God doesn't want to use you.
Discover more from Sarah Bessey's Field Notes
God doesn't want to use you.
Maybe God doesn’t so much want things from us. Maybe God actually wants things for us.
Hi friends,
I used to think God wanted to use me.
I thought God needed so much from me. What should I give up? What should I lay down? What should I do more? I needed to be used by God.
So I need to read the Bible more. I need to pray more. I need to give away more of my money, more of my time, more of my home. I need to sacrifice, love until it hurts and then keep loving.
If I really loved God, wouldn’t I be more like [insert famous Christian of the day here]? That one really has it figured out, I should be more like her.
I should really volunteer at church more, lead a Bible study, organize something for the homeless. I’m the worst at this Jesus stuff. I should really be doing more for God! It’s so demanding, it takes everything, EVERYTHING.
I mean, Jesus laid down his life for me, I should probably return the favour?
Didn’t you just feel so much more holy when you’re sacrificing everything on the altar of doing more for God? I mean, most of us like to feel like we’ve earned something. Who wants a free gift – those come with strings attached, right? And of course there are always those institutions or individuals who will profit from our passion, benefit from our need to prove our worth, take advantage of our enthusiasm and sincerity, too.
And I was happy to do it. I loved God, I wanted to please God, I wanted to be worth something to God. I thought I owed God something for all the saving-the-world thing. Of course this life in Christ will cost me something – it will cost everything!
That old god wanted so much from me: time, money, energy, focus, worship, passion, work. God wanted my best behaviour, a clean conscience. Work harder, do more, strive strive strive. People are going to hell if we don’t do our part, the stakes are high.
The nicest thing someone could say to me then?
“Oh, Sarah, God really used you.”
Here is what I think now: Maybe God doesn’t so much want things from us.
Maybe God actually wants things for us.
After all, God imagined us for love and for beauty, for life and for wholeness, for goodness and for mercy. You were made in the image of God. The Holy Spirit stirred over the waters, deep calling to deep.
God yearns like a good father, like a good mother, for us to be free.
God is Love, yes, and so God wants to lavish friendship and meaning and abundant life upon us, to help us to see this old world like the new world God envisions.
God wants us to be truly human, the way Jesus walked for and with us. Even the wrath of God isn’t something to fear, but something to welcome – that wrath is coming against the very things in us that bring death and destruction.
You, dear one, you’re not being condemned. You’re being rescued.
Maybe God doesn’t want much from us: God wants so much for us.
See there? The difference?
Start there. Start with the Love and with the freedom, with the grace and the wisdom, with the abundance, and suddenly those other things are simply an overflow instead of a sacrifice.
Open your hands and surrender.
Hand over your apathy and your loneliness, your never-enough and your too-much.
Lay down your sin and the things you do to numb yourself against feeling it all.
Toss down your pride and your greed, your selfishness and your me-first, those things aren’t for you anymore. Bury what hasn’t served you.
Throw your certainties and illusions of control over the edge of the boat.
Let your guilt and shame and hero-complex sink to the bottom.
What are they but fetters? Can anything hold up against the fury of a God who wants you free, wants you restored, wants you to see that you are loved loved loved?
God is for you, Love is for you. The only thing God wants from you are the chains that are holding you back. Hand them over, they’ve already been unlocked, you get to walk away free.
God is for us. Never against us.
I’m not working for God. I’m working with God. We’re on a rescue mission, we’re on a setting-things-right all-things-redeemed mission.
We’re not trying to wrestle paltry gifts from a reluctant deity, counting coins in the counting house, viewing our lives as a sheet of checks and balances.
The spreadsheets have been tossed out, there is only welcome now.
The counting house doesn’t exist, there is only the supper of the Lamb, and there is room for everyone.
Run towards grace, towards shalom. Throw off everything that holds you back – it is simply holding you back.
God doesn’t want to use you, God wants to be with you.
We are not serving gifts of stone or snake for the children, there is only a God of Lights handing out bread to the entire hillside. Maybe all along, it could have been a party.
Open the gates,
S.
And in case you missed these recent Field Notes:
On learning to love the Bible again: In which I make 16-ish book recommendations for your evolving relationship with scripture (for subscribers)
When you need a lighthouse in the storm: Good words for hard days (for subscribers)
I have this, for now: A few of my certainties at the moment (for subscribers)
10 New Breath Prayers: May you find ways to breathe prayer through your own life, finding God’s breath in your own breath. (for everyone)
(A version of this essay was originally published on my former blog a few years ago so decided to bring it back.)
God doesn't want to use you.
I was raised in an evangelical missions denomination. The focus was on going and doing. Even as a kid we had summer missions fests where the missionaries from exotic places (cough cough single women) came home and we bartered in play markets and sat on the gym floor eating rice. We had a giant global wooden map on the church wall with small bulbs that lit up around the world when you pressed a missionary’s name. (To this day I can oddly identify Papau New Guinea on a map.) I spent my 20s getting passport stamps for Jesus, poor as a church mouse, with various missions organizations and non-profits around the world. When it crashed due to a medical issue, so did my identity in God. I’m so glad God met me where I landed (very conservative west Michigan of all places—I was mortified). I learned that little lightbulb was above my own head, was inside me all along and not a task or geography to be chased. It took some therapy (and multiple Moana viewings, tbh, with the kids) and some listening to God, but I started to get it in my head I didn’t have to accomplish “going where no one else would go” to please God. I still have the occasional millennial existential crisis about what I am doing with my life, but I don’t doubt God‘s presence in it.
Love your last line, "Maybe all along, it could have been a party." Amen!