Dear Friend,
I want to begin with a confession, and you may recognize yourself in it. I have a tendency — and I do not always enjoy admitting it — to look hard at what I do not have. At what I have lost.
If you’ve read my earlier letters, you know that a rare brain disorder came into my life in 2021 and required surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In its wake came nerve damage, a paralyzed vocal mechanism, and the grief of watching abilities I had leaned on my whole life slip out of my hands. And so it has become easy to take a long inventory of the missing things — the voice I used to have, the strength and health I once had. Even long before the surgery, I knew this habit well: the resources our little church lacked, the gifts I felt I lacked, the resources that belonged to others. The list, if I let myself go, is easy to build.
Here is what I have come to believe, and I offer it to you gently, for you to weigh for yourself: it is terribly easy to miss the value and the power of the things we have. We become so fixed on the empty places that we cannot see what is already in our open hand.
I keep returning to Moses. You remember his story: born into danger, raised in Egypt, then forty years as a shepherd in Midian. And when God called him from the burning bush to set His people free, Moses did what most of us would do. He began listing what he did not have. Who am I? They will not believe me. I am not a good speaker; I stammer. I have no standing, no eloquence, no confidence for a task of this gravity.
And God did not argue with the inventory. He simply asked a question — the one that is the heart of this letter. “What is that in your hand?” It was only a staff, an ordinary shepherd’s stick. But God said, throw it down, and it became a serpent; pick it up, and it became a staff again. God took the plain thing Moses already had and made it the instrument of deliverance for an entire nation.
That is the premise I want to place in your hands today: God uses ordinary things and ordinary people to do extraordinary and even miraculous things. But oh, how easily we miss it, snared in “what don’t I have” instead of “what do I have.”
Have you ever noticed how quick we are to correct God? Moses did — Lord, You have the wrong man. Jeremiah did — I am only a youth. We are remarkably skilled at reciting the reasons God cannot use us, and at overlooking what He has already placed in our care. The lesson is simply this: take what He has given you and use it for His glory.
Scripture tells this story over and over. Think of the widow at Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. Elijah asks her for bread, and she answers out of her despair: I have nothing but a handful of flour and a little oil; I am gathering sticks to bake one last loaf, and then my son and I will eat it and die. And what does Elijah ask? The same question — what do you have? Make it, he says. And that meager handful fed the prophet, the widow, and the rest of her household until the famine broke. It began with a nearly empty jar and the question, what do you have?
Think of the disciples in Mark 6, as the day grew late and thousands pressed close. Send them away to buy food, they said — handing the Lord their tidy list of steps. Have you ever done that? Jesus said, you feed them. And He asked the question again: what do you have? Five loaves and two fish. It isn’t enough, Lord. Take it, He said. And five thousand men, besides women and children, ate until they were satisfied, with twelve baskets left over.
And here is the part that moves me most, because it shows this truth can be learned. In Acts 3, Peter and John go up to the temple, and at the gate called Beautiful, a man lame from birth asks them for money. Peter says, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And the man who had never once stood, rose to his feet — walking and leaping and praising God. Peter knew exactly what he lacked, but he no longer let the lack define him, for he had learned he possessed something far greater: the name of the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Because he didn’t have what was asked, a multitude saw the glory of God that day. Five thousand men placed their faith in Christ.
Imagine how the moment might have unfolded if Peter had carried silver or gold. He could have pressed a few coins into the man’s hand and walked on into the temple. The man would have received exactly what he asked for — a small mercy, quickly spent — but there would have been no miracle, no astonished crowd, and no surge of new believers.
In the end, it was Peter and John’s lack, not any supply of riches, that became the very ground on which God moved that day. It all began with what they did not have.
Even the temple rulers felt it. When they hauled Peter and John in, Scripture says they were astonished, for they perceived that these were ordinary, unschooled men. No pedigree, no credentials, nothing that should have given them any standing. So many things they lacked. And still — what did they have? The Spirit, and the name and power of Jesus Christ. That was more than enough.
So let me ask you plainly what God asks: what do you have? What is that in your hand, in your home, in your accounting of days? I know how the other list runs, because I run it too — I don’t have the talent, the resources, the health, the years I used to have. And how often have we disqualified ourselves before we ever took the first step of obedience, simply because we were staring at the empty places instead of the full ones?
Here is the verse I most want to leave in your thoughts: “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is fully devoted to Him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9). His gaze searches not for the gifted or the well-provisioned, but for hearts that are wholly His. Notice that the promise does not depend on what you have. The one thing it asks — a heart fully devoted to Him — is something you already have the power to give. And it is enough to move the hand of the God who made all things. And why does He search for them? So that He can show Himself strong on their behalf!
Paul learned this in his own weakness. “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord told him, “for My power is made perfect in weakness.” And so Paul could write: “when I am weak, then I am strong.” Not his strength — God’s own, given a place to shine precisely where Paul had none.
Think of Samson, too, whom everyone kept asking where his strength came from; the strength was never in his frame. If he had loomed over people with the muscle mass of a champion bodybuilder, no one would have asked him about the source of his strength. “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” That was the whole secret.
If God has a purpose, do you think He will be hindered by what you lack? Fix your eyes on Him. Remember Peter walking on the water — steady as long as his eyes were on Christ, sinking the moment he looked at the wind and the waves. The storm you may be facing, the Lord walks right over the top of it. And when your eyes are fixed on Him, He lifts you above it too.
So I will stop reciting what I have lost, and I invite you to set your list of things you lack down beside mine. What do you have? You have the Lord. You have a heart you can give Him, whole and undivided. And that, dear friend, is a very great deal — because He still uses ordinary things and ordinary people to do extraordinary, even miraculous things. Perhaps He is waiting to do one through you.
Held with you in Christ,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
For Your Reflection
Take these with you into a quiet moment, or into your prayers, this week:
1. What is the “what I don’t have” list you tend to recite? What would change if you set it down and asked instead, “what do I have?”
2. Where have you disqualified yourself from something God may be asking of you, simply because you felt you lacked the gift, the resource, or the strength?
3. God promises to show Himself strong for the heart that is fully devoted to Him. Can you name one area where you long to give Him your whole, undivided heart?