What makes someone extraordinary?

Their abilities?

Their talents?

Or simply, their smile.

When I first met Nick Vujicic, I knew I had just encountered someone extraordinary! From the moment he began to share his amazing story with me, I witnessed firsthand how God is using a man with no arms and no legs to be His hands and feet.

“My dad was saying that his head was next to my mom’s head as I was being born. He saw my shoulder. He just went pale. He was hoping my mom didn’t see me, because he saw that I had no right arm. My dad had to leave the room, and he couldn’t believe what he saw,” Nick Vujicic tells The 700 Club. “The doctor came in, and my dad said, ‘My son has no right arm.’ [The doctor] said, ‘No, your son has no arms or legs.’ And he said he nearly fell on the floor. He couldn’t believe it.

“The whole church was mourning, like, ‘Why would God let the pastor’s son be born that way?’ My mom, at first, she didn’t want to hold me. She didn’t want to breastfeed me. She just felt very uncomfortable for the first four months. It took them quite a while before they could trust in God that He didn’t make a mistake – that He didn’t forget them or me.”

Nick’s parents gave their fear and even disappointment in their son’s disability over to the Lord. They choose to trust God and His promise that He had a plan and purpose – a hope and a future for their son. But as the years passed, Nick on the other hand, had many challenges trusting in a God that he felt gave him less.

“I challenged God. I said, ‘God, I know that I’m a sinner. I know that I won’t probably have peace until You’re in my heart. But I will not let You in my heart until You answer me, why? Why did you take my arms and legs? Why didn’t You give me what everybody else has? God, until You answer me that question, I will not serve You.’

“I wanted to end it. If God wasn’t going to end my pain, I was going to end it myself. So at age eight, I tried to drown myself in a bathtub with four inches of water. I told my mom and dad, ‘I’m just going to relax in the bathtub. Can you put me in the bathtub?’ I turned over a couple of times to see if I could do it. I couldn’t. The thought that stopped me from going through with it was the love for my parents. I loved them so much, and all they did was love me. I pictured my funeral. I pictured my parents, and all I saw was guilt on their shoulders that they couldn’t have done more.”

That would be the last time Nick would attempt suicide. But it wouldn’t be the last time he would come face to face with those deep issues that made him want to end the pain.

One day Nick’s mother had him read an article about a severely disabled man. That man’s story made a huge impact on Nick.

“I have a choice,” Nick says, “to either be angry at God for what I don’t have or be thankful for what I do have. My mom said, ‘Nick, God’s going to use you. I don’t know how. I don’t know when, but God’s going to use you.’ And those seeds started penetrating in my heart. That’s when I started seeing that there is no point in being complete on the outside when you’re broken on the inside. I found out that God can heal you without changing your circumstance.

“I gave my life to Jesus Christ when I read John 9 at age 15, where a man was coming through a village, this blind man from birth. Jesus saw him. People said, ‘Why was this man born that way?’ Jesus said, ‘It was done so that the works of God may be revealed through him.’

“In second Timothy chapter 3, verse 16, it says, ‘All scripture is God-breathed.’ I believe God breathed in me life and faith. This faith came over me. This peace came over me. I felt like God answered my question that I’d been waiting for. The question was: Why? Why did you make me this way? The answer was: Do you trust Me? That’s the question. When you say yes to that question, nothing else matters. There was nothing else I could find. There was nothing else that could give me peace. I knew arms and legs wouldn’t give me peace anyway. I need to know the truth of who I am, why I’m here and where I’m going when I’m not here. I haven’t found that truth anywhere else but in Jesus Christ.”

It was in Jesus Christ where Nick found the strength to do what many thought would be the impossible.

Nick says, “It’s so hard to be strong when people constantly say, ‘You’re not good enough. Go away. We don’t want anything to do with you.’ In life, if you don’t know the truth, then you can’t be free, because then you’ll believe that the lies are the truth. But once we realize that when we read the Word of God and you know the truth of who you are, then I’m not a man without arms and legs. I am a child of God.

“I believe if God doesn’t give you a miracle, you are a miracle of God for somebody else’s salvation.

“I thank God that He didn’t answer my prayer when I was begging him for arms and legs at age eight. Because guess what? I have no arms and no legs, and He’s using me all around the world. We’ve seen, so far, approximately (and this is conservative) 200,000 souls come to Jesus Christ for the very first time in the last six, seven years.”

In the last decade, Nick has shared his story in 24 countries to over three million people. Whether he’s talking to a stadium packed with people or one single person, his heart behind the message is the same.

“I want to look right to you and tell you that God loves you. He hasn’t forgotten your pain. He hasn’t forgotten your family. Maybe while you’re watching this interview, you’ve compared your sufferings to my suffering, and that’s not where hope is. Hope is in the name of God, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is when you compare your suffering to the infinite, immeasurable love and grace of God. Isaiah 40, verse 31 says, ‘Those who wait upon the Lord, who renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles.’

“I didn’t need my circumstance to change. I don’t need arms and legs. I need the wings of the Holy Spirit. I’m flying, because I know Jesus is holding me up.

“Don’t give up on God, because God will not give up on you.”