Graciously given gifts

God has graciously given us gifts. The gifts that God has given every person that was uniquely and wonderfully created by Him are far more valuable than any gift that you could be given in your lifetime on earth. The gifts that God gives us will last forever, whereas something that your family gets you only lasts a couple of years.

I could be given a new vehicle tomorrow and love it but what value does that have with the kingdom of heaven? The new vehicle would be really nice, it would make me feel really good about myself and I would drive it for years. What will eventually happen is that the vehicle will become older and more worn out. The value of my new vehicle would depreciate significantly every day.

The value of the gifts we are given by God don't ever depreciate. Those gifts are valuable every day. We can use the gifts that we are given by God to further the kingdom of heaven daily.

What are the gifts that God gives us?

God lovingly gives us spiritual gifts.

God is completely involved in the giving, using, and empowering of gifts. Specific gifts, places of service, and activities vary, but they are all important. God creates a unique place in the body for every believer. Gifts vary, but each believer has a specialized, God-designed role.

Part of the existing adventure of following Christ involves discovering one's spiritual gifts and then making it available to God so that we can honor Him by using those gifts. Our gifts are never meant to be used for ourselves. Make serving God and his people your motive as you utilize your gifts.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between the spirits, to another speaking in different types of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.  (1 Corinthians 12:7-11)

No natter what gift(s) a person had, all spiritual gifts are distributed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit decides which gifts each believer should have. So the spiritual gifts that you have were given to you for a reason. You didn't get to choose them.

We have the unique opportunity to be responsible about how we use the gifts that we have been given. We are also responsible for sharpening those gifts. I will always remember one of my basketball coaches telling the team that we should really work on what we are good at it. I knew that I was a good stretch 4 so I could step outside and shoot 3's and midrange jumpers. I made it a priority to be good at that because it was something I was uniquely good at doing for being my height. Our coach told us that if everyone became experts at what they did well, the team would be successful because we all had a key role to play.

With that being said, we all have different spiritual gifts that we are responsible for sharpening and using to honor God and serve people.

When spiritual gifts are discussed among believers there are usually two points that are overlooked.

1 - properly used spiritual gifts are not self-serving but serve the whole body of Christ

It's easy to think that we should use our gifts for ourselves and for our benefit. We can become prideful with the gifts that we have been given and have the mindset of "hey look at me and my spiritual gift." Spiritual gifts are given to us in order to serve the whole body of Christ. We are fortunate that God willingly gives us such amazing gifts.

2 - each gift becomes practically useless when used without love

Having a spiritual gift and not using it out of love makes it pointless. Without love you can't truly serve people. An example that I think of is me writing this blog. I believe that some of what I write comes completely from God. Maybe words of wisdom is my gift, I am not sure. I don't think that I am very wise. But whenever I look back at something that I write in one of my posts I will be blown away by it. I look back and think that there is no way that I write these things. I write everyday because I love using my gift to impact the lives of other people. If I wrote these post for myself because I thought that I was a good writer, I would never feel fulfilled. I would be writing just to put words on a page and having the mindset of "hey look at what I do, I write a whole lot." Every time I write, I do it because I absolutely love sharing about things that I have read in the Bible and what God is doing in my life. Consistently spending time in the word has changed my life and I love you all enough to write and hope that your lives might be changed by reading your Bible on a daily basis as well.

I want you to know this. You have been given a spiritual gifts by God. You are loved. You have the responsibility to use those gifts to serve others and honor God. Please don't ever take your spiritual gifts for granted. They will last forever and will not ever depreciate like gifts that we are given on earth.

One more thing, I didn't just wake up one day and love to write. I did't wake up one day filled with things that I want to share with people. All of this started when I began reading my Bible consistently and on a daily basis. If you read this post and are thinking that you don't have any of these gifts, get into the Word of God and may a gift be given to you. I never thought I would write. The Word of God changed my life in so many different ways.

A mutual commitment

Submission - the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. 

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

This verse might seem a little questionable to some. It's easy to read through it and it looks like what Paul is saying is that the man is greater than the woman. I believe that one of the things you have to look at is the idea of submission. 

Submission is a key element in the smooth functioning of any business, government, family, or relationship. God ordained submission to prevent chaos. Imagine if we didn't submit to others. We would never be able to make decisions about anything and we would all think that we are better than one another. That is chaos. 

I believe that some people view submission as surrender, withdrawal, or apathy. Submitting to someone never means that you are the inferiority, because God created all people in his image and because all have equal value. Submission is mutual commitment and cooperation.

