They say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. It’s a colorful little proverb that emphasizes the value of proper preparation, yet I’m not sure it’s a proverb God cares much for. I sometimes think of the biblical judge Shamgar, who entered a battle armed with only an ox-goad—a stick used to poke oxen to get them to comply with directions. Shamgar brought an ox-goad to a sword fight, yet emerged victorious and with 600 Philistines dead at his feet.
God calls each one of us to battle for the right and against the wrong, and it’s a simple fact that many of us are not equipped with the kind of weapon we would prefer to carry into such a conflict. Many of us look at the weapons wielded by others and wish we had theirs instead of ours. Yet in the battle for God’s cause, he always means for us to put to use the weapon we have on hand with the conviction that he will bless our efforts, no matter how weak or paltry those weapons may seem. For the Spirit that was in Shamgar lives within us.
You may wish you had the sword of compelling argument, the rapier of sharp and thrusting wit, or the spear of the perfect put-down. However, God may not have gifted you in any of these ways. Yet there is always something you can do, and there is always some weapon you can wield. Don’t sit around pining for what you don’t have, but resolve to use what you do have.
Perhaps you don’t have eloquence, but you certainly do have a smile. Well, as it happens, a smile of encouragement has changed the behavior of tens of thousands of wanderers, brought them back to God, and enthroned them in heaven. Don’t underestimate what may seem so small a weapon.
Perhaps you aren’t good at making a persuasive appeal, but you can set an example, and a good example has saved more souls than you could count in a year, if you counted every second of every day. Don’t pass judgment on something that is so precious to God.
Perhaps you cannot give a hundred thousand dollars, but you can give as much as the widow we read of in the gospel of Luke—the one whose two copper coins, the least-valuable currency of the time, made her more famous than all the philanthropists who have endowed all the hospitals in all the world. In God’s hand, no weapon is truly small.
Perhaps you have a very limited vocabulary, but you can say “yes” or “no,” and a firm “yes” or an emphatic “no” has traversed the centuries with good and noble influence. Our God specializes in making much of what seems so little.
Perhaps you don’t have the courage to confront a massive crowd, but you can tell a Sunday school class of two—a boy and a girl—how to find Christ. And perhaps one of them may become a William Carey who will begin a work whose influence will transform lives and change a nation, while the other may become an Amy Carmichael, whose work will rescue countless orphans, saving them from unspeakable horrors in life and giving them the promise of heaven in death.
Whatever God gives you to wield in this battle, use it without shame. Put it to work with confidence that God will multiply its strength and magnify its power. There is no doubt that heaven will be full of many surprises, but I am convinced that among the greatest will be the stupendous results that came about through the simplest of means. For God specializes in bringing strength through weakness and turning little into much.
Inspired by the works of De Witt Talmage
