'God can use you.' What do you think about this phraseology?

[madhairday]

I'm thinking a lot about this phrase at the moment which is widely used in Christian circles. I'd be really interested in any thoughts, from people with and without faith, be as honest as you like When you hear something like 'God really can use you, he uses even weak people' or 'God uses women as much as men' or 'God used me to do his will' or anything like this - what does it make you think? Feel? is it helpful or not?

Not sure I like the "even" bit of even weak people (how about chooses the weak to shame the strong), or "women as well as men", because in many Christian circles, there wouldn't be any doubt about that. No problem with being "used" by God though.

well, if we believe that all of creation, manifest or unmanifest, seen unseen, known unknown, past present future, personal impersonal, is god, then we are all used by god, willingly or not.... we are all putty in god's hand....

'not my will but thy will be done...'

But what about the fact that when talking about 'used' as in a person being used - like 'he used his girlfriend' etc it's always a negative connotation? How does that square with it all? Any more thoughts? :)

I think there are negative associations with the idea of 'being used' but really it's only another way of saying 'being useful', surely? And as a Christian, my first (only?) desire ought to be making myself available for such use. I think the notion of 'being used' by someone / thing appears negative because the implication is that it happened against our will and without our consent or knowledge - you thought you were doing one thing but in fact you were 'being used' for something else. But if we willingly seek to enter into relationship with God and to make ourselves available to his will, then 'being used' by him should be the only thing we seek?

(sorry, garbled)

As a person without faith I have only heard very devout Evangelical Church-goers use it (apologies if that's not the correct terminology - I hope you know which branch of Christianity I'm talking about). Honestly it puts me off a lot and seems to refer more to the Old Testament idea of an omnipotent, all-punishing/wrathful God than one who allows free will.

I feel it's one thing to follow a code of conduct and to live your life according to your religion, perhaps receiving what you feel to be instruction through prayer which you can choose to follow or not, and totally another to think of your god as some kind of puppet master who uses you to change someone or something. All well and good within a church setting but an example that unsettles me would be an acquaintance who recently blogged about being 'used by God' to do 'evangelical outreach work' with Muslim women. I found that disrespectful to the other women's faith and highly odd, as though the Muslim women (in a democratic, liberal society setting) were to be pitied. (My overwhelming feeling and opinion on her actions rather than anything against her religion, IYSWIM.)

Thanks Charmingly, that's really helpful :)

Aspirant, the problem is, if as you say being 'used' is only another way of saying 'being useful', that surely implies that God only wants us if we are 'useful', so what does that say about God - and us? What about if we are not useful, in human terms, what about if we have no visible use, if for instance someone is so profoundly disabled they are unable to do anything for themselves - so reliant on their carer - does that mean they are not of use to God? I would say that value to God far outweighs usefulness.

I'm asking these questions because I am thinking about the word 'useful' for something I am working on, and also because I think the way we use the word can actually be jargon-istic and offputting to people who are not Christians, as Charmingly has said.

Like you Aspirant, I want to be open to God. But I wonder if there is a better way of describing the way God works in our lives and through us. 'Using us' seems to me to be wrong on a few levels, but I remain open to being totally available to God, to do God's will - while knowing that God will only do what is best for me/others, and using perhaps doesn't always convey this.

Waffling I know - I appreciate all your thoughts.

Being partners with God? I'm sure Paul uses that term somewhere.
As Aspirant says, the whole purpose of our life as Christians is (or at least should be, we will always fall short) that we walk the way with God, we attempt to do His will and, thanks to Jesus, we know that God will reward our efforts with "Well done."
The experience I have of 'being used by God' is of getting ideas which can be very useful when shared.
It's all a matter of being open to God's will, living in community with other Christians and being willing to lose oneself in the service of God.
Who knows what purpose God has for severely handicapped people? He asks us to 'follow Him' and we have the choice to make ourselves available or not and leave the outcome to Him.

MHD that would be true, possibly, if we were defining 'useful' in human terms, and as something that we, as humans, can readily interpret and understand as being 'useful'. Divine 'usefulness' is surely something very different? As DO says, who knows what use he has for us? And who knows the ways in which we might be 'being useful' without even being aware of it?

But you are quite right, there are may terms used in Christianity (and probably all faiths) that become 'jargonistic' in that they are readily understood by some but very easily misunderstood by others (eg the idea of 'sin' and 'repentance', which put me off Christianity for years. I couldn't see how anyone could be attracted to a religion that required you to be constantly grovelling and debasing yourself and picking over all the times you 'sinned', and how can all sins possibly be equal? etc etc.... but as soon as I understood 'sin' in terms of 'not getting it quite right' and 'repentance' as 'trying again' it all made much more sense).

'Being used' as a phrase / idea does feel difficult, I admit. I have always felt very sorry for Judas, who seems to have been 'used' by God in a very cruel way, to bring about Jesus' prophesied end and fulfil God's plan. It seems wrong that he should be cast into darkness forever when, without him, the Christian story would not have unfolded as it did.

I feel I may be going in circles

When you hear something like 'God really can use you, he uses even weak people' or 'God uses women as much as men'

Fortunately I've never heard those phrases IRL .... WTF? I'd think the person saying it was a patronising git and in the latter case, misogynist.

