Why God Doesn't Want Your Ability—He Wants Your Availability

What if your biggest insecurity was also your first name? Well, that was Abram. His name literally meant exalted father. But in reality, he was childless. He walked around for 75 years with a title he hadn't earned and a blessing he couldn't keep. He was a man defined by what he lacked. But what God does with Abram's shame is going to wreck how you and I view our own identity. You see, God isn't looking for a hero with a perfect resume. He's looking for a pagan idol worshiper who's willing to obey. If you've ever felt like your life didn't matter or you don't understand why you're even here, well, then this story is for you. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. And before we get to the name change of Abram, we have to understand something about him when God showed up. Because the calling of Abram is one of the most surprising moments in all of scripture. Let's go to Genesis 12 and look at what happens when God calls him. The Lord said to him, go from your land, your relatives and your father's house, to the land I will show you. Now, why is that land important? See, something people miss is that Abram wasn't looking for God. He didn't seek after God. He didn't apply for this job. He didn't even put out a resume. In fact, he didn't even have one.

When God came to Abram, he was worshiping false gods. Now, how do I know that? Look back up to Genesis 11, verse 27. These are the family records of Terah. And if you go down, it says that Terah, a Terah, his father was living in Ur of the Chaldeans. Ur of the Chaldeans from the text shows us that this was a paganistic culture. Terah, his father was probably a worshiper of pagan gods, the god of sun and the god of the moon. The text didn't even hint at the fact that Abram was blameless like Noah. He had nothing to bring to God. And so why in the world would God choose Abram in the first place? Here's the principle I want you to get. Our best ability is always our availability to God. God is not looking for someone who has it all figured out. He's not looking for someone who is good enough. He's looking for someone who's receptive to his call. And you would probably amen that at this point. You see, Abram had nothing to offer God. Absolutely nothing. And yet God is about to change eternity through him. Your best ability is always your availability to God. Here's the secret nobody will tell you though. You will mess up. You're gonna mess up in life. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna second guess yourself.

And people will second guess you. As my wife Candy always says, that's why you have to be okay with being misunderstood. Let me say that again. You have to be okay with being misunderstood. In fact, this is the grand narrative of the entire Bible. God continues to pursue those who turn away from him. Can anybody watching relate to that? Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, used to say God was the hound of heaven. I love that because he doesn't stop chasing after us. And here's what I want you to hear. It's not because you're good enough. It's because God is good enough. You see, Abraham is not the hero of the story. God is. God is the hero of the story. And the same goes for us today. We don't follow Jesus to get a treasure from him. We follow Jesus because he is our treasure. We're not trying to get something from him or make a deal with him. We simply want him. So God calls this pagan idol worshiper. And he says, I'm going to make your name great. But here's the thing most people miss. His name was already the cruelest joke in the ancient world. And let me show you what I mean. Abram's wife, Sarah, was barren.

And to not have children in the ancient world wasn't just sad, it was devastating. It was a social death sentence, if you will. You didn't die, but you surely felt like you were dead at that time. I want you to follow me on this because here's where it gets really personal. In Ur, where Abraham lived, they had a patron god that was called Nona. Every city in the ancient world had these patron gods. Nona, the patron god of Ur, was known as the god of fertility. So think about this. The chief god of the city where Abram spent his entire life was the god of children. And here he has no children. He's married to a post-menopausal woman who's also not fertile. He's not fertile as well. Can you imagine the shame that carried? But it gets worse. The name that his dad gave him, Abram, actually has a meaning. And the meaning of Abram is exalted father. In the ancient world, names were more than call signs. Your name became your identity. Your father gave you a name that declared, this is who you will be. And I imagine Tara, his father,

