Flawed and Called: When God Uses People Like Us

One of the biggest things I wrestled with when God started nudging me to start this blog, to show up more on social media, to actually start doing the work of kingdom building—it wasn’t fear of failure. It was fear of being seen. Fully. Mess and all.

Because here’s the thing: I know my flaws. I know the areas where I still struggle. I know I’m not perfect, not even close. And yet, here I am, trying to point people to Jesus while still needing Him just as desperately myself.

And for a long time, that felt like a contradiction. Like I had to pick one or the other—either I’m someone who’s still working through my stuff, or I’m someone who can be used by God to encourage others. But not both.

But you know what finally broke that lie for me?

The Bible. Not the perfectly packaged version we sometimes hear in church, but the real, raw, unfiltered one. The one that doesn’t shy away from telling the whole truth about the people God used. I mean—God didn’t even try to clean up their image. He left their mess in the text.

David, called a man after God’s own heart, was also impulsive, violent, emotionally up and down, and made one devastating decision after another.

Peter was loyal and bold one minute, denying Jesus the next.

Paul? Brilliant. Called. Anointed. But he literally spent part of his life hunting down Christians before he became one of the most influential voices of the New Testament.

And none of those stories were edited to make them more palatable. Why? Because I think God wanted us to know that calling and imperfection can—and do—exist in the same person.

Somewhere along the way, though, we forgot that. Or maybe we just got scared of what would happen if people saw the cracks in our foundation. Christian leaders—whether they’re pastors or podcasters or people like me just trying to use a blog to glorify God—are often expected to be flawless. To lead from a place of mastery, not from the middle of the mess.

But here’s the truth: there’s something powerful about being led by someone still being led. There’s something beautiful about a person who says, “I’m still healing, but I’ll walk with you while I do.” That’s the kind of leader I want to be. Not the kind who pretends to have it all figured out, but the kind who is honest about needing Jesus every single day.

When I talk about kingdom building, I don’t just mean preaching and teaching—I mean inviting people into deeper relationship with God. Creating space for honesty. Encouraging others to stop performing and start pursuing. To get real with God about where they are and trust that He can still meet them there.

That’s what I’m after. And I’m learning that God doesn’t need my perfection—He wants my surrender. He can work with that.

So if you feel like your flaws disqualify you, or that your struggle means you have to sit this season out—hear me: they don’t. And you don’t.

You can be deeply imperfect and still deeply used. You can still reflect God’s heart even with cracks in your own.

You are not too messy to minister.

Not too broken to build.

Not too flawed to be called.

And maybe, just maybe, your honesty is the very thing someone else needs to see to believe that God can use them too.