What if God Doesn't Use You?

Let me say right at the start of this post that these thoughts are not original with me. Mike Donehey from the band "Tenth Avenue North" wrote a post about a year ago entitled "God Don't Use Me" that struck me then and has recently come back to memory. Here is a link to his blog (which by the way is awesome!) - http://mikedonehey.tumblr.com

When I read that post a year ago, I began to chew on it and to this day I am still processing it. Allow me to share some of my thoughts with you here.

I want you to think about s prayer that we pray often; we say something along the lines of "God, please use me." It's a great prayer and I think every Christian should desire to be used of God. We should fervently seek to have God use us in a way that advances the Gospel and His Kingdom on earth. But I think that we also need to learn to be okay when He doesn't use us.

Let me explain: say you have an unsaved family member and you want more than anything that Jesus would save them. Wouldn't you be okay if God used someone other than you to lead them to Him? Of course you would because the most important thing to you is that they know Jesus, not that you be used to lead them to Him. Of course, you would be thrilled if you are the one to lead them, but the ultimate goal is that they be saved.

So why is it that so often we pray to be "used of God" more than we pray that Jesus be exalted and the lost be found? Let me challenge us to come to church services, mission trips, youth groups, everyday life, etc. with the desire to see Jesus lifted high and God's will be done; no matter who He uses to accomplish that.

We all play a part in seeing God's mission accomplished, but there will be times when God uses someone else instead of you for a specific task. You need to be okay with that. This hits home to me as a youth pastor because I want to be a part of showing all the teens at South Shore what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. But I have to be okay with and even excited about the fact that God will at times use other people to impact those same teens instead of me. And I should rejoice when that happens because the ultimate goal is to see them follow Jesus, not that I be the one who led them to do that.

After all, it is God who does all the work right? We all are here to play the role that He calls us to. That means we must let God use those around us as well instead of trying to be the "top Christian" at our church. So what will you do if God doesn't use you? Will you submit to that? Or do you want the spotlight? Let us "humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the right time, He may exalt us." (1 Peter 5:6)