wanted him to grow up and have many kids. Son, you're gonna grow up and have a huge family. But what happens? He has no kids. His name means dad. And every single time someone calls his name, feel the weight of this, it's gut-wrenching in his soul. Hey, dad, oh, I'm sorry, you don't have any kids. And then in Genesis 11, 31, the text tells us that he moves to Haran. Let's go back to the text and look what it says. It says, after he leaves Ur of the Chaldeans, he moves to Haran, and they settled there. Now, that's an interesting place, why? Because there's only one other city in the ancient world that has the same patron god, Nona, and it's Haran. He moves to the other city with a fertility god, and he has no children. Can you feel his shame? Can you sense his suffering? Here's the point I wanna encourage you with. If you find your identity in anything other than God, it will always leave you empty. You will always be shamed. And it's right here, in this brokenness, that God comes to him, not when he's cleaned up, not when he's earned it or proved himself. It's God who meets him in his shame. And what does God do next?

This is the part that should impact all of us. God changes his name. He changes his name from Abram to Abraham, or Avraham in Hebrew. Now, that might not seem like a big thing, but in the ancient world, it was everything. Abram means exalted father, but Avraham, or Abraham, means father of the multitudes, father of many. God takes a man, you're gonna love this, shamed by his own name, and gives him a new name. His identity is no longer found in what he's done, or what he hasn't done, but in what God will do for him. He's not earning his approval from what he's done. God has already given it to him. And this is the pattern that we will see through the entire Bible. God continues to pursue those who turn away. It's not because we're good enough, it's because he's good enough. Now, I want to share something with you personal, because I think this truth connected something for me in my own life that I've never forgotten years ago. The greatest thing I ever learned early on in my Christian walk was from a mentor of mine named Tim LaFleur. Tim LaFleur taught me something called the Christ life. You may have heard of it. He asked me this question in our first discipleship group where we're sitting in Glorietta, New Mexico.

I was the camp pastor that summer. And this question really rocked my world back then. He asked me this question, what is more pleasing to God? The work that you do for him or the worker himself. You see, at that point, I had just come out of the business world. I was very successful in a network marketing business. I had a big downline and I'd become a Christian and left my back on all that. At that point, my motto was, if it's meant to be, it's up to me, right? Some of you are resonating with that. You're like, man, that's my life as well. But I learned something about the Christ life that on my best day, in all my strength, in all my power, everything I brought to God in my flesh was filthy rags. And what he told me next changed my life. He said, Robbie, you can submit to the Lord and allow the spirit to work in you to work through you. Why? Because what pleases God is not the work you do, but the worker. I remember sitting back in the chair. I couldn't believe what he just told me because I was thinking, wow, I've never heard that before. I always thought it was what I did for the Lord, everything I brought to the Lord. And he said, no, God loves you first and then you work from that. God accepts you and you work from that acceptance.

Now, we see this all through scripture. The Christ life is everywhere. It's this combination of God working in you to work through you. And this frees us up with so much pressure and striving and earning. 2 Corinthians 4, 7, one of my favorite ones about this. We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that their surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. Colossians 1, 27 is actually Paul's personal mission statement. He writes, Christ is in you the hope of glory. Him we proclaim. So this is Paul warning everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. Paul says, that's something I do. For I toil, watch this, striving with all his energy wait a minute, his energy that he powerfully works within me. Let's go back, look at that, his energy. So Paul. But which one is it? Are you doing it or is God doing it? And Paul would say, it's both. God is working in me to work through me. Philippians chapter two, verse 12. You know this one. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,

for it is God who works in you both to will and to work according to his good pleasure. You see the synergistic aspect of sanctification. Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you've been saved through faith. This is not of your own doing. It's a gift from God, not as a result from work so that no one can boast. That's all God. But then he says this in verse 10. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You see what Paul's saying? Paul's saying I'm doing it, but it's really Christ working in me and through me. That's the Christ life. And I want you to get this. Ministry is always received from God. It is never achieved for God. You see the Christian life is either easy or it's impossible. It's impossible if you live in your own strength and try to please God in your own power. But it becomes more easy as you let Christ work in you to work through you. If your identity is in your work, you'll be crushed by the weight of it. But if your identity is in the worker who works in you, the one working through you, then you'll be sustained by his word. But here's what keeps this from being just a nice idea.

