Just Call Me Preacher

For a 100% Jewish woman who grew up in a family that didn’t believe in God and became an agnostic, atheist, and who knows what else, who has been so broken along the path of life at times that I couldn’t fathom being put back together let alone being put to any kind of good use, I continue to be astonished at what God has done with my life. While He continues to put the jagged pieces of my life back together as He makes a vessel of me fit for His use, the Lord is continuing to use me to preach the Word to a world in need.

“You’re the preacher woman,” an elderly man with a walker called out to me at the assisted living facility recently. Me? Preacher woman? Yes. I preach there weekly now.

“Hey preacher,” a homeless man called out to me months ago as I walked through a park in Savannah, GA. Me? A preacher? Yes. He knows me from when I have preached at the soup kitchen in Savannah.

These people don’t look at the pieces of my life and see a broken woman. They see what God is doing with a broken life.

When I was called to preach years ago, I couldn’t even imagine. I couldn’t fathom. It made no sense. But then, God never really does make sense to the natural mind, does He? I hurried to my pastor and heard the words I would forever remember.

“God has called you to preach,” he told me. “Now comes the preparation.”

As many times as I have tried to go running before God, entering into my calling before His timing, He has pulled me back in. And He has, and is, preparing me. Little did I know that the preparation would be far more than an intense study of His Word. It would also be an intense application of His Word as day by day the Lord renews my mind with His Word and transforms my life – taking every broken piece and doing with it as He desires.

I am no longer the broken woman I was. I am the broken woman I am. But it’s a new kind of broken now. I am no longer the broken woman I considered useless. I am the broken woman being used.

Today, I will go preach God’s Word at the assisted living facility. Next Wednesday, on my 46th birthday I will preach God’s Word at the soup kitchen to the homeless and hurting, to the downtrodden and the low-income, to the challenged, the depressed – yes, the broken.

Just like I am. Only I am not just broken like I was. I am now a broken preacher woman. Broken before my Lord, humbled by the circumstances of life, brought down low where I belong that He might fill me up and rise up within, and rise up through me, to pour forth His glory in and through my life – as He uses my brokenness for His glory.

I never understood the beauty in brokenness. But now I do. Brokenness gets me out of God’s way so that when I go to preach His Word people see the glory of the Lord shining through a vessel broken before my Lord.

Yes, me, the preacher woman. Daughter of the most high God.

Just call me preacher. Broken, humbled, in awe, in utter adoration, in reverence, madly and passionately and ever in love with my Lord. 

Please visit Walk by Faith Ministry at https://www.walkbyfaithministry.com.