Used by God

Most Christians I know want to be used by God for something. They’re hoping for, looking for, and dreaming about the ways that God can use them for His purposes.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, but I think we run into problems with it sometimes because of how we go about waiting for God to use us. We want to be used by God, but until we hear from Him about how He wants to use us we don’t do anything. We sit back and wait for the specific direction.

As I was reading the Old Testament prophet Amos recently, I was struck by what Amos said. In Amos 7, the king of Israel is telling Amos to leave because he doesn’t like Amos’ message. Amos’ response is what struck me. Verses 14-15 say this:

Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel'.”

Amos was looking after sheep and trees when God called him to be a prophet and gave him a message. He wasn’t sitting back and doing nothing while he waited for God to give him something to do. He was working at what he had to do at that time.

As I started to think about this more, I began to wonder if God isn’t looking for us to be faithful in serving Him in our day-to-day activities. All those things we do that don’t seem significant, that may not even seem like they’re making a difference for God. When we faithfully serve in those, God is using us for His purposes – even when we can’t see that.

Each day can be filled with divine appointments. Moments where we can point the people we are interacting with to God through our actions and through our words. All these moments are then us being used by God for His purposes, and we didn’t have to sit and wait for Him to tell us what to do. We chose to serve faithfully in our jobs, in our schoolwork, in our interactions with friends and family, in our interactions with those providing services for us.

I believe that being used by God begins with us being faithful in the mundane, every-day tasks and relationships. That’s where we begin.