Abraham didn't just believe this. He built his whole life on this. And there's a warning buried in the story that honestly, if more people paid attention to this, it would save their ministries, it would save their marriages, and it would save their lives. Abraham built his life on the word of God. Since God said it, this man believed it. And not only believed it, he obeyed it. You'll notice in the life of Abraham as we study the scriptures in the days ahead, he built an altar every single time God spoke to him. And here's the part that gets me. God hadn't even come through with his promise yet. He will have to wait two more decades for God to even come through on the promise to send him the chosen son. But he worshiped God anyway. He didn't work for worship. He actually worked from worship. He heard the word of God and he staked his life on it. Now I wanna share something with you that is sobering to hear. Years ago, I heard a study from Dr. Howard Hendricks. He was finding that a lot of guys he went to seminary with, many had served alongside in ministry, were failing in ministry. Moral failures, financial failures, ethical issues. And he noticed that almost 250 men

over a two-year period had fallen. 250 men in ministry engaged in an immoral act with another woman, this is what he found out, other than their wife. And after extensive interviewing, he identified four things that ran through every single one of their experiences. I wanna give you all four and I wanna camp out on one. Number one is this, he found that 80% of the men who fell were involved with a woman other than their wife in a private counseling session. Number two, he found out that every single one of the men he interviewed was not, none of them were in an accountability group, not one. Number three, every single one of them, and here's the key, stopped having a personal daily quiet time in the word and prayer. They got away from reading the Bible. It was good for sermons and good for blog posts, but it wasn't good for saturating their soul. And here's the fourth one, and this is the one that got me. Every single one of the men said, this will never happen to me. A friend of mine, Darren Patrick, took his own life many years ago after he had restored himself and God had really brought him back into ministry after he had a moral failure many years before he lost his church. But he really did a lot of work to restore his family

and his relationship with his children. And I reached out to him a couple years before he passed and I asked him if he would help me just to protect, put parameters in my life so I wouldn't end up the same way he did and lose my church and lose my ministry. And he was very gracious and he and I became friends. And I asked him one day when we were talking, I said, Darren, what was it? What can you put your finger on? The slow fade that started that really unraveled your ministry. And he told me this line I've never forgotten. He said, the problem is this, the Bible became a tool for me to use rather than a treasure for me to behold. You see, it's very easy for you and I to fall in love with the ministry of Jesus and out of love with the Jesus of our ministries. It's another reason we must get into the word, gets into us. The words of Jesus for us at this point are like a healing balm for our soul because I feel like a lot of you are. overwhelmed, you're burdened, you're heavy laden, as Jesus said, you're depressed, you're anxious, you need to come to Jesus so he can give you rest for your souls, for his yoke is easy, this is what he said, and his burden is light. Now let me warn you here, Jesus never promised an easy life for his followers,

but he did promise an easy yoke. Don't ever fall into the trap of doing ministry for Jesus without ever having intimacy with Jesus. Don't let your charisma outperform your character. Don't let your giftedness supersede your godliness. Don't let the fanfare of the world get in the way of your faithfulness to God. And finally, don't ever let the public success outwardly outpace your private devotional life inwardly. Here's how it closed. Make sure the light shining through you is always brighter than the light shining on you. If the spirit used this to open your eyes to something new today, let me encourage you to pay it forward. You can help us by hitting that like button to get the content out and to share with friends and family about something you heard today. Also, I don't want this to be a monologue, I want it to be a conversation. And so if you saw something in the text today that impacted you, would you drop a line below? I read all the comments, I'd love to respond to you if you respond about something God is teaching you. If you wanna help grow with us and the channel increases and we continue to learn together, make sure you subscribe to the channel right now so you don't miss any upcoming videos. Until next time, get into the word till the word gets into you.