I’m always amazed at the things God expects me to do.

I know he uses people to do amazing things. I have a list of “heroes” who are doing the almost impossible and the impossible; I get a vicarious thrill from watching their successes, and failures. On many occasions I’ve found myself wishing that my life could be as significant as theirs.

I find it very easy to think that God will use someone else to accomplish his purpose. I have great difficulty thinking that the “someone” he has in mind is me. I’m not as qualified, as visionary, as courageous, as smart, as well-backed financially, as [you fill in the blank] as so-and-so is. It’s obvious, and makes good sense, why God would use that someone to do great things; it isn’t obvious, nor makes good sense, why he would even consider using me.

Then I make the mistake of reading something like this:

It was the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king. At the hour for serving wine I brought it in and gave it to the king. I had never been hangdog in his presence before, so he asked me, “Why the long face? You’re not sick are you? Or are you depressed?” That made me all the more agitated. I said, “Long live the king! And why shouldn’t I be depressed when the city, the city where all my family is buried, is in ruins and the city gates have been reduced to cinders?”

The king then asked me, “So what do you want?” Praying under my breath to the God-of-Heaven, I said, “If it please the king, and if the king thinks well of me, send me to Judah, to the city where my family is buried, so that I can rebuild it.”

The king, with the queen sitting alongside him, said, “How long will your work take and when would you expect to return?”

I gave him a time, and the king gave his approval to send me.

This fellow was a waiter. In a very nice establishment, granted, but still a waiter. He became the individual God would use in an incredible manner. He would experience terrific risk and danger; he would see the impossible unfold before his eyes and under his hands; he would become bold, courageous and powerful… but he didn’t know that on that particular day. He was merely a waiter serving the President and given an opportunity to become who he had always dreamt he might be.

The God I’ve met likes to do that. He enjoys putting you at the threshold of the incredible and giving you a shove. He thrills at placing the impossible in your hands and telling you to make it a reality.

He knows you are the hero and wants to make it a reality.

Yeah, you…