The Threshing Floor

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

God doesn't want to use you...

I posted this as a note on Facebook a few months ago, so I figured I'd re-post it here:

I know, shocking, right? I must say, recently I've begun doubting the old Evangelical credo of "God wants to use you to fulfill His purpose". I don't think God is a user. I think God values people far too much to just use them. We, on the other hand, do like to use people to fulfill our purposes.

I'm pretty tired of seeing people treated like cogs in some ministry apparatus, or pawns in some chess game. It's like churches only value people for what they can produce. I believe they have bought into a lie from Satan himself. I've seen many great people used and discarded like toilet paper because they were suddenly deemed "unproductive" or "uneffective".

In Henri Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen makes the point that both sons misunderstood the heart of their father. The son that left and came back didn't understand the depth of his father's love, but the older son didn't either. The older son had the mindset of a servant in the household, rather than a son. He didn't understand his father's love, either. He thought he was loved because he did all the right things and worked hard. I think many in Evangelicalism fall into this thinking.

In John 15, Jesus said, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." That's pretty profound if you think about it. Friendship isn't based on what we do for God. God doesn't base our worth or value on the stuff we accomplish in His name. I think this why on the last day, Jesus will say to some, "depart from me, I never knew you." Knowing the heart of the Father is more important than doing stuff for the Father.

As Ben Witherington III says on his blog all the time, think on these things...

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