The previous two summers I had spent a couple weeks in China. When we would have large dinners after our basketball games the opposing teams would eat with us, along with all of the individuals who were responsible for putting the games on. The individuals who put the games on would always come to our tables and offer a toast. We would raise our glasses and toast to the Chinese. We were taught to put our glass lower than theirs because it was showing them that we thought of them above ourselves. It would always turn into a competition every time we toasted because the Chinese men always thought we were greater than them. 

God calls us to have submission among equals. He did not make the man superior; he made a way for the man and woman to work together. Jesus Christ, although qual with God the Father, submitted to him to carry out the plan for salvation. 

Likewise, although equal to man under God, the wife should submit to her husband for the sake of their marriage and family. I believe that this can go both ways. My wide someday will be right about something and I will be wrong. The will most likely happen a lot! But I need to respect and listen to what she has to sat as much as she is going to respect and listen to what I have to say. 

Submission between quals is submission by choice, not be force. We serve God in these relationships by willingly submitting to others in our church, to your spouses, and to our leaders. 

I challenge you to submit yourself to others in order to prevent chaos. Next time you disagree with somebody, remember this post. Next time you have a hard time making a decision, remember this post. My prayer is that this post applies to so many things.  I hope it really encourages you to mutual commit yourselves to each other. 

Gloria from Panera

I met a new friend at Panera this evening - Gloria.

The one thing that I want you to get out of this post tonight is that you have the power to learn somebody's story. God will create this divine moments, but it is up to you to listen and take action.

I had a meeting at Panera this evening with a good friend of mine and after every meeting we pray together. Wes is way more bold than I am so he wanted to hold hands with me, which is fine! A majority of the time, I won't hold a dude's hand in public.

When we finished praying together, we got up and started to walk out the door. While we were heading to the door and older lady (Gloria) stopped us and told us how encouraged she was to see young men praying and not being ashamed...We introduced ourselves and thanked her for her encouragement and walked out.

As I walked to my car I felt like I needed go sit down and learn a little bit more about Gloria. I got all the way to my car, opened my door and was conflicted on what do to. Part of me wanted to go and talk to her and the other half was ready to head home since it had been such a long day.

This was a battle between the flesh and the Spirit. Gloria wasn't positioned there just out of happenstance. She was there for a reason and I made the decision that I was going to go sit down and talk with her.

When I walked back into Panera the first thing I said to her was "thank you so much for your encouragement." She told me that watching Wes and I pray together brought tears to her eyes. I asked her some questions and found out a little bit more about her. I learned that she attends Granger Community Church and is a part of the prayer team there. Gloria made it known that she is a prayer warrior. She lost her husband to cancer 8 years ago and recently the company where she worked shut down. Despite things that had happened in Gloria's life she just kept telling me over and over again how good God has been to her. She told me that God is way more good to her than she is to him and yet, He still amazes her everyday.

I walked away feeling extremely encouraged by Gloria. So much so that I had to share the story with you all in this post tonight.

I challenge you to think about all the people that you have an interaction with everyday...how well do you know those people? Honestly, probably not much. I believe the reason for that is because we are often so focused on what is best for us.

What's best for us is building relationships and loving people like God does. I pray that you are able to learn somebody's story in the near future. Who knows the story you might learn might change your perspective on your entire day.

It's not about you...

A slave to everyone

Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 9:19: Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a salve to everyone, to win as many as possible. 

Paul asserts that he has the freedom to do anything, much like you and I. He emphasizes living a life full of strict discipline. The Christian life involves both freedom and discipline. The goals of Paul's life were to glorify God and bring people to Christ. For Paul - both freedom and discipline were important tools to be used in God's service.

With the mess of me trying to get my insurance exam scheduled/passed I have felt a lot of stress lately. I cannot get paid without a license so I have been working for about three weeks so that when I am able to start getting paid, I will be in a great situation. Everything I have been doing has been positioning me for success.

Today I struggled - I let it get to me that I am spending all of this time at work without getting paid. But that wasn't the main issue...I am more stressed about the exam...there were a couple of times this morning where I was just sitting and looking at my computer screen. I was slowly starting to become more concerned about myself then I was at the big picture at hand and that is impacting the lives of people who I will do business and build relationships with.

I forgot why I do what I do. When I was deciding what career path I was going to take, God made it very clear to me that whatever I was going to do was something where I could impact the lives of the people around me.

There were two things that happened to me today that God used to help me remember what my purpose is.

1 - I was grabbing coffee with one of my really good friends and while we were talking about my job, she asked me if it was really something that I see myself doing. We both know that I have the relationships part down, but what about everything else?

