Who Will God Use?

If you grew up in church, you probably learned early that there were standards for being used by God, and most of them had to do with character. The message came at us directly and indirectly: unless your life measures up to a certain standard, do not even imagine God using you. Boil it down, and most of us concluded that the person God uses has to have three things locked down.

• You have to be holy and righteous, because God cannot use an unclean vessel.
• You have to be skilled and anointed, apt and equipped for every good work.
• You have to be willing, because unless you are willing and obedient, you cannot eat the good of the land.

And let us be honest about what we actually meant by those words. Since Scripture says that if we claim to have no sin we deceive ourselves, when we said holy we really meant something more manageable: come to church programs regularly, do not cuss, do not listen to worldly music, and dress a certain way. When we said anointed, we usually meant polished and articulate, able to dazzle a room the moment someone handed us a microphone. And then, of course, you had to be willing. But when you actually open your Bible, you find a radically different picture.

The People God Actually Used

God has used people we would have written off as perverse or criminal, like Rahab the harlot and Saul of Tarsus, who once dragged Christians to prison. God has used people with no discernible skill, who stuttered and stammered and had no leadership training, like Moses and Amos the herdsman. And God has used people who flatly did not want the job, like Jonah, who ran the other way, and Saul the king. Why does God's standard for whom He uses look so completely different from ours?

I believe it comes down to one thing: what the church usually wants to accomplish is different from what God wants to accomplish. Most of the time, the average congregation's goal is to grow its membership and to help its members look good and succeed in the world. God has no objection to that; He delights to see His people flourish. But to reach that goal, the people a church tends to recruit have to be respectable, gifted, and eager, because it is a great deal of hard work. God's aim, all through Scripture, is simpler and far more relentless: to save as many people as possible.

That is what God cares about most: How can I rescue as many as possible? And with that goal in view, His attitude has always been, I will use a harlot, a former persecutor, an unwilling prophet, a woman written off by her society, a man who can barely speak. I will use anybody, in order to save as many lives as I can.

Joseph, Samson, and Esther

Take Joseph. God used a man abused by his own family, lied about by his employer's wife, and thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit. And when it was all over, Joseph looked back and told his brothers the truth of it.

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

Genesis 50:20

Take Samson. Here was a man genuinely gifted and anointed, and also a man who chased after every attractive face that crossed his path. Yet no judge delivered Israel from her enemies more than Samson did; God used him to hold back the Philistines for twenty years. I do not know a single church that would make Samson a deacon, let alone a pastor, and for their purposes they probably should not. It would be scandalous. But the person the church may be unable to use, God can use, and gladly. If God can use Samson, God can use you.

Or take Esther. Many of us resist admitting it, but Esther began as one of the young women taken into the king's harem, entered into what amounted to a royal beauty contest, paraded before a pagan king so she might be chosen. There is no pastor who would point to that and say, Yes, that is the woman I want as the first lady of our church. And given the church's goals, perhaps he should not. But when there are many lives hanging in the balance, God will use exactly such a person to save them, without apologizing to anyone. Remember what Mordecai told her.

Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Esther 4:14

In other words: everything you have suffered, the loss of your parents, the strange and painful road you have walked, all of it will be wasted if you will not step up and let God use you to save many lives. If God can use Esther, God can use you.

Here Am I, Send Me

This brings us back to Isaiah. When the prophet saw the Lord high and lifted up, his first response was not confidence but collapse: Woe is me, for I am undone, a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips. Only after a coal from the altar touched his mouth, and his guilt was taken away, did he hear the Lord ask, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And Isaiah answered, Here am I; send me.

Do you see the risk he was taking, how completely he was exposing himself? What if people discovered that the prophet, the man of God, was unclean too? Yet he still said, Here I am. I am not skillful, I do not have the credentials, I am not good enough, but send me. And notice this: God then sent a man with unclean lips to help save a people with unclean lips. You would expect Him to send someone flawless to the flawed. Instead He sends the rescued to the ones still needing rescue, because only someone who has personally tasted God's salvation can carry it convincingly to anyone else.

Look again at everyone God used, and you find the same pattern: they all had issues. Esther was orphaned and grew up a stranger in a foreign land. Joseph was sold into slavery and forgotten in a dungeon. Do you think being a concubine was Esther's childhood dream, or that Joseph listed slavery as his life plan? Yet without the very things they suffered, neither could have been positioned to save so many. It almost looks as though God used them not in spite of their wounds but through them.

So here is what we can do. Do you have issues in your life right now, poverty, a broken heart, loneliness, fear and doubt, immigration troubles, a stubborn sinful habit? Bring them to God and pray: Lord, with all my issues, use me to save many lives. I may not be good enough for a title, I may not be holy enough to be a pastor, but if you need people saved, here I am, send me.

Where God Wants to Use You

And notice where God does His work: far beyond the walls of the church and the boundaries of religion. Yes, a few of the people God used were prophets and priests, professionals in ministry. But most were ordinary people doing ordinary things right where they already were. Some were in the oldest and lowliest of trades, and God met them there. Some were career officials like Daniel and Nehemiah, used in the corridors of power. Some were working people like Amos, some were servants and civil servants like Nehemiah and Joseph, and some were simply homemakers, like Deborah, who judged a nation.

That is the point. It is not mainly in church that God wants to use you, but in your neighborhood, your workplace, among your friends and family, in your dealings with clients and coworkers. That is where the hundreds and thousands of people who need rescuing actually are. God met Isaiah in the temple, but then He told him to get up and go out to the people. So say it today: Lord, in my day-to-day life, use me to save many lives. Here I am, send me.

One Honest Word

Now, whenever a message like this is preached, someone assumes we are handing out a license to sin, as if to say, Don't worry, keep sinning, God will use you anyway. Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, nobody here needs a license from me to sin; we are all managing that quite well on our own. Holy, righteous living has its rightful and important place. What it does not do is qualify us to be used, because none of us is holy enough for that. It is God who qualifies us, God who says, I want to use the outsider, the overlooked, the one with a past.

But once God has chosen to use you, how effective you are, how many lives are actually reached, depends a great deal on how fully you cooperate with Him. Samson delivered his people, yet imagine what more he could have done had he walked in step with God. Solomon did remarkable things, yet imagine the legacy had he mastered his desires. The tragedy of many is squandered potential. But that is not the real problem for most of us. Our problem is that we keep telling ourselves we are not there yet, not ready, not enough. So let this be the day you stop waiting and simply answer. Here I am, Lord. It's alright. Send me.