Sometimes God sends us the people we need to help us manage our stressful situations and we look right through them, shake our heads in disbelief, convince ourselves they can't be the answer to our prayers, erase them from our minds and continue suffering in our stressful situations because our blessing is in disguise.
In Luke chapter 4, Jesus went to Nazareth where He had been raised, entered the synagogue and read from the book of Isaiah that God's Spirit was upon Him because He had been anointed to preach the good news, proclaim freedom and release the oppressed. He then concluded by telling them that that Scripture had just been fulfilled there and then in their hearing.
The residents of Nazareth had been expecting A MESSIAH who they probably imagined would storm into town on golden chariots with trumpets blazing. They were not ready to accept that their local carpenter's son was God's solution for their problems.
When these people rejected Jesus, they could have asked themselves,
"Can that carpenter's son have been chosen by God to lead us?".
"What qualifications does Joseph's son have to preach to us?"
"What skills does a carpenter have to liberate a nation?"
The thought that God's chosen Messiah was a just carpenter's son was unpalatable to them and since they could not stomach thinking of Jesus as their Savior, they "escorted" Him out of the synagogue and out of Nazareth to vomit Him down a cliff
As a result, they missed their helper and Savior.
This, is in stark contrast to Elijah who did not miss his helper by despising the person that God had chosen to help him manage his stressful situation.
In 1 Kings 17, God sent Elijah to a widow in Zarephath who was to feed him during a severe famine. On arrival, her first sentence to him was, "I don't have any food. I am going to make the last meal for my son and I so that we can eat and die." (1 Kings 17)
But her words did not disconcert Elijah. He was still confident that she could feed him as God had said she could feed him and that was why he replied by telling her to go home and bake him a cake.
Elijah's confidence in her ability to feed him was not shaken by her words or her appearance (picture her thin face, picking sticks at the town gate to prepare her last meal before she and her child starved to death) because He knew that if had said she was the one He had chosen to feed him, then God had also given her the resources to feed him even if she may know have know it herself.
Elijah also probably understood that the ultimate solution to his hunger problem was God and this poor and broke widow who was preparing to die was just a channel. He thus did not look at her poverty and miserable state and convince himself that God could not feed him through her.
Therefore, do not judge and find wanting the person God has chosen to use to help you. Understand that if God has found them worthy or qualified to be used for the purpose of helping you, then they are worthy and qualified regardless of their gender, race, color or social class.
To stop disqualifying them from doing the task God has given them to do, look to God who told you about them and expect Him work through her.
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