You Have Gifts...Use Them
Devotional April 3: A journey of devotionals that may be hard to end, and how we all should find our gifts to use in community.
Devotion
When I started this, I wasn’t sure if I would continue it after Easter. I began this devotional as a lenten discipline, something for me to express and work through some of my thoughts, and an opportunity for you all to hopefully continue to grow in faith through devotion and reflection.
I want to name though, that I do not do this for you all to learn, but as a time of self-expression and even release of thought. I love to write and I love to share what I write, not for accolades, but because much of the stuff that I write feels blessed by God. No matter what I write, I pray over it, whether a sermon, devotion, blog post…even my writings about running. They are blanketed with prayer, and the hope that with what God has offered to me it may offer light to someone else.
I offer these devotions for my own self-expression, and I think that is something that we have lost in faith. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes,
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.1
My mind wanders to these verses and the rest of the verses that make up this passage where Paul talks about the Body of Christ. Faith is not about trying to all be the same in Christ, but acknowledging what makes us different and living into that difference to bring us together as community (The Body of Christ with one another).
Faith is not a prescriptive lifestyle that must be lived in exactly the same way for everyone. Instead faith is a learning of who we truly are. As we grow closer in relationship with faith we grow closer in relationship with the one who created us. The One whose image we bear wherever we go. It is that image imprinted on our spirits that guide us in life, and that teach us the gifts and spirits we carry with us.
Connection with the body highlights the gifts we have and where we serve within community. We all take up roles and tasks as we listen and learn more about ourselves as we learn about our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
This self-expression of faith that I offer you, is just that, an expression. Writing and teaching are gifts of mine (well in writing I will just ignore how terrible my grammar is…forgive me oh Lord). I love to take what God has shown me, and find ways to help others grow.
Your gifts may look different, but they are blessed by God nonetheless. Discern how God is calling you to use those gifts, and hopefully you can use them to bless others.
Reflection
Pray and think of 2-3 things you think are good at.
How can you use those gifts to help serve God’s Kingdom (either through Beech Grove or even beyond)?
Prayer
Creator God, as we exit the season of Lent, and now are fully into Easter, may those 40+ Days stay with us. May we take those intentional reflections and be transformed by the renewing of your Spirit. May we be guided by your call, to produce your fruits throughout creation. May your image be restored in us, that as we live within your body we would help to restore you image across creation. AMEN!!!
1 Corinthians 12:12-14