God Can’t Use My Life

Last updated on: February 24, 2018 at 7:59 am by Darrell Lackey

God Can’t Use My Life 2018-02-24T07:59:13-08:00 Darrell Lackey

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So much of my early life in the FG world was about how God was “using” my life then, or, was going to use my life in the future. A common theme or question during those years, was: What were my spiritual gifts and was I allowing God to use those gifts in my life? I was told to give my “life” to God. All of me. My talents, gifts, resources, dreams, hopes and all the rest, so God could use my “life.”

“God is going to use your life son,” I heard more than once growing up. And I know they meant well. They didn’t want a person to waste anything God had given them. None of us do. Much like the US Army, we want to be “all we can be” for God. We want God to use our life. We didn’t want to be like the one servant who buried his talents and did nothing with them.

For those old enough to remember the movie “The Graduate” there is a scene (see here) where Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is moving past the adults present at his graduation party, trying to escape, really, their questions. Everyone wants to know what Benjamin is going to do with his life, what his plans are, and some have advice. One man cryptically pulls Benjamin aside, and almost conspiratorially says one word to him, “plastics.”

This was in the late 60’s, so perhaps plastics was the next big thing. Today it would probably be Tesla, Solar, or Bitcoin, I don’t know. We want young people to be “successful” and to live with purpose, vigor, and gusto. We want them to hone their skills and talents—put them to good use, so they can reap the rewards. We don’t want them to miss the next train, the one that will take them to the “top.”

In the FG world, in similar times of transition, graduations, and so forth we were often pulled aside and whispered to regarding which college or seminary to attend, to be “successful.” We were also warned about the ones not to attend (“way too liberal…”). There was whispering about which churches to attend and which pastors to know. So much help. So many pats on the back. Because if God was going to use my life, I had to make it a life worth using.

And this meant pursuing, aggressively, the “abundant life” we were told about in John 10, which many of us thought meant the “best life” Joel Osteen told us about. It meant we would get the life talked about in Jeremiah 29 and Proverbs 3. And, magically, amazingly, this life would look like the successful life of our secular counterparts, only it would be a religious life, a moral life, one God could truly bless and be happy about. But, it would look the same as the others as far as the nice car, nice house, white picket fence, good job, 2.5 children, time share, pension, and tooth sparkle with the wide grin when photographed.

Over time however, I ran up against a sobering and, at first, almost painful, thought. What if God was more interested in my death than my life? Obviously, I don’t mean a physical death. I mean something far more horrible. I mean the death of my ego, pride, and false self. I mean the death of striving to “live” a “successful” life; a life lived in the way too many of us were told it should be lived to be seen as not wasting our gifts or talents. I mean the death of the picture I had built (and had built for me by my culture)—the picture of a successful Christian and what that was supposed to look like.

What if God wanted all the masks, all the facades, all the play-acting, all the structures I had built to hide behind, gone? What if I was being asked to stand naked before this God? Then what? Well, the fraud (me) would be exposed. I would rather die first. Exactly.

I still wear plenty of masks, play-act, and try to hide from God, myself, and you. It’s a slow death for me, this Christian life. But I’m finding there is a greater possibility of living, when I first begin to understand the dying part.

I’m learning that God can’t use my life, but he can certainly use my death.

“Life is a web of trials and temptations, but only one of them can ever be fatal, and that is the temptation to think it is by further, better, and more aggressive living that we can have life. But that will never work. If the world could have lived its way to salvation, it would have, long ago. The fact is that it can only die its way there, lose its way there….

For Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life of those who will take their stand on a death he can use instead of on a life he cannot.”

– Robert Capon

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