There's more acceptable jargon than 'used' -the phrase that popped out of the depths of my mind was 'make me a channel of your peace'. Is that the sort of thing you're after?

Thanks all, it's great to read your thoughts.

AP, yes you're right, divine 'usefulness' is something quite apart from how we see usefulness. Yet there is nothing in the bible at all to support the phrase 'used by God' whereas there is for sin, repentance etc - I think this is one of the reasons I am thinking it through (and the fact dh wrote his dissertation about it, and I am writing about it ) I am trying to get my head round the fact that sometimes it seems to me that the phrase 'God used me' implies in itself that you need to be useful in some way - whereas in fact, our value is in who we are, not what we do.

Oh dear....I'm not explaining myself too well - and I am supposed to be getting my thoughts all in order...!

Grimma, yes I have heard those phrases and fully agree with you on your response!! I like the make me a channel of your peace thing actually, it somehow seems more in line of what we are called to be.

I never had a problem with the phrase before but it is bothering me a lot lately, as I delve into the themes of usefulness and uselessness.

I'm going in circles too - never mind!

"whereas in fact, our value is in who we are, not what we do".

Excellent point. It is our very existence that pleases God. But it is very difficult to separate of existence from our actions?

Interesting!

We were talking about serving in the community in a bible study this week and one of the sections we were looking at was Ephesians 2:8-10 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith? and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God? not by works, so that no-one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (my italics). We were discussing what, as Christians, we had been saved for i.e. what our purpose is. We are saved by faith, not by what we do but as it says in James 2:14-18:
"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith; I have deeds. Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do."

I don't mind the phrase too much but that may be because I've never associated it with someone "using" or taking advantage of someone else. What I do dislike though, is when I've then been presented with the follow up question of "how is God using you?". As others have said, we are often unaware of how God is using us. In the past, I've felt the question "how is God using you?" has been used to put pressure on people to show that they are useful to God. I think the danger with this is that it can put the emphasis on good works, rather than a relationship with God. Hope this makes sense!

Rather than the phrase "God using us" I guess I think of it more as "God working through us".

Jaffa - I agree with you - we usually don't know how God is using us although sometimes we can look back and see answers to prayer or responses to things we have done that can be very encouraging.

Makes total sense Jaffa :) Now, if someone said to me 'how is God using you?' I would be most obtuse and reply 'God is not using me. God is not a user. However, God is doing all this stuff I am joining in on...'

Interesting your thoughts about faith and works, newlark, have been mudging on all that in this context as well - esp on all the Romans stuff about Abraham being credited with faith and that being what saves, not works - but balancing that with the James stuff. Interesting!

I agree, I like the phrase "God can work through you".

I've been following this a bit and wanting to contribute, but not really around much this week and not sure if what I wanted to say made any sense.

As someone else said, I've personally never heard the idea of God using 'even weak people' or 'women as much as men', or whatever, and the idea that God would discriminate in such a way (that is, using or working through, or whatever only the strong or the male) would never have crossed my mind.

I also like the idea of God 'working through' individuals (which implies working with them - with all their strengths and weaknesses and quirks and individualities) much better than that of God 'using' them... which implies more (to me, though probably not to the people who say it) that we're just puppets in God's hands, rather than having our own free will which we can use to turn to Him (to work with Him). I don't know... I like the idea of God inviting us to work with Him, and giving us the tools with which to do so (which may not be the tools we had imagined... and which may not be those most prized by society -- after all, Jesus was a carpenter from Nazareth, not a prince or a great religious leader in the conventional sense: I always understood this to be the point of the story of the visit of the Magi to Herod, that we can find God in a stable as much as in a palace, or to turn this around to the current discussion, that God works with the humble as much as with the mighty). [Errr... that was quite a sentence - sorry it's so convoluted, but hopefully you can see what I mean.]

The other thing I've been thinking about is about Paul as God's 'chosen vessel'. I like the idea of the 'vessel' because it suggests a receptacle; it suggests that we are (or can be) containers, open to receive God. And this, it seems to me, supports the idea of God working with us, insofar as, if we receive God into ourselves if we let him fill us up as if we were a vessel then we have no option but to work with Him, since He is intrinsically part of us. Am I making any sense? I have just re-read the story of the conversion of Paul, and what struck me there was the sense that when Ananias baptised Paul he enabled him to move from being God's 'chosen vessel' (that is, God had already chosen him and had seen the potential in him) to acting as God's 'chosen vessel'. So no sooner is Paul baptised than his sight is restored and he eats and becomes strong again, and then. after just a few days, he begins preaching 'Jesus is the Son of God'. But he's able to do this because he is filled with the strength that God gives him to enable him to do His work....

So, I guess my conclusion is this... What if we are all potentially chosen vessels? What if we open ourselves to God and let Him fill us with the strength to do what He would have us do, using the very different gifts (we can't all be Pauls, obviously) that He has given us?

That's a huge long waffle, but I've been saving it up for some time. Sorry if it doesn't make any sense.

I'm not religious, but I take that phrase to mean that everyone has a purpose and has something to offer to others.

TUO, brilliant thoughts, love the stuff on chosen vessels, and totally agree with all you said.

Thanks too IUse. :)