So Whats the Use?

My queue is up... to write our church newsletter article that is. We Elders take turns, rotating every fifth month to lead with an opening piece that’s hopefully insightful and helpful to us all. And while I love to write, I rarely think I have anything worthwhile to convey – anything that would be either insightful or helpful.

So twice a year I struggle with the push and pull of expression through the marvel of the literary/the artistry of words and those nagging recordings etched in my brain that “there is nothing new under the sun”, [Ecclesiastes 1:9] “So what’s the use?”

Of course I somehow manage to muscle through each time, pumping out words that are almost always meaningful to me, but o’ so unsure if they are also for others. Hey, it’s how I often feel...just keepin’ it real.

And since we’re all essentially cut from the same cloth, [cf. Romans 5:12] I suspect that we’re all a little timid about expression at times – not really sure that what, or anything, we have to say could be helpful to someone else.

Some might call that self-effacing, and by some accounts perhaps it’s just that, but I think it’s often just the opposite (meaning it’s selfish) and undervalues the power we all possess in Jesus.

I suppose that’s why the Apostle Paul had to entreat young Timothy to “… kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” [2 Timothy 1:6-7 NASB]

So what gets me across the finish line each time I’m faced with an opportunity to share, to the place where you’re able to read what you’re reading now in spite of me? Three places I go:

1. My Heart

I like to start with the heart because, like David, my own “heart is” often “faint” and I need to be led “to the rock that is higher than I.” [Psalm 61:2] And it’s just too easy for my faint heart to be misled by the untrue teaching I teach myself, resonating with a rhythm that has been referred to as “deceitful”, “sick” and hard to “understand”. [Jeremiah 17:9] That’s the heart that says, “So what’s the use?” But why set to that cadence when there are “apples of gold” [Proverbs 25:11] to bite into and savor in exchange?

The late D. Martin Lloyd-Jones helped me immensely here when he wrote, “The main trouble… is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self.” [1] So, instead, he instructs that we should stand up and say, “‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.’” [2] And what is it we are to speak to our self ? Truth! And since there is no truth but Truth itself, I figure this – that if my faint heart can be made stronger by a truth I’ve first preached to myself, then there’s a very good chance that same truth can help make another faint heart strong.

2. My Worship

So now that my heart has been redirected, I like to go vertical by considering this – that a good word can be a worshipful word. That whatever I have to write, whatever I have to say, when the heart is pulsating to truth “the mouth proceeds from the heart” [Matthew 15:18] and can shoot honor in its proper direction. Some of my sweetest moments of nearness to God are right here, right now, with fingertips to keyboard as these sentences run through my head over and over and over again.

It causes me “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord”, [Matthew 15:18] the one thing more than anything else that David wanted of God, and the one thing more than anything else that God wants of us. So what’s the use? The use is this – that speaking and writing a word of truth, even though all truth has already been set under the sun, is a reflection of the beauty of the Lord, and an honor of Him and an honor for you.

3. My Gift

O. K., so this is good for my heart and it’s right for my worship, but now it’s also needed as a gift… from me, to you. This one’s hard to swallow. I know all too well that I need you, but it’s tough to accept that you might need me. Why am I so ill at ease to reciprocate? Because I have to first believe that I have something to give you. And the Bible tells me I do… the Bible tells us we all do.[ cf. I Corinthians 7:7; I Peter 4:10]

However, what I have to give you now is not some kind of unique gift that’s only endued to a few. No, this gift we all hold. Why, in fact, because we all hold it, it’s commanded that we give it, and why command something that cannot be done?

This means we not only have it, but we don’t have any other choice but to “… encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” [I Thessalonians 5:11] We’re assumed to be in the business of doing it already; it’s just part and parcel of being in community.

So what’s the use? The use is this – God’s given us something to give one another, and if it’s coming from God, then it’s got to be good. [cf. James 1:17]

Listen, our hearts can always use a good talkin’ to, and our worship can usually use reviving, and our gift just needs to be used. So the next time we’re reticent to say or write something and think, “So what’s the use?”, let’s take our hearts to the rock that is higher than us, let’s rest our worship upon the beauty of the Lord, and then… let’s go for it and say that something, write that note, encourage the other, build the other up. What better use?

Thomas Kruggel is one of our Pastors here at Grace Bible Church

1. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures,
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1965, p. 20.
2. Ibid. p. 21.