church before his encounter with Jesus. Peter wasn’t disqualified from being one of the founding fathers of the Christian Church because he denied Jesus three times.

If our past failures and mistakes disqualify us from ministry, then none of us would pass the test. King David wrote, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand! But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared… put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption” (Psalm 130:3,4,7). I couldn’t find one example in the Bible where a repentant person was disqualified from future service.

Tamar was King David’s daughter and Absalom’s sister. And while her name meant “palm tree,” a symbol of victory and honor, her life became a symbol of defeat and despair. One day, when Tamar least expected it, her half-brother Amnon violently raped her and then tossed her away like a filthy rag. She was a woman who felt disqualified because of what had been done to her.

After the attack, Absalom cared for and protected Tamar in his own home. Eventually, he exacted revenge and killed the rapist, but she never felt like a princess ever again. For the rest of her days she lived in darkness and desolation. (Read Tamar’s story in 2 Samuel 13.)

Tamar’s father never did anything to restore his daughter to her rightful place. But your heavenly Father did! He sent His Son, Jesus, to remove your filthy rags and place a royal robe on your shoulders. “He [God] has sent me [Jesus] to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners… to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve… to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Isaiah 61:1-3).

Whether it is something you have done or something that was done to you, Satan will use the information and the experience to try to make you feel disqualified. However, God has said that you are qualified the moment you believed on Jesus Christ, His Son. While your scars mark you, they do not make you.

“We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). Did you catch that? He planned work for you to do before you were born. Do you thin His plans for your life could possibly be negated because of something that happened in your past? Oh no. No plans of God’s can be thwarted (Job 42:2).

God “has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:12-14). He does the qualifying. Not me. Not you. Not anyone. Only God.

SHARON JAYNES is the author of several books, including Becoming the Woman of His Dreams and Becoming a Woman Who Listens to God. She and her husband Steve have one grown son, Steven, and live in North Carolina.

Excerpted from Your Scars Are Beautiful (Harvest House 2006). Reprinted with permission.