I’m not sure where my mind was yesterday, amid getting ready for services for tonight and Sunday, but I realized in the middle of the night that I had not prepared a post for today. Father, guide me, in the early hours of this morning, to take the opportunity to spread Your Word once more. Amen.
1 Peter 4:10-11 (<<click here to read the passage)
First off, let’s read through this passage.
God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen. NLT
Lord, we are all gifted in some way or another. You made us and blessed us with a unique blend of abilities. Some of those gifts we realize early on – others we may discover as we move along the course of our lives.
It is easy to let the application of this passage fall strictly into church-oriented mentalities. Without a doubt, we should use our God-given gifts and abilities in ministry but we obviously must realize that it goes way beyond the four walls of the church.
Lord, I guess my struggle mentally here is that all my life it seems the importance of discovering my “gifts” and applying them have all focused on how I would use them in the Church to build up the body of which You are the Head. Peter himself proclaims that we are to “use them well to serve one another.” But as I have matured (and it still feels like I still have a long way to go) I realize that, yes, I must use what I have been given to lift up the church, but I must also use what I have been given to lift up all of humanity to You.
Peter emphasizes with great clarity that we are to share what we have as though You are working through us, using Your strength and energy to do so. In going about it that way, we will discover then that “everything [we] do will bring glory to God through [You].”
It is narrow-minded to think that I must use my gifts only within the confines of the church. I am responsible for touching the lives of everyone with whom I come in contact. I am a social being and I interact with many, many people every day. If I “have the gift of speaking” then I must “speak as though God himself is speaking through” me.
Lord, help us to more and more to think outside the walls of the church. You expect us to use our talents to touch as many people as possible for Your glory. Amen – so be it!
(Feb 7th, 2017, Tues, 6:27 am)
Apr 6th, 2023, Thurs, 6:13 am
