Faith & formation
The Most Dangerous Prayer in the English Language
The room used to be a canteen, and it still has the hatch, painted over twice.
Twenty-odd people, a keyboard, and a woman at the front saying the thing people say at the end of nights like this: Lord, use me.
She means it. That is not in question, and it is not the interesting part.
The interesting part is that she has prayed it every year for eleven years, and if you asked her whether she felt closer to God than she did in year one, she would give you an answer about the ministry.
The warning everybody gives is the wrong warning
People are usually warned that use me is dangerous because God might take you up on it — the mission field, the hard road, the cost.
It is the most dangerous prayer in the English language, and it is dangerous in the opposite direction from the one everybody warns you about.
The actual risk runs the other way. The prayer can be a request to be useful instead of known — and it is possible to be given exactly what you asked for.
You can be used. Genuinely, fruitfully, for decades. People can be helped who would not otherwise have been helped. And the whole time, the thing you never quite asked for — presence, being known, the unproductive part — can remain a thing you intend to get to when the season eases.
Why usefulness is the easier ask
Because usefulness is measurable, and presence is not.
A rota has your name on it. A number went up. Somebody said the talk helped them. These are real, and they are legible, and they can be counted at the end of a year in a way that I sat with God on Tuesday and nothing in particular happened cannot.
And there is a quieter reason, which is worth saying gently. Being useful lets you set the terms. You choose the service, the hours, the version of yourself that shows up. Being known does not let you choose any of that — it involves being seen at a time you did not schedule, in a condition you did not select.
So the prayer that sounds like total surrender can function as a negotiation. Take my hands. Take my calendar. Take the visible parts.
The prayer is not wrong. It is unfinished.
None of this means use me should not be prayed. It is a good prayer, and the impulse in it is a good impulse.
It is simply not the whole sentence, and praying half a sentence for eleven years produces a particular kind of person: tired, fruitful, and further away than they were, without anything having visibly gone wrong.
The completion is not more surrender. It is a second clause — and know me, and let me know you — which is harder to pray sincerely, because it cannot be reported on at the end of the year.
Try this
Answer this in one sentence, without editing it: if I were no longer useful to anybody, what would be left of my standing with God?
If the honest answer is I do not know, that is not a failure of faith. It is the most useful thing you will learn this month, and it is the thing this book is about.
The short version
- The danger is not that God takes you up on it.
- The danger is asking to be useful instead of known — and receiving it.
- Usefulness is measurable and lets you set the terms. Being known does neither.
- The prayer is not wrong. It is half a sentence.