Increasing Your Usefulness
This teaching is Session 2 from a Men’s Breakfast on June 14, 2025.
Let’s focus a little bit more on increasing our usefulness. How are we useful?
Ephesians 4:28 — maybe not the verse that you guys would go to — but I think this is good and kind of fleshes this out for us. Ephesians 4:28 says,
“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
It’s interesting to see how Paul lays out several parts of this verse here. The first part is clearly the eighth commandment, “Let the thief no longer steal...” Stop. Don't don't do that. It’s common that Scripture often offers: Hey, don't do this, but rather do that. Do this. Fill it with something else. Put off these things; put on these things. So,
“Let him no longer steal, but rather let him labor [work], doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
So we see the negative, we see the positive, but then we see the full vision of the imperative here. He says, to what end? What’s the motivation? Why ought he to do this? And he concludes, so that… Why should he not steal? Why should he labor and do honest work? …so that he has something to share with anyone who would be in need.
And so there’s obviously a baseline of providing for himself. I’m not stealing other people’s stuff — I’m providing for myself, maybe I’m providing for my family, or providing for other responsibilities I have. But the full vision here is saying that I work hard so that I’ve got an abundance here to be able to bless and serve others. That’s the “so that” here.
The purpose, to glorify God, is so that I may have more for others — so that it may be useful, you could say, to others.
And so the thief here can move to a position that now he is Lord-willing willing and able to bless others. So he’s not taking, he’s giving. He’s not doing dishonest work, he’s doing honest work. He’s not being lazy and stealing, he’s working hard. See that there’s contrast here? I’m not taking … I’m actually moving myself in honesty and hard work to a position that I can give so that I can give and serve any who have need. And so Paul could have easily, I think, left it at just: don't do this and do this. But he really fills the picture all the way out to say to see beyond you so that you have something to share with anyone in need.
And so the thief makes himself useful to others here. He’s able to bless them, he’s able to meet needs, he’s a benefit to them — which is what I really mean by making yourself useful.
I said earlier that I don’t know what comes to your mind. If it’s mostly a negative thing, like you just say like: yeah, make yourself useful means you’re kind of worthless. Find something to do. I don’t know how you guys receive that word, if it feels like it’s positive or negative or not. But I think there’s a right helpfulness to it. But if we think usefulness, or we think beneficialness, or blessing to others — that’s kind of what I mean by this. And so whatever word kind of helps you grasp it and gets those other blocks out of the way. It’s a good thing we want to be useful.
We want to be blessings. We want to be beneficial to others. And that’s what the thief here is to move toward. Don't don't do that, do honest work so that you may be able to help any who have need. So if usefulness is helpful and we want to increase our usefulness, here’s what I mean by that…
Defining “usefulness”
Here’s an equation to think about, or maybe a rough definition here: If we increase our usefulness, we increase our capacity and potential to serve and bless others. So our usefulness equals our capacity and potential to serve and bless others.
So why do I want to increase my usefulness? So I can increase my capacity and ability (potential) to serve and bless others.
If I am not that useful, then I can’t be that big of a blessing to others. The more useful I can become, the more beneficial, the more capable I can become can be used as a way to serve and bless others. That’s why I think about increasing our usefulness. If we increase that, we increase our capacity and potential to be a blessing to others and to meet needs.
Three avenues of usefulness for the sake of others
I have three avenues or categories for increasing our usefulness.
The first avenue will be the most dangerous and the third will be the most critical, most important.
And so the first way to increase our usefulness:
1. Our resources to share
That’s just the immediate context here. Remember Ephesians 4:28. What’s he talking about? Working hard, so that he’s got stuff, so that he can share. And you probably already know why that’s extremely dangerous — but that’s what it says as a starting point. And so one way to increase our usefulness to others is just like it says in Ephesians 4:28. Have things so that we’re able to bless and be generous to others and to share. We can be generous.
So to begin to provide for ourselves is good and God-glorifying. To provide for our families is good and God-glorifying. And to get to a point where we have an abundance so that we can bless and serve and be generous to others either out of our abundance or even out of our need. Sacrificing for others so that we may be able to serve anyone who is in need is a good and God-glorifying desire.
