Issue 848 – Gifts – September 8, 2022

Sitting here, I hear the coffee pot making my mug of morning nectar. I can hear several songbirds off in the park beyond our fence and the squawk of a Stellar’s jay.

I enjoy watching those jays. Their bright blue colour always picks up my day. As beautiful as they are, though, like most members of the crow/jay family, they do not have an aesthetically pleasing singing voice.

Hearing them call with the songbirds is akin to hearing a car horn honking during a symphony. They don’t go together.

The Lord blessed the Stellar’s jay with beauty and intelligence. They are incredibly smart birds. He did not, however, choose to endow them with the gift of singing.

I can relate. Like the Stellar’s, I have no singing voice or musical ability. Still, I can enjoy listening to a good song or even singing when a crowd drowns out my individual voice (like church) or when there is no one around to complain.

My gifts lie more in the area of preaching and teaching. The beauty of spiritual gifts and natural talents is that God has created all of us with them.

The Lord has given us spiritual gifts.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

If you have been in church for any length of time, you are probably familiar with that passage (and similar passages that speak of the gifts). Unfortunately, many Christians use the gifts list as a badge of honour or individual merit. They hold one gift above another, and you are somehow less of a Christian if you don’t have the favoured gift.

That treatment misses the whole point of spiritual gifts. We don’t elevate one gift over others; we need all the gifts. Not individually, we need the gifts as a community.

The community functions with all the members using their respective gifts and talents to serve our Living King. When that happens, all the community members contribute to its success, and proper function and God is glorified.

What is your gift(s)? Are you using it in service to the King? If not, the community is poorer for it, and you are missing out on the blessing of serving.

Praise God that just as He did with Stellar’s jays and songbirds, God made each of us a unique part of the whole.

Be blessed

Hallelu Yah

Praise God

Kevin

Gleanings From The Word

Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life.

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is from the English Standard Version (ESV).

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