What does it take to be someone God can use for His glory?

I think often we disqualify ourselves from really being a “witness” for God because we simply don’t know what to say. But what does it really take to be a person that God can use?

Years and years of “Christian” experience?

Some huge testimony of radical change?

A degree in theology?

So often we just kind of look at ourselves and think, “But I have nothing to offer here! I don’t know what to say!”

I know I’ve done that, over and over!

I say things like, “I’m a stay at home mom, and most days I don’t even have a car available, I can’t even get out TO people to witness to them!”

Or I think, “I’m just to shy! I don’t know how to relate well to people! I’ll put people off!”

Or something like, “I’ve never really had much happen to me, I mean I was raised in a Christian home, around church, I have no common ground from which to speak from!”

Except, all of those things, they really are just excuses. They seem and feel valid, but in reality we really need no qualifications for God to use us, and since we need no qualifications than we can’t disqualify ourselves.

In fact, we don’t even need to talk for Him to use us.

We really don’t need to “do” anything, beyond making ourselves available for His use.

Example:

During my pregnancy I had quite a few horrible possible complications my doctors were watching for. In actuality I had them all freaking out, I had one doctor telling me I was giving them all grey hair, they considered me some type of walking time bomb. They were honestly afraid I was going to start hemorrhaging to death at any moment, coughing up blood from pressurized veins rupturing in my esophagus.

There were other risks, but this was the biggest one. I’d had these veins before pregnancy, they weren’t all that bad, but pregnancy doubles your blood volume, so they just knew these veins were ready to rupture.

So, at about seven months in, they put me under to take a look at these veins with an upper-endoscopy and hopefully tape them off. It’s all risky, they have me fully prepped for emergency cesarean, and they do the procedure in Labor and Delivery’s operating room, just in case.

The doc goes in (we hear later about this from a nurse that was their and happened to go to church with my parents) she looks around, and the nurse starts hearing her say things like:

“Are you seeing what I am seeing?”

“This doesn’t happen!”

“I don’t understand!”

She even calls in other doctors for a second opinion.

“These veins look perfectly healthy!”

“They must be praying to the right God!”

They must be praying to the right God…

I love that story, not because it says something awesome about me, but because it shows how God can use us no matter what circumstance we are in.

I mean, I’m not talking, I’m not moving, I’m doing nothing. In fact, I’m unconscious on a table with no clothes on and the only covering being medical shreds of whatever they cover you with. I have a catheter in, completely pliable and vulnerable to the people around me. I have no modesty, no control, no personal dignity that I can claim, no nothing.

I am completely vulnerable to His use.

I’m not saying we don’t need to do anything in order to be used. I think it is something we learn how to do overtime. Learning how to listen and obey when He says, “do this” or “speak here.”

What I am saying is, is that if He can use me naked and unconscious before strangers to testify to His glory through my body, well than He can use you too.

We don’t have to be eloquent, we don’t have to be full of knowledge, we don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to have some huge amazing testimony.

Because it isn’t about us anyway, it’s about Him, and we are simply instruments for His use.

We just have to be available for God’s use.

Joy Aletheia Stevens