I told her absolutely. People need to have financial security. Everybody has things that they want to do and goals they want to accomplish. In this life, money isn't everything, but you need it to live. If I am able to help families accomplish their goals and build lots of relationships by helping them finically,  I can't imagine doing anything more fulfilling.

Allie said this to me as soon as I said that - "there is your pitch...use that."

2. - Reading about Paul tonight in 1 Corinthians. Paul became like everyone else so that he would win as many as possible. Everything that Paul did was for the advancement of the gospel. Paul was called to try and save as many as possible.

Why do I want to impact lives in all that I do. That is what God wants from us. I love people because God loves us so much that he gave his one and only Son.  I will do anything for the kingdom and that is my job.

You can do that in whatever profession you have. That is my challenge to you - remember why you are here. When you do everything for the kingdom of God you are being obedient. With that - enjoy what you do. God gave us the things that we do for a reason and when we enjoy whatever it is that we do, that is pleasing to God.

Completely aware

There were numerous times in college when my buddies would go through something and I would want to help them out by the advice that I could give them. On the other hand, there were times that I would go through something and they would try to come up with the things to say to me. My three best friends and I were really close. We all had different traits that we brought to our friendship. Whenever we had something serious to talk about, we would all go into the bedroom or sit in the living room and we would just talk things out. It was always special even though sometimes they had to confront me about things or I would have to confront them. One of the best parts about those moments we had was that we would get rid of all distractions. We would shut off the TV, the video games, and put away our phones. We had each others undivided attention.

When I look back it, these memories were some of the best and most meaningful I had in college. Too often things are just written out in a text. No with my friends. We had high expectations for each other and wanted nothing but the very best out of each other.

To initiate these conversations, all we had to send to the group text was that we needed to talk tonight. That is all it took and when we all knew that, we were going to make every effort to be there for each other.

Although these conversations were some of the most meaningful I had with my friends, there was always one thing that irritated me. When my buddies were not completely aware of the information. That doesn't mean the conversation didn't go well...for me I was frustrated because they were giving my advice that wasn't working, accusing me of something I didn't do, etc. They just didn't know - so nothing against them!

I believe that we have a tendency to want to give advice to people before we know all of the information. We want to help so we try and we usually do help! Just sometimes you might trigger something in somebody that really bothers them.

Blessed is the one who God disciplines.

"Blesses is the one whom God corrects;
so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty."  (Job 5:17)

In Job, Eliphaz was correct about what he said in verse 17. (above)  It is a blessing to be disciplined by God when we do wrong. Eliphaz thought that Job was suffering for something that he had did wrong, making his advice to Job incorrect. Eliphaz was giving excellent advice only to learn that it did not apply to Job.

Just like how my friends would give me excellent advice but it wouldn't apply to me because they were't completely aware of the situation.

All who offer counsel from God's Word should take care to throughly understand a person's situation before giving advice. 

Next time that you have advice to give, make sure that you are completely aware of the situation.

You can't limit God

I want you to think about anytime that you have learned something in class, church, or a seminar and then changed what you learned to your own words. What do I mean by that? It is way too easy to learn a little knowledge from the Bible for example and then completely change it to make you sound like you know what you are talking about it.

We live in a media consumed culture where a little bit of truth can be completely twisted. We thrive on knowing information that others don't and then we tell everybody what we learn and make it our own. It feels cool to be the source of some much wanted information right? We want people to come to us because we know something that they don't. You know what isn't cool? Changing the truth.

One of the ways that you can think about this is gossiping. When we gossip information spreads like wildfire and next thing you know there isn't even truth anymore. All of the information has been twisted around to please our human ears.

Honestly though, I am not concerned about gossip - it was just an example I used that might help you understand what point I am trying to make.

I am concerned about limiting God because of our own perspective. It's easy for teachers, counselors and well-meaning friends to begin with a portion of God's truth but then go off on a tangent. We can't ever limit God because of our own perspective and finite understanding.

I wonder if I do this with my blog posts. I am sure that I don't. I make sure that I put scripture into every post I have and then I talk about it in such a way that I hope it makes sense to you. I also know that the Holy Spirit helps us interpret scripture so that we may fully understand it. Every time I open my Bible I pray that the Holy Spirit gives me something I can encourage others with.

Remember how I told you that Job had three friends who traveled to see him and they mourned with him? Well they had advice for him and God later criticized them for what they had to say. Job's friend Eliphaz was the perfect example of someone who started with God's truth and then limited God with the rest of the things that he had to say.