A super simple example that’s helpful to look at is a snowblower. You have a snowblower and you can use it for your neighbor’s house too. Or they can borrow it. Or maybe you use your house or your cabin for hosting people, using extra bedrooms, or blessing other people to use those things. It could be your cabin. It could be your tools. It could be your truck — some of you have benefited from that in this room because I have a truck, and that’s right. It’s a tool to be used for the blessing of others.
Now, I didn’t primarily buy it with that in mind, saying, hey, I’m going to buy a truck because I think my neighbor might need to move mattress sometime in the next ten years. But that’s certainly a use for it. So I’m not saying, hey, I bought this thing, it’s for that. I use it because I could do house projects, it’s useful to my family. It’s useful to myself. So simple things like that. A truck, your tools, a snowblower, your things, your resources. This one of the simple ways to be generous to people.
It’s saying: work hard so that you may have things to be generous to others, keeping that point and purpose in mind. And so one of the ways that we can increase our usefulness is our resources that we are able to share.
One thing that this helps us do — when we serve others with our resources — is it helps us to hold loosely to them, hold loosely to our things, which is important.
A simple example from college: I got a new car. Newish. As in it wasn’t mine before. It wasn’t new but it was kinda nice. Newest car I ever had. And immediately there’s an opportunity. Man, I live with six other dudes. Half of us have cars. Bunch of football guys. How am I going to think about this?
I bought it, I want to take care of it, I want it to last … you know, got all these kind of reasons. But there’s also the fact that my roommate doesn’t have a car, so he’s going to probably use it half the time and we’re going to cram ten football guys in here at times. And someone’s going to borrow it for this and someone’s going to borrow it for that. And for me, it was just helpful at that point to just count that cost right away.
My default is this is new to me, and I want to take care of it, and I want to last — and there’s good reasons to care for stuff. There’s good reasons to steward stuff. There’s good reasons for stuff to last. But also, to be generous to my roommates and others around me, kind of count the cost that it might mean somebody backs it into something or somebody scratches something, or it doesn't last as long or you name it. I think for me it’s helpful at the beginning just to try and hold loosely to it right away. To say, whatever this is, it’ll be good for other people to borrow it. And I need to let them do that. I want to let them do that at one level, but if I don’t want to let them do that, I need to let them do that.
And obviously there’s wisdom in there — it doesn't mean your car is the community car or whatever, you know, but you get the example. I think it’s helpful to count the cost to say, I have something and I want others to be able to use it but that’s going to mean ______. That means it might get beat up a little bit. That might mean it doesn't last as long as I want it to. It might mean I got to lose whatever that control is and let my hands off of it saying, this is a blessing that God has given me — whatever it is — to be useful to others. And so for me, that was just a helpful way right from the beginning to kind of have that set in my mind so that I would hold loosely to, you know, even just like car in college. You know, whatever it is, the thing that we’re tempted to hold tightly too.
God’s made us with abilities to increase our resources to be blessings to others. So whether it’s our things, our money, or our time — holding too tightly to these things is so dangerous. And so we need to just navigate that line. That’s one of the ways that I help myself navigate it. Just from the get go saying, hey, this is what it means to be generous and I’m going to push my heart and push my actions towards that.
And things happened. I had a buddy who was moving a fridge and it sliced one of the seats. I had another buddy, when I was out of town, ask if he can move some kayaks. It’s a Jeep Grand Cherokee and I was like, yeah you can move the kayaks. Now, maybe the assumption would be — where do the kayaks go? … the roof. He didn’t put them on the roof. He put them inside, and so he shut the tailgate and both of them went into the front window. Then he returned it and he goes, hey, were those cracks there before? I was like, no, no, they weren’t. So maybe the moral of the story is I need different friends. Just kidding. Just kidding. But stuff happens like that, you know? And just to say, things will happen and that was good for me in teaching me to hold that loosely. To just say, hey, things can be a blessing to others. And most of the time those things don’t happen, but some of the times they do. That’s just counting the cost of serving others with our things that God has given us.
