Have you ever prayed for God to use you?

Maybe you shouldn’t.

Maybe there’s something you need to be asking yourself first. As Samuel Brengle put it,

“Instead of praying so much to be used, people should search themselves to know whether they are usable” (Helps to Holiness, p.69).

Are you usable?

The author of Hebrews complained that his readers were not usable:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food (Heb 5:12).

They should have been teachers, but they still needed to be taught. They should have been able to serve but were not ready. And it was their responsibility to be ready.

I once heard a preacher tell of asking a woman in his congregation to teach Sunday school for children. She was in her sixties and had been going to that church for nearly forty years.

She refused.

She insisted she couldn’t teach the class. “Pastor, I couldn’t do it. I need to be fed. I have so much more to learn.”

The pastor persisted. He assured her that she was quite capable of teaching a children’s Sunday school class. But she refused again. “No, I couldn’t. I need to be fed.”

At that point, the pastor grew angry and said firmly, “If you can’t teach a children’s class, then find another church to attend next Sunday.”

“But I’ve been coming here for forty years!”

“And if you haven’t grown enough here in forty years to teach a Sunday school class, you better find a church where you will.”

How many opportunities for service have you missed because you were not usable? Are you willing to change?