Can God really use me?

Have you ever asked that question? “Can God really use me?” I know when that question crossed my mind, it’s followed with all the reasons that I think the answer is “no”. The list is long and detailed. It’s negative and overwhelming. It doesn’t take me long to decide that maybe God should choose someone else. Someone who’s list isn’t so long and filled with so many times I felt God has been disappointed in me.

Before I go further, let me share just a few of the things on my list. I have so many regrets in my past. I have broken promises and been selfish so many times. I have said “no” to walking in obedience when God has called me. I have said yes to sin way too many times. I have looked my family in the eye and lied to them. I have left those who loved me to “follow my heart” only to realize that my heart deceived me. I have had friends confront me about my actions only to defend and justify my sin. Add to those the very normal list of; I don’t pray enough. I don’t read the Bible enough. I am not a Bible scholar. The list goes on and on. I’m sure you can identify even if it’s only in that fact that we each have a list that we believe disqualifies us from being useful to God.

Have you ever noticed elephants are a 12,000 pound animal that can be tied down by the smallest small chain? An elephant is trained from it’s youngest days that the chain is strong enough to hold it back. As the elephant grows it sees the chain but it has grown up testing the chains’ strength and realized it can’t get away. When it’s grown, it no longer questions the chains’ strength. The elephant believes the chain limits movement and so the chain stays stronger than the elephant. Our spiritual bondage is like that. One thing we all forget, is that we have a past, before we began our journey with Christ and we won’t be made perfect until we reach Heaven. We all have baggage that we carry into our relationship with Jesus. As we have grown with this baggage, we believe each event, bad decision, or disobedience is a link in a chain that holds us back from being able to go where God leads us. For me, when I am challenged to share my story, I begin to look back at my chains and fill my mind with all the reasons, I can’t be used by God. Reasons why my story can’t impact or help anyone. But when I read scripture, I see that entering a relationship with Jesus, I am set free from that chain. My chains have been broken! Each time I try and tell God why I can’t be used, I am picking up those chains and wrapping them around my own hands and feet. He has freed me but I am choosing to stay bound. Like the elephant I can be free but I choose to stay enslaved.

I see it as if I am the samaritan woman at the well. (John 4) I remember when my sin had become so dominate in my life. It was shocking, even to me, how brazen I had become. I had been a Christian for years but I let my hurt turn my heart from God to be soothed by anything else. I had left my husband and began to pursue another relationship that I thought would fix the brokenness in me. Friends met with me and begged me to take a look at what I was doing. The pleaded with me to realize how far I had run from what God wanted for me. I had reasons that I thought justified my actions. But like the woman at the well, it didn’t work. I may not have married 5 men but I see the same heart in both of us, to find healing in ways that seemed right but really weren’t. She shows up at the well at an hour when no other women would be there. In her culture, she would have be an outcast. She knew what others thought of her and so she goes to the well alone to stay away from judgement. At the well she encounters a man sitting there. Not just any man but a Jewish man.

Jews and Samaritan’s didn’t mix. They stayed far away from each other. Jews would travel many miles out of their way just to stay out of Samaria. But not Jesus. He isn’t intimidated by any of that. When Jesus speaks to her and asks her for a drink, she is stunned. Not only is she a Samaritan but she’s also a woman. This are two very unusual things. Her answer shows that she understands the prevailing thought of their time. John 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) She doesn’t know who Jesus is. So her answer is questioning His request. He shares His desire to give her more than He has asked her for. John 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  Each exchange shows that Jesus wanted to give her more than she could have imagined. Living water that truly satisfied and next, freedom from shame. He then asks her to call her husband to come out and talk with Him. Her curt reply is, ‘I have no husband”. To which Jesus fills in the details. John 4:17 Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

I understand how it feels to be confronted with your sin. I have sat with friends who have lovingly called out my sin. I have heard their words, knowing they were right, yet wishing they were wrong. I know the choice you have in the moment to confess the sin or justify and hope they believed it. And just like the woman at the well, I know how to change the subject to move away from painful subjects. But what I love about Jesus in this story is, He allows her to change the subject but He never stops drawing her out to a place that she can see who He is and why that is life changing. I think each response she gives is her looking at her chains; I am a woman, I am a samaritan, I have been unfaithful, I am defiled, I am not smart enough…

John 4:25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” I see her trying to justify her thoughts. “Some day at some time I will have answers but for now, it’s not for me to know.” Jesus answer is straight to the point. John 4:26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

He lets her know that He is the One she has been waiting for. He has come and He has chosen to talk to her, regardless of the reasons why she didn’t feel qualified. He gently and lovingly speaks to each of her concerns. It’s at this point she leaves her water jugs and runs back in to town to tell everyone that the Christ has come. I understand the joy after being freed from my sin. Repentance can bring such relief. But it did not change the consequences or the circumstances. Just like the Samaritan woman, she still had to approach those who had confronted, scorned and avoided her. She may have told her family members, those who had judged her when she moved in with the last man. She may have told her previous husbands and their families. She may have told the women who avoided her. But rather than telling Jesus she wasn’t the one to tell her neighbors, she runs and tells everyone. She choose to walk in freedom no matter what was done, spoken or said in the past. Like her can’t live like an adulteress the rest of our lives, heads hung down in shame. We can have freedom to live as those who’ve been given life even though we have a past. 

When Jesus calls us in to new life, He knows who we are and what we have done. He knows all the things we have done well and those areas that we have damaged. He also knows how to create a new future that changes those previously ruined areas into thriving healed areas of life. He can use those damaged relationships, lost dreams, broken hearts to bring healing to others as well. We just need to see those as chains that have been broken. We need to stop binding ourselves up and step out in freedom. Those first steps may feel scary. When we have lived in bondage to sin for a long time, we many not even know how to step out. But just like this woman, when we tell our story, people respond. In fact, it says that her whole town came out and many began a relationship with Jesus that day. John 4:39-42- Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

It’s amazing what happens when we don’t try and talk God out of His plan for us.  What would He do in us and around us if we just obeyed? Today, I am challenged and I challenge you to surrender your life to Christ again. This time laying down all the reasons you think you aren’t able to do what God has called you to. Take a step of faith and begin to tell others what God is doing in your life. It’s that simple. Let’s live free from the chains that once bound us!