1 Corinthians 9-12
*Click here to read this passage:
It is so cool that God gives every believer a spiritual gift –
some sort of gift that helps you minister to others and to serve in the
church. Not everyone gets the same
kind of gift though. There are
different kinds of gifts but all from the same Spirit. “There are different kinds of working,
but the same God works all of them in all men.” Paul uses a great picture for this in how the human body is
made up of many different parts that all have different jobs that all function
together.
Paul has already touched on the issues the Corinthians were having
about comparing and competing … spiritual gifts was one area where this was a
problem. Everyone wanted the
so-called more important gifts.
But Paul shows us that every part is important and that the unseen jobs
are often more important than the ones that are seen. For example, you could live without an eye; you can’t live
without a stomach.
“If Foot said, ‘I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings;
I guess I don’t belong to this body,’ would that make it so? If Ear said, ‘I’m not beautiful like
Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,’ would you
want to remove it from the body?
If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of
the body right where he wanted it.” (1 Corinthians
12:15-23 MSG)
I came across this quote the other day from Rick Warren that I
thought was so good – “Anytime you feel jealous or envious, you reject your
uniqueness. It’s a criticism of
God’s plan for you.”
God made each of us unique, each with a purpose. Trust Him. Seek out what gift it is He’s given you and how He wants you
to use it, and don’t worry about what other people’s gifts are. If you spend your time and focus trying
to do something else other than your personal made-for-this, you’ll just be
spinning your wheels. When you find
your made-for-this and really use it for God’s glory and for His Church, that’s
when you’ll really start moving.
No comments:
Post a Comment