Delivering theological content and assuming that knowing more about God will produce a life patterned after Him. Knowledge without discipleship is dangerous, and the Church has ample record of learned people who never learned to obey.
Useful to God
The Christian is made useful to God by being conformed to Christ.
A theologically integrated pathway built around eight characteristics that mark a Christ-patterned life. Eight parts of serious biblical and theological study, each ordered toward obedience.Rigorous theology and genuine formation, held together.
What usefulness is
Made fit for the Master's purposes.
“A vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house.”
2 Timothy 2:21
Usefulness to God is not a function of talent, training, or platform. Neither is it a matter of private sincerity. The vessel does not make itself valuable. It is made fit for use. God is God, and we are not.
A life becomes useful to God as it is conformed to Christ and set apart for His purposes.
Study and formation
Held together.
Most formation resources fail in one of two directions. Useful to God refuses both. Every characteristic is grounded in sustained biblical and theological work and carried through to concrete obedience.
Pursuing formation while neglecting rigorous study. Sincerity drifts, untethered from the word meant to govern it, and the life it forms bends toward its own preferences.
The study is demanding by design, because theology done rightly is formative. Formation is the frame. Theological depth is its substance. Held together, they produce what neither produces alone: a Christian competent to teach and lead, and being conformed to Christ.
The eight characteristics
Seven from Torrey. One for this age.
R. A. Torrey identified seven marks in the life of D. L. Moody, the uneducated shoe salesman God used to reach more than a hundred million people. Moody is the illustration, not the point. These characteristics describe facets of Christ's own life, and every Christian is called to exhibit them.
Surrendered
Setting aside ambition, security, and control, and entrusting them to God.
What are you holding on to because you don't want to be vulnerable? Abraham's story shows us what it looks like to walk by faith rather than by sight.
Prayerful
Aligning our desires with God's will rather than bending God toward ours.
Prayer isn't something we do before we do what we've already decided. It's the practice of setting aside our agendas to hear from God.
Studious
Submitting to God's word to be governed by it, reading against ourselves.
Being studious isn't about accumulating knowledge. It's about submitting ourselves to God's revealed word — reading it against ourselves, not just for ourselves.
Humble
Receiving every gift as given, and pointing beyond ourselves to Christ.
Humility is embracing our role, exercising our gifts for Christ's body, and pointing others to Jesus. As John said: He must increase. I must decrease.
Free from the Love of Money
Holding wealth as a tool for the mission, refusing it as a god.
Contentment isn't passive. It's a posture of trust that recognizes God's provision is sufficient — and resists the lie that security comes from accumulation.
Consumed with Passion for the Lost
Setting aside our rights and preferences so that some might be saved.
Paul became all things to all people — not by compromising his convictions, but by letting his passion for the lost outweigh his preference for comfort.
Imbued with Power from on High
Depending on the Holy Spirit for the work rather than our own strength.
We don't advance the gospel in our own strength. The Holy Spirit empowers, teaches, seals, and fills. The question is whether we're grieving him or making room for him.
Undistracted
Refusing the stories and idols that pull our attention away from Christ.
Distraction is a gateway to idolatry. In a world proficient at telling stories that deny God, staying fixed on what matters most is an act of resistance.
Eight characteristics · Eight weeks
Becoming useful to God.
D. L. Moody reached more than 100 million people with the gospel — not because of talent, strategy, or platform. Because of position. He placed himself at the right angle to reflect God to the world.
What would it look like for you to do the same?
Good for
- Individual self-study
- Small groups
- Sunday school classes
- Discipleship pairs
- Length
- 8 weeks
- Format
- Devotional + Bible reading plan + reflection + weekly action
The approach
Resist. Hear. Do.
Resist
Something that is hindering your usefulness to God — not necessarily something dramatic, but something real.
Hear
God's voice through a devotional study, a daily Bible reading plan, and prayer focused on that week's characteristic.
Do
Something concrete. Obedience isn't a habit, but we often need to be faithful in small things to prepare ourselves to be faithful in big things.
The goal isn't information. It's obedience.
The assessment
A diagnostic across all eight characteristics.
The assessment is the entry point. It opens the pathway with a structured self-examination, drawn from the same biblical and theological commitments that govern the formation work that follows.
See where the work remains.
It is not a test to pass. It returns a reading across the eight: where a life is already positioned well, and where the work remains. The instrument holds a mirror to a life. It does not assign a score.
Start where the diagnostic points.
From that reading, the participant chooses a starting point. The formation pathway orders itself to the person rather than ordering the person to a fixed sequence. Honest results require honest answers.
Pricing to be confirmed.
Begin with the diagnostic; your results establish the pathway's starting point.
Formation guides
Five guides for the work that follows.
Five of the eight characteristics have a formation guide, each working through the characteristic at length with daily readings and examination.
Assessments identify where formation work is most needed, and the guides follow from the results.
Surrender: A 31-Day Journey · Prayer · Learning to Be Studious · Passion for the Lost · The Holy Spirit
Who it is for
Pitched at a graduate level. Open to any Christian willing to do the work.
Ordination is not a prerequisite. What the pathway requires is seriousness: a readiness to study Scripture and theology with rigor, and to submit what is learned to obedience.
Pastors and elders will find formation suited to those who lead. Lay Christians prepared to study at depth will find the same. The standard does not change between them.
Start a cohort
Formation matures within the body of Christ.
Starting a cohort gives a leader the full pathway to take a group through: the biblical and theological study, the resist, hear, and do disciplines, and the means to see where each member stands across all eight parts.
The leader supplies teaching and presence. The pathway supplies the structure and the depth. A pastor forming a congregation, an elder training leaders, a teacher leading a class, or a lay leader gathering a group can each start a cohort and bring others through.
Position yourself to be used
“The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to him.”
Henry Varley speaking to D. L. Moody
Useful to God comes out of the work of James Spencer, PhD, a biblical scholar and the author of Useful to God, Christian Resistance, and Serpents and Doves. The framework is Torrey's, drawn from a life the Church has examined for more than a century. The pathway puts it to disciplined use.
The companion book Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody is available on Amazon. Also explore the Useful to God Audio Seminary series.