Born Thy People to Deliver Day 27

BY Kia Stephens

When I was an ambitious twenty-year-old, fresh out of college, I hired a life coach to help me create a life statement. This document included my vision, mission, core values, and short- and long-term goals. My little optimistic and naive heart was full of big plans for my life. I was focused on my perceived strengths, and what I believed I could do and become in this world. 

Every year around this season, I sit down and read the plan I penned in my early twenties. Much of what I wanted to accomplish has yet to manifest. I am no longer the naive twenty-something-year-old woman. My hair has added a few gray strands and my heart has tasted disappointment in ways I never thought I would. 

My life has not gone how I expected it to, but God has made it unexpectedly beautiful. What I didn’t know in my twenties that I know now is that God’s plan for humanity is far greater than anything we could create on our own. His master plan is a love story that entails the relentless pursuit of a broken and sinful people.

In today’s reading, the apostle Paul reminds us of this truth in 1 Corinthians 1:26–31. God did not come for the self-sufficient or the perfect. He did not leave heaven and come to earth for those who had everything together. He came for the foolish, the weak, and the lowly. He came for people in need of a Savior: people like me. 

When Christ Jesus entered the scene, He did not come as one would expect a king to arrive. He clothed himself in flesh and embraced a lowly beginning. He was an unlikely king. Fourteen generations before Jesus, David was also seen as an unlikely ruler. In 1 Samuel 16:1–13, we see that he was overlooked by his earthly father. He was considered unlikely to be the next king by men but not by God.  

It was not David’s appearance that qualified him. The Lord reminded the prophet, Samuel, just as He reminds us all that He is not concerned with our outward appearance. He is concerned with our hearts. This was the case for David, and this is the case for you and me. Jesus, our unlikely deliverer, came for us, an unlikely people, to save us from our sins and to transform our hearts.