And so we need to hold loosely to our things. There will be points in our life that we’re just scraping by, we’re just making it. So this isn’t: unless you have abundance, you’re not pleasing God. There will be seasons that will be that way. There may be long seasons that way. It’s good to provide for ourselves and to aspire to get to a point where if God blesses us with more, we’re ready to be generous to others. And that blessing could just be time. It could be the few things we have. It could be blessing not just in material senses, but that’s just one of the categories. That’s the context of this verse. He says, hey, thief, don't take from other people. Get your own stuff and be able to serve and bless others with it. So that’s one place here. But again, it’s a dangerous spot for us to be careful of because we can justify so many things there.
I’m going to spend most of the time on this one here because of the danger that can come with it. So here’s three motivations to enjoy and avoid the danger of loving money and treasures on this earth.
The first one, Matthew 6:24. You cannot serve God and money. You can’t love both as your masters and make it work. Matthew 6:24 says,
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
You cannot serve God, and your neighbor, and your riches at the same time. He talks about those being mutually exclusive. I can’t hold tight and be a blessing at the same time.
Scripture fits strongly there. Don’t love money, don’t love treasures here. There’s a place for them, but don't love them. It’s at odds with loving God, serving God, following God. It’s at odds with having joy in this life. So that’s motivation one to avoid the danger. You’ll lose your love of God if you love money.
Two, you cannot take anything with you. In Luke 12:13-20, the rich fool in the parable who stored up his treasures and built bigger barns said to himself,
“Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
They will all perish, you can’t take it with. So we should be wise in what we obtain, how we use it, and how we think about it. Can’t take any of it with you.
Motivation three: riches, after all, are uncertain and they’re not where life is found. 1 Timothy 6:17-18 says,
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share [some good themes here], 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
God is certain and good to us. Riches, however much it is, by itself is uncertain. It says don’t set your hope in those things, and life’s not found in those things.
So the three motivations of the danger of the love of money and the storing of treasures here is that it’s at odds with loving God if we love money, you can't take it with you, and it's uncertain anyways and life’s not found in those things.
So you may love money from the get go — and that’s a terrible problem for us who are trying to follow Jesus. Or you might slip towards it and get entangled. How many times maybe have we justified something we’ve bought with a potential motivation for something else? … Yeah, if we had a bigger house, we would host more … If I had a new pen, I would write more … If I had new weights, I’d work out more … if I had new golf clubs because I work in finance, they would look better … If I had a new car, I would carpool more … So many things. If we had this, we got this out here, and there’s the assumption that we need this and that will produce that and probably half of those things don't even happen.
There's a lie saying those things are actually needed. A bigger house? Yeah, you can maybe host people more. Does that mean you can't host now? No. Does that mean you need to renovate your kitchen first? No. And so press into those things. It's so easy for us to justify that there’s this thing I want, there's this thing I'd like, or here's this comfort that would be good — and then without even knowing it I'll find reasons why that's justifiable. I want this so I'm going to figure out why that's a good thing after. And so it's slippery. It may not start that way, but we move that way.
I think by default I’ve lived just kind of as a pretty frugal person. The Lord's preserved me from a lot of that but one of the ways I saw that was the first time after getting married that we bought a house. Before it was, you know, just you get the free stuff, you get the Craigslist stuff, you get the you know. But now I'm married, now I'm a family, now we got a house, now I want it to look respectable. Which are good things but then it got to the point of it's like, oh, you get nice furniture for like one room, and then it's like, oh, well, then we need to you know do this over here. And it’s just slippery. I didn't notice right away.
All of a sudden, our quality of spending and our expectation of stuff just took a jump because we had a house. It was slippery. Didn't recognize it right away. Now we're just kind of upgrading and maybe those are good things, maybe it's not. We need to think about it. We need to discern: is that needed? Is that helpful or is it just: well that's nice, so let's have the thing next to it be nice too. And so we’ve got to be careful.
