Are You Being Used?

I have often heard people talk about God "using them" in ministry.  I've heard others say they didn't like the term "being used".  That's because the world has given us a connotation that being used means you are being generous with your time or your talents or your money on behalf of someone who doesn't care about you at all and is just exploiting you to satisfy their own selfish needs and desires.  God can indeed make use of us, but His use of our lives is not exploitation but fulfillment.

When a violin is in the hands of an accomplished musician it is being used for its intended purpose and the music that results is breathtaking.  A paintbrush in the hands of a master painter creates beauty that astounds us. When we place ourselves in the hand of God, He can cause amazing things to happen as we yield our will to Him.  Just as the violin and the brush don't work on their own, neither do we.  

John 15:5 says, "I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

Abiding - just being continually, persistently, constantly, steadfastly, perpetually - in Him.

A few years ago, my husband and I were house-hunting and we went to view a home that was being shown to us by a gentleman who was handling the sale.  We mentioned briefly that we needed a home with a large living area because we hosted a weekly Bible study in our home.  We didn't mention our denomination, our doctrine, the topic of our current study - nothing at all.  It was just a passing comment.  We looked through the home and returned to the living room to find the man weeping.  He said, "I can't explain it, but I just suddenly feel convicted that I've been neglecting the Holy Spirit in my life and that I need to repent for that."  We were taken aback because we hadn't preached, witnessed, or proselytized. We hadn't mentioned the Holy Spirit.  All we had done was wander through a house.  Of course, we prayed with him and invited him to visit our church, which he did, but the point of this memory is that you don't have to set out to do something for God.  He will use you naturally for His purposes when you are just being.

Many of my blog posts are about my granddaughter, Bella, who is 2 1/2.  She is just a normal little girl, growing up in a loving family, who is learning and changing just as she should.  She has absolutely no idea that God is speaking to me through her in the tiniest little things that she does and says.  She makes sure that our family always joins hands and prays before meals, but I doubt that her understanding of Jesus goes much further than that, yet God imparts very heavy lessons to me through her almost every week.  She's not striving to serve. She is just being.  In the middle of just being herself, she is "being employed for a purpose" which is another meaning for the word use.

If you are a member of a church body, you may have a certain formal role in ministry that leads you to expect that God will be using you for certain activities at a church service, but you are by no means limited to your title or responsibility.  In fact, the most meaningful times of ministry that I have experienced were times when I had no plan to "go out to minister".  They have been chance encounters when I have been doing very ordinary things. We don't have to work so hard at forcing ourselves to structure ways to reach out. God will set us up for divine appointments and situations that we had no idea were coming.

The beginning of Acts 17:28 says, "In Him we live and move and have our being...." I realize that's an explanation of spiritual truth, but if you picture it in your mind as if your physical body was enveloped by Jesus, you can see that nobody can encounter you without encountering Him.

John 7:38 says, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  It's a flow that comes naturally as an outcome of truly believing.  We don't have to force the water out, or pump it, or splash it, or carry it - we just have to let it flow.