Everyone Has Gifts

   God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. 1 Peter 4:10 NLT

God has given each believer a spiritual gift. And these gifts come with the distinction that they are to be used in service to build up the church body. That means that in order to really enjoy your gift, you have to use it to serve one another.  The Greek can also be translated as "towards yourselves." These are gifts of grace that "are the common property of the Christian community, each Christian being but a steward for the edifying of the whole, not receiving the gift merely for his own use."

Can you see God's plan in this? When everyone is in the place he/she belongs, and when everyone is using their gift, then the church is missing nothing, lacking nothing. But when someone chooses to not take the place that was selected and assigned by God, then the whole church is affected. If that person refuses to be restored, then God will replace him/her. For our gift to flourish and bloom in abundance, we must be in our place; not in the place that we chose when we surveyed the possibilities that the world offers, but the place that God chose especially for us.


Positions of Prestige vs. Stations of Service

I lifted that subtitle from a sermon.² It perfectly describes one of the inner battles that Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, was caught up in—and in turn, that explains why she gave such sappy advice to her daughter—so when the bride listened to her mom more than she listened to the Lord, KatieLyn chose a source of counsel who admitted having "misgivings" over and above her all-knowing Creator. These are two directly opposed models for structuring a plan for one's future.

The first one is largely worldly; decisions are made on the basis of prestige and status: financial status, social status, and deceptively, often on comfort status. Comfort status is what an economist might call reaching "the point of diminishing returns." The idea is that a person invests effort as long as there is a positive payoff, but if they reach a place where extra work does not give them extra satisfaction, they have maximized their comfort status, that is the point of diminishing returns. To achieve a position of prestige, a person looks at available data and circumstances, and then attempts to make a logical decision.

Stations of Service, however, have a more spiritual orientation. Instead of approaching career and marriage decisions with "how much can I get out of it," the attitude is, "how much can I use my gift, how much can I give, where am I most useful?" It takes faith and a willing obedience to find those answers, to find the place that God intended for you to belong. And once you have found your proper station, it continues to take faith because service requires strength. The verse that follows the promise of a gift for service says in part, "If anyone serves, let it be as of the strength which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ," 1 Peter 4:11. The strength for serving is also supplied by God along with His gift—He includes the batteries!

We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. Romans 12:6

The gifts are different. For years I took in only the surface level meaning of that: there is a variety, God designed each individual to be unique, and the gifts are given "according to grace." I was a bit hazy on the "according to grace" part, but had the general idea that between God's omniscience and his kindness, that it was all good. In the upheaval left behind when KatieLyn ran off in the middle of the night, I discussed this with the Lord.

"Her gifts and Joe's gifts were such an excellent balance of complements," I said, "so what went amiss?" Then something happened that is very rare. God seldom tells a person how He is dealing with someone else. Usually it is no one else's business. But this time He said that He expected KatieLyn to grow up; that the circumstances were arranged for her to grow up and become independent from her parents. Obviously, KatieLyn handled that very badly and failed her test. Satan deceived her into thinking that calling off the wedding was the "adult" thing to do. It was one of those half-truth deceptions. Yes, that was God's will for her to step into her adulthood. No, that was not God's will for her to run back to her childhood home.

Gifts function to their fullest by being in their proper God-given place. That is where they are most useful and bring the most satisfaction in their service. That is where the gift will be most appreciated by others. KatieLyn would have been appreciated beyond her wildest imagination here because her gifts are needed here. Sure, the Lord will fill those needs some other way, but that is not the point of this blog post. The point of this blog post is the lesson.

The Lesson
Every believer has a God-given gift. An adult in the faith knows that anything which causes doubt or discouragement that stops the intended use of that gift has originated with the enemy; it is devilish. A grownup faith realizes that being in one's station of service is far more fulfilling worldly prestige, and that although this choice is tough and does not produce a bump-free life, choosing to serve God will ultimately bring far more joy and real peace than pursuing a position of prestige.

¹ Jamieson Fausset Brown Online Commentary on 1 Peter 4:10
² It is in the Graces and Places series http://www.moorelife.org/listseries.php?xml=rss/GracesAndPlaces.xml