We got to think through those things and see how many times we have kind of justified the use of getting the new thing, or the comfort, or the nice thing and finding reasons that maybe would revolutionize this that just never actually happened. Or was a good thing but was used as a justification for something else we wanted. There’s danger here. It's good for us to be suspicious of our hearts, suspicious of our motivations. Ask those whys, slow down. Maybe ask somebody else. Does that make sense to you? Use the body to understand that and not be in our bubbles where we we are happy to have our blind spots so that we can really just get what we want.
So there's a tension for us to live in there, but it's saying that I don't think the the way to go is I only have what I need for the next week, and I live bare minimum, and I do nothing, and I acquire nothing. I don't think that's what God's calling us to. I think that's kind of avoiding the tension.
I think he's saying produce things, work hard, and be a be a blessing. Hold the purpose to it. Hold loosely to those things. Use those things well. And so it's not saying I just avoid it by having nothing. Nor the other side that says, I love it all and I have everything.
There's a mix of whatever he provides for us. What are we able to have to use it for the blessing of others? Don't steal. Work hard. Do honest work so that you may be able to share with anyone in need. That's what Ephesians 4 says there.
So, that's one category, our stuff.
2. Our skills to share
Second category, have skills to share. Maybe this is the most obvious one or the most plain one when you think about what we've been talking about with usefulness. It’s maybe where your mind has gone. Like what am I able to do?
Do you know how to just do stuff, do you know how to fix stuff?
If you were shipwrecked on an island with a bunch of people, would you be eating first? Or would you be useful to people? Would you be beneficial? Do you know how to work with your hands at least a little bit?
Obviously God has made us all different. All of us are in different careers in different ways. And all of those things are useful and beneficial. Vocation is a God-given thing. Business is a God-given thing. Blue-collar or white collar, they’re God-given things. But under the umbrella of that, just kind of being a man, do you know how to do some things a little bit with your hands?
Do you know how to use your body for the good of others? That may be the most foreign thing from what your career path has been if you're just kind of a spreadsheet guy … but there's still a value to say, hey, I can change a tire if need be. Or I can change a battery, or I can help look at this. Can I jump a car if I need to do that? There's an example of someone in the room that called me and was like, hey, I need to jump a car. They hadn’t done it before, and I think I was kind of like, oh, great, that's like a good spot to start, right? Like it’s pretty easy. You do this. I can't remember the full details of the story, but the short of it is his car's battery was in the trunk. I’d never heard of that. And so he was like, hey, I'm having trouble finding the battery. And I'm like, you're having trouble finding the battery? Oh, you know, like, it was in the trunk.
So some of these things that are just kind of like low hanging fruit aren't always low hanging fruit, but we just like push through those things. So it's good to be like, okay, I guess there's batteries that are in the trunk of cars and you jump it from back there. I'd never heard of that. Yeah, I think it was a Buick. I'm not sure. So I think I was like, oh, man, this is a great, like, entrance in to being useful. It had some bumps.
The ability to use our hands, be useful, steward our skills in that sense. Mental skills are included there too. I've been able to help a ton of my neighbors just because over time I figured out how to do house stuff and I've figured out how to tinker with a lawnmower. And it's just God's kindness.
There's ways that by increasing my usefulness for my neighbors it increases the opportunity to bless them versus them asking me and I have to say I have no idea. I don't touch stuff like that. We're all going to have different levels and so I’m not trying to have a negative projection on this, but for us to have a desire and ability to say we we know how to work with our hands a little bit. We know how to fix. We know how to tinker. We know how to do whatever things that may be helpful to our wives or our kids or our neighbors. Because it can increase our usefulness. It can increase our blessing for them if we increase our abilities in some categories. My neighbor is a seminary guy and he was trying to do some improvements on the place that they're renting and I was like, you should do these things. It's like you can you can do these light fixtures.
And so I was like, all right. So I literally came over and I was like I'm going to do the first one and I'm going to have you help with the second one. And then the rest our yours. He had never touch that sort of thing and initially was just like, I have no idea. I have no idea. Is this like brain surgery? And you know, you just do it once… and some things are actually simpler than they may look. It doesn't always happen that way, but just a simple thing of, hey, this is how you do it.
