Feelings of Worthlessness Hinder Your Ability To Find Your Place In The Body of Christ

At times, Christians endure feelings of worthlessness. Something goes sour at the local church. We try to accomplish a perceived task, but no one backs our efforts. Meanwhile, someone else is elevated, and it seems that everyone rallies around his or her cause. Satan whispers thoughts of envy or jealously into our mind. The hurt accumulates. We feel inferior, worthless, and suddenly we begin to wonder if we shall ever fit into the body of Christ. The fear of being useless hinders our service to God. Before we know it, self-pity reduces our effectiveness, and we lose sight of our position as chosen children of the King.

Back in June of 2006, I worked for a construction crew in Charlotte, N.C. We had just finished building an addition to a Christian church for Korean worshipers. I was alone on the jobsite, serving guard duty. I had plenty of time to sit and study God's word. I also had much time to ponder my personal value in the body of Christ.

By then, I had been out of prison for over a year. Many other new Christians were already preaching and teaching and singing and sharing all that God had given them to share. Yet for me, it seemed that my every effort met roadblocks and dead ends. God had given me three years of confined, one-on-one understanding, yet He opened no doors for ministry. Frustration had begun to move over me.

Notice that I left off witnessing, serving, and helping from the list of what other Christians were about. Satan does that, you know. He narrows your focus so that you miss the areas that God most often has reserved for you.

At any rate, I was sitting alone in that Korean church, reading my scriptures, and hearing continuously within my head the whispers of Satan as he condemned my efforts, blackened my successes, and caused me to feel worthless to God, useless to the Kingdom, and a waste to the body of Christ. I knew the speaker was a liar, but my flesh was strong and my spirit weak. I found myself thinking ill thoughts toward my local church assembly. A scripture came to mind, so I turned my bible to the pages of Hebrews where it reads as follows:

"Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," (Hebrews 12:12-17).

The text was clear, the understanding obvious. Fornication need not be sexual in nature. Sometimes fornication involves spiritual infidelity. The enemy was seeking to implant fear, anger, and a root of bitterness within my heart. More clearly, I understood that he had no sound grounds for the content of his words. He was merely striving to make me desert the church, to isolate myself, to cease being a part of the life that is within the body of a local assembly of God's children. He wanted me to commit spiritual adultery by permitting some other source to become my link to God's purposes in this life.

But as I said, my flesh was strong and my spirit growing weaker. A false pride was gaining momentum. Speaking the words of scripture seemed not to drive back that whispering enemy. I was on perilous ground, at risk of a great failure, and helpless to protect myself.

Then I heard a second voice, a calm voice, a gentle, nudging voice that said unto me, "Michael, arise and go to the far side of this complex."

I knew that voice. I knew the profit in doing as the Holy Spirit commands. I followed His instructions.

On the far side of the building, I paused before a doorway and looked across the wide expanse of a very large parking lot. A white pickup truck was parked on the far outreaches of the pavement, near the curve in the highway, almost in the edges of the trees.

"Go to him," said the Lord.

As I drew nearer to the pickup, I could see on the passenger door the marking that identified it as a Time Warner service vehicle. Facing sideways, with a laptop on his lap, a black man sit in the driver's seat. He was startled by my sudden appearance.

We talked. He told me they were trying to locate and mark a buried cable line. He showed me the PC screen and expounded on the location process. After a while, as the Spirit prompted, I began to talk with him about Jesus.

Turned out that the man was a discouraged evangelist. After several years of Christian outreach and service delivering the message of a risen Christ, this winner of lost souls had come home from a week of Kingdom work only to find that his wife was having an affair with his pastor. The encounter with such a filthy truth had had broken his spirit. He was bruised, shaken to core, and completely uncertain of his personal value to anyone, much less to the body of Christ. Now, he had not pastor, no wife, and no mission. So he worked for Time Warner, listened to the occasional gospel track, and brooded over his personal losses.

We talked for thirty or forty minutes. I have no idea of what words passed between my lips. I know that some came from scripture. Others came from experience. Most came from the Holy Spirit as He used my lips for His purposes.

In the end, the evangelist had repented and recommitted himself to the work that he had been called to perform. We prayed. We laughed. We rejoiced. And we praised a living God. Then, least we become thieves of the time that belongs to his earthly employer and to mine, we parted ways to return to our post of labor.

But for me, there were a few more moments of praise. I passed through that new Christian center of worship, opened to outer doors on the other side, and then sat down behind the steering wheel of my own vehicle. There I cried. I cried great streaming tears of joy and relief.

I may never teach the masses, but that has noting to do with my value in the service of God's Kingdom. That evangelist, a man that I cannot call by name, was the first of many troubled pastors that God has permitted me the joy of bring renewal into their life.

"He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward," (Matthew 10:41-42).

At times, those who seem to be in the least of positions perform the greatest of services.