God's man

Pastor and fellow blogger Rob Hadding recently asked me, along with several other men, what we think it means to be God's man. I like that formulation: God's man. I told him I'm not exactly sure what it means, to be God's man. If I look in the Bible for stories of men whom God called to himself, I find fools and quarrelers, buffoons and critics, self-righteous preeners, adulterers, murderers, betrayers. If these are the sorts of men God makes his own, then I am God's man.

When I read modern texts on being God's man -- on being a "godly" man, as they like to put it, which sounds Puritanical and therefore suitable to many such tidy pamphlets -- I am struck by how demanding are some theologians, and how thinly veiled at times is their unwritten message, namely, that we who seek godliness should emulate them, the pamphlet writers and sermonizers. I'm more partial to broken people woven into God's tapestry in spite of themselves, people stricken by that I've-just-won-the-lottery feeling that grips a sinner saved by grace.

It seems to me that being God's man is to be swept up by He who will never leave nor forsake us, despite what we are. It is to be embraced by this laughing God, who sees fit to do his grace-filled work with broken and crooked tools, and who will find us no matter where we conceal ourselves. To be God's man is to be incapable of being anything else; trust me -- I've tried. I am that sheep he hobbles, so prone am I to wander. And still I am God's man, in spite of myself.

Perhaps that is the best definition I can conjure; that the mystery of being God's people while mired in our sins is that we are his people in spite of ourselves, and if that doesn't make all of us weep at the absurdity and grace of it, then perhaps we have misconceived what we really are, or who God really is.