In a nutshell: If you've ever felt too broken, too inconsistent, or too far gone to be used by God, this one is for you. The same struggle you think disqualifies you might be the very thing God is using to keep you close to Him. God Uses Broken Vessels
I want to tell you something I kept quiet for a long time.
When I gave my life to Jesus at 15, I felt it immediately — this overwhelming sense of calling. Like God had pulled me aside and whispered something specific into my life. My purpose was clear: to reach people who were struggling to stay faithful after their conversion. People who loved God but felt like they kept falling short. I was excited. I was ready.
And then I met my thorn.
For ten years, from the age of 15 to 25. I carried a private struggle that I was convinced disqualified me from everything God had spoken over my life. I’m not going to name it here. But I want you to know it was the kind of thing I believed only bad Christians dealt with.
The kind of thing that made me feel like a fraud every single time I opened my mouth to talk about God. The kind of thing I prayed about so many times I eventually stopped praying about it because it felt like the prayer wasn’t going anywhere.
I felt like a cracked jar that couldn’t hold water, let alone the Holy Spirit.
There were seasons I stopped showing up. Not just to ministry, but to God. I convinced myself that the distance was protecting people around me from the hypocrisy of who I actually was behind closed doors. I recently stepped back from ministry altogether because I felt like a performer playing a role I had no business playing.
And in that quiet, that’s when God showed me something.
The Jar Was Never Supposed to Be Perfect
2 Corinthians 4:7 says: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
In biblical times, clay jars were the most ordinary objects imaginable. Cheap. Breakable. Replaceable. Nobody displayed a clay jar to show off their wealth. They were utility tools, used precisely because they were available, not because they were impressive.
And if a clay jar cracked? It was usually discarded.
But God does something different with cracked jars. He keeps them. He fills them. He uses them specifically because of the cracks, not in spite of them.
Here’s what I had to sit with: a perfect, sealed jar hides the light inside it. But a cracked jar? The light leaks out through the gaps.
When a broken person serves God, the people watching don’t see a perfect human. They see a perfect Saviour working through a human. And that is the whole point.
A perfect, sealed jar hides the light inside it
A cracked jar? The light leaks out through the gaps.
The Lie of the Finished Saint
We have been sold a version of Christian service that says you must be complete before you can be useful. That you need to have the struggle fully conquered, the prayer life perfectly scheduled, the past completely cleaned up, and only then can God properly use you.
But if we were finished, we wouldn’t need a Saviour.
If I had waited until I was perfect to talk to you about God’s mercy, I would never have said a single word. Those ten years weren’t a pause in my story; they were the research for the message I’m giving you today
My struggle didn’t mean I was predestined for failure. It meant I was human. It meant I was unfinished.
And unfinished, it turns out, is exactly where God does His best work.
What God Was Actually Doing in the Waiting
Looking back now, I can see three things clearly that I could not see while I was in the middle of it.
- The Author was never surprised. He knew about your struggle at 25 when He called you at 15. He knew every chapter of this story before He signed His name to it. The things you think disqualify you are things He already accounted for in the plan. His calling over your life was not made before He knew what you would struggle with. It was made after.
- The thorn was a tether (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). “Sometimes the reason a struggle remains isn’t to punish you. It’s to keep you dependent. I know that’s hard to receive, especially when the hard season just won’t lift. If you’re there right now, this one is for you. Trusting God During Hard Times. If I had conquered everything quickly and neatly, I might have started to believe that I was the one doing the saving. The weakness kept me at His feet. Without it, I don’t know that I would have stayed there.
- Your cracks are your connection. The people you are meant to reach are not looking for someone who has never fallen. They are looking for someone who knows how to get back up. Your story, the messy, unresolved, still-being-written parts of it, is not a liability to your calling. It is the very thing that makes you credible to the people God is sending you to.
Stop Waiting for the Version of Yourself That Never Struggles
I know what it feels like to think: I’ll start again when I’ve sorted this out. I’ll go back to serving when I feel cleaner. I’ll step back into my calling when I’ve had enough good days in a row.
I spent years in that waiting room. And all it did was keep me sitting down when God had already called me to stand up.
If you need something to hold onto while you wait, I pulled together seven verses that genuinely helped me. Save them. Come back to them.
I spent years in that waiting room. And all it did was keep me sitting down when God had already called me to stand up.
You are not a Judas because you keep falling. You are in a battle. There is a difference, and the enemy wants you to confuse the two, because a Christian who believes they are already disqualified is a Christian who stops fighting.
The only difference between those who fulfil their purpose and those who don’t is not who falls. It’s what they do after they fall. Don’t hide. Don’t wallow. Turn back to the Author.
He is not standing at the door with a scorecard. He is standing at the door with an open hand.
In Conclusion
I am 25. I am still a work in progress. I still have hard days. I still feel the weight of my story. But I am no longer hiding from it, and I am no longer letting it hide me.
I am a cracked jar. And I am learning, slowly, to stop being ashamed of the cracks, because the light that gets out through them is not mine anyway. It never was. It belongs to the Treasure inside.
You are Authored by the King. And being Unfinished just means there is more of the story left to write.
Don’t drop the pen.
The Author hasn’t.
Let’s grow together 🤍 — Dorcas
Drop a comment: Have you ever felt like your struggle disqualified you from your calling? You don’t have to share the details, just tell me: does this resonate? You are not alone in this. Not even close.
