God Uses Everything--February 26, 2021

 God Uses Everything--February 26, 2021

"At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should." [Colossians 4:3-4]

I heard someone say once that preachers are like butchers--they use everything.

There's probably some truth in that comparison, too, in the sense that nobody really wants to watch a sausage or a sermon being made.

But while it is certainly true that preachers potentially "use everything" they encounter or live through as people-watchers to become later sermon illustrations, parables, or object lessons, I think it supremely true that God uses everything.  And maybe the greatest learning of faith is coming to see that God has a way of taking the things we are certain are too useless, worthless, damaged, or broken, to be good for anything, and using them for good we never expected.  God, more so than the preacher or even the butcher, really does use everything.

That's what strikes me about these few verses from Colossians.  We hear Paul asking his readers to pray for him, but interestingly, the prayer is for God to use his current situation for spreading the Good News--not necessarily for a change of that situation.  Paul asks the Colossians to pray "that God will open a door for the word," not necessarily that he would be set free from imprisonment.  He prays for God to use the circumstances, rather than dictating that God has to change the circumstances.  That's a big difference.

We're used to presenting God with an itemized wish-list of things we need God to do for our own benefit: find me a parking spot, keep my list of people happy and healthy (with a sort of shrug of indifference about everybody else), make my political party win, increase the value of my portfolio, help my way of life and privilege to remain unchanged and unchallenged.  That sort of thing.  On most days, we don't dare pray for God to use the things that we may not like for the purposes of speaking grace to someone else in the world--and yet that is exactly what the apostle dares us to do here.  Instead of treating God like the speaker-menu at the drive-thru, to whom we present our demands, the Scriptures invite us to offer God our circumstances in faith and to trust God to make of them what God will.  In other words, to use everything.

So while it is certainly possible that God could have responded to an imprisoned Paul's situation by arranging for Paul to be set free, it is also possible that God used that imprisonment for Paul's faith to get through to his guards, so that the news of God's grace in Christ would spread throughout the empire, right under Caesar's nose--and on Caesar' dime, too!  (Something like that seems to be the case, in fact, if you read the letter of Philippians!)  And instead of Paul just saying, "Hey everybody, please pray that God springs me from jail--if we get enough of us doing it, God will make it happen," like some sort of spiritual Groupon offer, Paul asks his readers, "Pray that God will use this my situation in a way that I can be useful--so that love will be shared more fully with everyone."

And maybe in a way, that's the most we can dare to hope for in this day: that God would use us, just as we are, in our current circumstances, for the sake of the Kingdom.  It's funny--for all the vaguely spiritual self-help books out there and all the guides for "Christian" ways to find a mate, land a job, or grow your wealth, the New Testament really doesn't offer much direction for finding a spouse (and it's honestly pretty ambivalent on whether romance is all it's cracked up to be), and almost discourages attempts to grow your wealth.  The Bible can't honestly be turned into a scheme for making God change your circumstances or situation; instead, it points us to a God who takes us as we are and brings good we never expected from things we thought were unusable.  If I am convinced that God's job is to make my life to fit my expectations, I should be prepared for disappointment--God ain't my personal genie.  But if I can see that God's work is to take the pieces of my life, my world, and my deepest self and use them as they are, in transformative ways, well, then every day is full of possibilities.  But it means learning to change the way we pray, from, "Give me this thing I want so my life will be better," to "Here are things I can't make heads or tails out of--can you bring good out of them for the sake of sharing your love and your good news with others?"

And God will.  God absolutely will take the things we thought were garbage and junk and transform them into channels for loving the world.  The question is whether we'll consciously let ourselves be a part of what God is up to when it happens.  That's how God is--God uses everything.

Lord God, make of us what you will. We dare to trust ourselves to your good hands.