Teach him, coach him, have him watch you do it, and give him the ability to finish the rest of them. It save them some money. It gave his wife some opportunities to tell a few jokes about his lack of handiness and to improve it, and for him to be able to fix some things and accomplish some things and be useful to her in that sense and useful to his family.
Growing in small ways in these abilities and skills are all just simple examples to see the theme of when we increase our usefulness, we increase our helpfulness, our ability to bless others because we can we can step in some of those moments to care for others.
Another example is can you coach kids teams? Thankfully, when they start so young, you don't need to know anything about the sport. And just as they get older, your coaching grows up kind of like parenting. You know, most time you start with kids that are babies and you just learn and grow and develop your parenting as they grow. And so I'm coaching a couple of our kids’ teams and I like to do that, and it's just a great opportunity to be in a leadership position to influence 10-15 families, 10-15 kids. And who knows how God will use that. And if that's very foreign to you — increase your usefulness to be able to be outspoken and have a kid go here and be energetic and organize them and just figure out how to do it so that it may be a blessing and you’ll be able to care for others.
And it’s just the small moments of things that come out of it. There's one kid where it's just clear that his self-esteem, his image of himself, was terrible. Just to have a few examples of a seven year old on a soccer team to encourage him and see that he did something right and see that he follows instruction and see that he listens to his coach. And just to be a blessing to him. In Minneapolis, there’s another kid whose two moms are here with him — just model what does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a man in his life?
So by stepping in, even to places that are challenging and unknown has the capacity to be a blessing, to be useful, to be good to those around us. So our usefulness — our capacity and potential to serve and bless others with our skills.
Another tangent off of skills here real quick is our bodies. And so, in one sense, our bodies are the things where these skills show up, in our minds and our hands. But they're also like the first one, a resource to be stewarded. So they're kind of both. They’re the place where our skills and competencies show up. And then they're also a resource. We got one life and we got one body. And I think there’s a motivation there to say how do I steward this and have it be ready for the blessing of others?
I think that means there's a level of seeking for it to be healthy, seeking for it to be stronger to some degree, seeking for it to have more abilities and skills in it — not as the ultimate aim, but to say, hey, he's giving me a body and I don't want to obsess over it and I don't want to dismiss it. I want to steward it. I want to nurture it so that I can help others. I need to have the skills and the ability to do these things. If I can't help lift the couch, then I can't help lift the couch. It's just straight-forward. And maybe the couch is too heavy for you no matter how much you worked out and that's fine. Again, we're all made differently and it's not going to look the same for everyone. But I think there's a good call to say our bodies is one of the things that our skill shows up in and as a resource that God's given us so there should be right motivation to steward it. For it to be healthier, stronger, and have abilities to be useful and a blessing to others.
So our body is a God given resource for us to think well about.
So category two, skills. We have resources to share, skills to share, and now the one that's the most important and undergirding all of this:
3. Our wisdom and godliness to share
This is the most important. Godliness is what makes the first two work. If we don't have a godly mind, if we don't have wisdom, or if we don't have the heart of Christ and His Spirit in us, then the other two are going to go off the rails all over the place.
If you don't have the wisdom to discern: Am I just hoarding stuff? or Am I just avoiding this? or Am I not stepping in to the challenge? Am I just obsessing over these skills for my own good and not for the good of others? And so we have to have godly wisdom to keep those other ones in check. And so that's the thing that the other things are revolving around. And if it's not there or if it's weak, those other things are going to be dangerous. The other reality is that with the other two, the world does them to some degree. The world sees the value, to some degree, in sharing with others. They share things. They see the value of increasing your competence, your ability to be needed by your company so you're in-expendable. They see those things, but they miss the true motivation and they miss where those things fall in life and the eternal perspective of God loving us and creating us a certain way to be blessings to the end of them knowing and loving and understanding God. And so there’s shadows out there. You can do the first two and not be a Christian.
Eventually they'll tip off to some other areas of obsessing over our body or obsessing and collecting our things. But godliness and godly wisdom is the thing that keeps those in balance. Keep those in check. It helps us discern and understand those things and those are the things that are distinct because we bless everyone. We don't just bless those we like, we bless our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. The distinction of all we do really flows from our godly wisdom and desire in him, working His Spirit in us for his glory and the loving and serving of others.
