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May 21, 2026 06:00am

When Christianity Becomes Transactional: The Danger of “Usefulness”

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I used to say it a lot: “God used her.”
I prayed it too: “God, please use me.”

But when I search Scripture, I don’t find the same language.

The idea that God works in us and through us, that He prompts us to speak His words, to love others with His love, to be His hands and feet on this earth—all of this is certainly found in Scripture.

But the perpetual ongoing request for God to “use me” seems to be missing from the Bible.

I wonder if we’ve taken that idea, added our American gluttony for usefulness, productivity, and efficiency to it, and now say words that might have more detrimental ramifications than we realize.

When I use a hammer, I pick it up, drive a nail, set it down, and go about my picture-hanging business. The hammer’s value lies in what it can do for me and in how effective it is; its worth is directly proportional to its usefulness.

How unsettling would it be if I said I wanted to use my child or my spouse? It removes the value, love, and care, and it turns my relationship into a transaction. Using an inanimate object is fine. Using a person is not.

Here’s where the nuance lies, though: God does work through us. He does live His life through us. He does use our words, our actions, and our resources for His purposes. And this isn’t a burden. Personally, when I know the Holy Spirit is working through me, I feel pure delight—what a privilege.

But when we casually repeat catchphrases for the supernatural working of God, it begins to do something to our minds and hearts. We begin to believe our value is found in what we can produce, our relationship is reduced to a business partnership, and our understanding of God’s heart for us becomes skewed. We are His child, not His hammer. We bear His image. He has proven our value in the price He paid for our redemption.

One last thing—when we adopt the language of “usefulness,” we not only wrongly see who we are in God’s eyes, we also begin to value God only when He is useful. We would never say this out loud, but many of us see Him this way. We use Him for prayers we want answered, for healing, for help through a tough day. And while I praise Him for His abundant “yeses,” what happens when His answer is “no,” when He doesn’t come through in the way we want?

Am I following Him because of who He is or simply because He’s been useful to my life? Do I know His love? Or is our relationship so transactional that I only understand Him in light of answered prayers? Do I worship God because He’s beautiful, glorious, and good, or because He’s useful? If I worship Him because He’s useful, then when He doesn’t meet my demands or when He says no, I will shake my fist in His face and turn to something else.

Okay, one more last thing: if I find I have traded the supernatural love of God for “usefulness,” there’s good news. Jesus came to redeem hearts like mine (and like yours), to thaw the frozen ground of “get it done, work harder, produce results,” and to allow His love to settle down deep, grow roots, and produce fruit that cannot be manufactured. If He illuminates our gluttony for usefulness, it isn’t to condemn us, but to show us how we’ve substituted usefulness for love and self-effort for Holy Spirit power.

Some might say that if we begin to view our life with God like this, we will become self-focused and forget what God has called us to do. But I want to suggest that having a utilitarian mindset has actually pushed “us” to center stage. When we know God’s heart toward us, we no longer seek to be known, admired, or applauded by anyone else.

I’ve known so many in ministry who look up one day and realize it’s been years since they encountered the very One they proclaimed. Knowing His love, apart from our usefulness, might be the very thing that heals, transforms, and compels us to share Him in ways our pride-induced productivity would have never allowed.