"The church only wanted my money and free labor—I was just a resource to exploit."
How it sounds in your head: Every time you showed up, there was another project, another need, another 'opportunity to serve.' They called when they needed your carpentry skills, your accounting, your checkbook. But when YOU needed support during your wife's cancer? Crickets. You were a wallet and a tool belt, not a person.
"The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: 'Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.'"
-- Jeremiah 31:3Source: Religious transactional systems that use people instead of loving them—directly opposite to Jesus' heart.
The phone calls dried up when you stopped being useful, and you can count on one hand the visits you got during your hardest season. The pattern of being contacted only when they needed something is documented and painful.
Onesimus was literally a slave—the ultimate 'resource to exploit'—but Paul sent him back not as a slave but as a 'beloved brother,' instantly shifting his identity from tool to family. God specializes in transforming exploitation into belonging.
I REFUSE the lie that I was just a resource to exploit. IT IS WRITTEN: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.' Religious systems may have used me, but my Father LOVES me. I am not a servant but a FRIEND, not a tool but a SON. IT IS WRITTEN: 'No longer do I call you servants, but friends.' The BARAK blessing makes me blessed in my storehouses and all I set my hand to—not because I'm useful, but because I'm COVENANT. I am the head and not the tail, valued for who I AM, not what I produce.
Your Father is running toward you not with another project list but with an embrace—He doesn't want your skills, He wants YOUR PRESENCE at His table. He's been preparing the feast while you've felt used, because to Him you're not a resource—you're the son He's been missing.