The other implication of this being the most important is because if you don't have the other ones, you can still, in a God-glorifying way, give the biggest blessing to others.
The biggest blessing is not all the stuff that you can share. The biggest blessing is not all the competencies you have in your body. Those are means to the ultimate end of caring about their soul — helping them understand a God who loves them and cares for them and who they need to be saved by, redeemed by.
Even the guy at the temple, the beggar, as Peter was walking by and he says, I don't have gold or silver, but what I give to you: in the name of Jesus, walk. And so we can still glorify God and be extremely useful, beneficial, a blessing and helpful to others, even if we don't have the other two. Even if we don't have an able body, we all will have unable bodies at points. Even if we don't have the resources. Godly wisdom, understanding the Word, understanding what life is about is the greatest blessing we can give.
That's a thing to be stewarded. A thing that's useful to others — to have good, godly wisdom is useful and makes us like sons of the Most High who love others and serve them for their good. We also see that there's an enduring reality to godliness and wisdom. Proverbs 20:29 says,
“The glory of young men is their strength…”
Some of us have it, some of us don't. Some of us are losing it.
“…but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.”
You see this trajectory. Some of us have able bodies, had able bodies, but the strength of a young man fades. But the glory and splendor of old man continues to increase as that wisdom and godliness.
1 Timothy 4:6-8,
If you put these things before the brothers [talking about some virtues], you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. 7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training [the strength of young men] is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
So understanding the gospel, having godliness, good character, and wisdom helps keep these other ones in check and is the most important thing. It’s the thing that all of us can attain. Those who have no resources, no skills, no abilities, can still have wisdom and godliness to share.
The reality is all of our work in this life until Jesus comes back is incomplete. The discipling of others is incomplete until we get there. The raising up of our kids will be incomplete. All that we do is going to be left and passed down to someone else. The preserving of the gospel will be passed to the next generation. When I die, I can't preserve it. I'm not here. There's a stewardship, there's a passing along where our work will just continue until we lay down these lowly bodies and then we go into glory.
We're always working, always wanting to be useful. And that work continues. God's kingdom continues to expand until he sees fit to come back.
In all of these, our work is incomplete until he comes. Wisdom and godliness to share is critical. The most important. It keeps everything else in check and in balance.
So men, we can glorify God by being useful to others.
We want to be capable men. Men who are willing to and able to bless others with our time, our talents, and our treasures. We want to increase our ability to be a blessing to others so that we can be useful to them, to ourselves, to our families, to our church, to our neighbors. It’s a good, God-glorifying thing to say, I want to be useful, I want to be a blessing, I want to be able to serve others, I want to be capable for the good of my family and the good of others.
So I want to encourage us, exhort us that way. Under the headings of: God doesn't need us, and he loves us, and he's going to use us. There’s a danger in having stuff and there’s a blessing in having stuff, so let’s navigate in godly wisdom that tension. Wisdom is so critical because it's just going to look different for different people. Do I give this money right away? Do I invest this money? What percentage of this and that? There's hard things that require wisdom. I don't want us to avoid it. I want us to lean in there and say, God, how would you use these things? What are you asking me do? How may I help others in the midst?
Bring others into that. Don't let your blind spots just be happy that they're there so that you can do what you want. It takes godly wisdom, even if you go into it with a 100% desire to say: Lord, do what you will with all of this stuff. Even there the answer is not always clear. And so it takes wisdom to do these things, but I don't want us to run from them. I want us to live in the tension of saying: these are good things, and I don't want them to be the ultimate thing.
God is the ultimate thing.
How do we use these things? How do we use our bodies? How do we use our health? How do we use our strength? How do we use our skills? How do we use our resources to be useful and a blessing to others?
Discussion
Which of these areas have you thought about the least? The most?
What does it look like to pursue these things for the Glory of God, and not ourselves?
Is there a personal next step you want to take to increase your usefulness (your ability to bless others) in one of these areas?
Are there ways that you have had to adapt your usefulness over the years?
