Lies Christians Believe - God could never use me
Thursday 14 Mar, 2024
With the rise of internet and telephone scams, many of us have become pretty good at spotting lies. ‘You have been in an accident in the last weeks’ or ‘your bank account has been hacked’ might sound like familiar lies used to try to steal information and money from us. If you are working you might have even been forced to complete training by your employer about how to spot a fake email. We can discern whether something we’re told seems genuine or not by using our common sense, our past experiences and knowledge of the people involved. But when it comes to believing lies about ourselves and about God the waters seem a bit muddier. How do we discern what is the truth and what is a lie when the lie just seems so easy to believe?
Our world is very quick to determine the value of an individual. Unfortunately the criteria that are used to assess someone’s value aren’t always helpful (or indeed biblical). Position of power or influence, the size of property, the brand of clothes worn, the amount of money held in a bank account, or even the contributions one is able to make to society are used as yard sticks to determine someone’s usefulness. If we’re honest, unfortunately, even in Christian circles people are valued based on their gifting and their positions. Preachers are looked up to as holier than others, people who serve up front are put on pedestals and we can easily come to doubt our own gifting and begin to think that we’re useless for the Kingdom of God.
It’s in those moments where Satan’s lies come in “did God really say that everyone is gifted? He must have skipped over you. You can’t preach or do upfront stuff, you may as well just sit quietly because God can’t use you. Others are so much more gifted than you and you are clearly not needed. And any way, look at all those rotas they look pretty full already, is there really anything useful I could add?”
We’re so quick to believe this lie ‘God could never use me’ because as Christians we are no strangers to the truth that we are not perfect, we fail and we sin. However, the knowledge of our sin shouldn’t be cause for us to doubt ourselves and the gifts that God has given us. Yet we easily listen to and believe this lie because we might not be gifted to do up front stuff - we get nervous, or we might not be the most confident evangelists - we don’t have all the answers, and we definitely aren’t the perfect Christian - we keep on sinning. With all of these thoughts flying around our minds Satan has a field day, causing us to shrink further and further into thinking that God could never use us.
So how do we combat this lie and what does God actually say about it?