If I were to ask you what is the biggest obstacle to the advance of the kingdom in any city or any neighborhood, most of us would be tempted to look outward.

We’d say, well the decay of the culture is a huge obstacle, or the way school funding is set up is an enormous obstacle that would hinder the advance of the kingdom, or whatever it might be as you look outward.

Can I ask you to reconsider that?

I’ve come to believe that the greatest obstacle to the advance of the kingdom in our neighborhoods is actually inward. It’s really our unbelief in the promises of God that ultimately are the biggest obstacles to the advance of God’s work in our cities and communities.

Think about God’s leadership profile. It is very different than the normal leadership profile. When you look at God’s job descriptions, they are very different than the ones that we make. We make two or three pages of impossible things that we ask people to be. But God doesn’t vet in the natural, he vets in the supernatural.

God does what he does not because of our giftedness, but in spite of our limitations.

In 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, Paul helps us to see that this is by God’s design. Listen to God’s leadership profile. He says,

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God.”

That is quite a job description: foolish, weak, low, and despised. That’s His leadership profile, and I fit that to a max. And you do too.

Now what is God’s design in that? His design is that at the end of the day, nobody would say, “Look what Nathan has done,” or “Look what Steve has done.” But that we might say, “Look at what God has done! Isn’t God amazing!” This is what God is up to in calling servants.

Let God do something in and through your life so that people will say, “Isn’t God incredible that He would bring a people that would lay down their lives, that He really is who He says He is, and He’ll do what He says He’ll do!”

That is the real qualification, and that is available to every one of us.