"A word was secretly brought to me,
my ears caught a whisper of it.
Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
when deep sleep falls on people." (Job 4:12-13)

The things that Eliphaz were saying were true at first, but he changed what he had to say to Job because of the things that he had learned in his life. He thought that if he learned things a certain way, that is how Job must be taught too.

I really hope that this post made sense to you. The one thing that I want you to take away from it is that we can never limit God. We can't limit God by saying things to people that they want to hear. We must tell the truth.

All the material recored and quoted in the Bible is there by God's choice. Some is a record of what people said and did but is not an example to follow. The sins, the defeats, the evil thoughts, and misconceptions about God are all part of God's divinely inspired Word, but we should not follow those wrong examples just because they are in the Bible. The Bible gives us teachings and examples of what we should do as well as what we should not do. Eliphaz's comments are an example of what we should try to avoid-making false assumptions about others based on our own experiences.

We should never limit God.

Power > Talk

The things that we say are just words until we put them into action. In this world there is a lot of talk but no action. People say a lot of things that they are going to do but never do anything about it. 

We are talking a break from Job on the post because what I read in 1 Corinthians this evening seems like it needs talked about more than the story of Job.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. (1 Corinthians 4:20)

Some people talk a lot of faith but that is all it is. There are so many people who know the right words to say, but their lives don't reflect God's power. Paul says that the kingdom of God is to be lived, not just discussed. There is a big difference between knowing the right words and living them out. Don't be content to have the right answers about Christ. Let your life show that God's power is really working in you.

The best example that I have of this right now is the relationship I am in. What drew me to Rachel was her love for Jesus. That is the most attractive thing about her. Before we started dating we agreed that we were going to have a Christ centered relationship. We did too. I would get asked all the time what I liked most about Rachel and I would always tell people her love for Jesus. That was always my number one answer because that was the truth, and quite honestly that sounds the best. 

I have been in situations like this before where I would claim to be a part of a Christ centered relationship but it was either one way, or sometimes we would be Christ centered and other times we wouldn't. 

With Rachel, we wanted it to be Christ centered from the very beginning. The first month or so when we were dating, we would often talk about Jesus, often times it was daily. We would tell each other that we were praying for each other because that is something that we did. Things were super great! But we believed that we could do better. 

Would you believe me if I told you things could get better? 

Things got a whole lot better. About a month ago, Rachel recommended that we start doing bible plans on the Bible App. I didn't know you could do this, but I was down for it. I then told her that I wanted to start reading the Bible together and we both agreed that we should pray together as well. We started all of this at once. 

My love for her took off once we started doing these things. I had feelings for her like I have never had for anyone and that continues and strengthens everyday. There is so much power in actually having a Christ centered relationship rather than saying that you have one. That power comes from doing something about it and not just saying that we put God first. 

Our relationship has been a great way to share Jesus with others as well and the work that he is doing in both of our lives. Whenever I am asked about Rachel I get into talking about how we do devos, read our bibles and pray together. I believe that it's encouraging to other people. Plus, it's okay to boast about God. 

 

One thing that we have both learned and I know that Rachel can testify to this, is that our individual relationship with God is what comes first. When we are right with God, we are right for each other. Having our own personal Jesus time is more important than having it together. My faith is my own, and her faith is her own. I love Jesus more than anything with all my heart and she does too and when you are with somebody who really lives their life that way, there is nothing better. 

For example, yesterday afternoon I was really stressed out and I was FaceTiming Rachel in my car before I went into the grocery store. She could tell that I was stressed and she wanted to help. Instead of just telling me encouraging things to make me happy and feel better, she offered to pray. You can say all of that nice things you want to someone, but it won't mean nearly as much until you live out your faith. Rachel trusted that her and I praying together would help our stress and it did. Power is greater than talk...The power of Jesus and doing something about your faith is greater than any words that we will ever say. 

When it comes to relationships, there is no greater verse than this: Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness. (2 Corinthians 6:14)

There is one more example about this that I want to share. Another thing that I am very proud of about Rachel and I is that we created a relationship goals list. (one of the reasons I like this is because I don't like looking at other couples and thinking of them at "goals.") This list is full of the things that we want and are going to commit to the relationship. I made a list, Rachel made a list, and together we made one. There are things that we both promised and committed to doing and we also have things we have committed to do together. I was blown away by the power of doing something like this. When we first shared our lists together, I read mine with some tears in my eyes because what was happening between us was so powerful and it was like nothing I have have experienced with someone. 

I am not writing about this to tell everyone that we are perfect. We aren't perfect. Nobody is perfect, I am telling you all about how we do these things because there is so much more power in doing something rather than talking about it. You don't have to apply this only to a relationship that you might be in, you can apply it many ways to your faith.