As I write this post I am at a car dealership waiting for my car to have its routine service. It's not that bad. They have free wifi and I have set up an office of sorts to work on writing and studying. Every so often all of our vehicles need a service or a tune-up. When I turned 16 and got my first car the leader of our youth group was a mechanic and gave me some solid advice. "Change the oil every 3000 miles and take care of your car and you should have it for a long time." The advice was great and that car lasted longer than I thought it could.
Well cars aren't the only thing that need routine service. We do too! We need to take ourselves. I mean this in the physical, social, and spiritual sense. Talking about how this plays out in the physical is for a different time and a different blog. Today I'm thinking on the spiritual side of life. I know, I know all of this should be one thing, not compartmentalized. However, I want to take our spiritual lives out for a second examine it and then we can have everything join together again.
When people talk about taking care of our spiritual lives we mostly will talk about quiet time, solitude, sabbath, reading our Bible, prayer, meditation, listening to God, and serving others. And all of these help build and maintain our spiritual existence. All of these are important. So if this is what it is, what is there left to talk about?
How about our gifts? This past Sunday I spoke about being useful for the Kingdom (What's The Use?) and discovering our spiritual gifts and using them for the Kingdom. The response and discussions have been amazing. You have to admit, it feels good to find out what God has given you and being affirmed in His kingdom work. I know I felt good to know how God could use me and from what people have shared with me, it made them feel good too.
Not only that but there was another revelation by some after that sermon and discussing the idea of spiritual gifts. What do we do with those gifts that are in us, but aren't the strongest?
Well cars aren't the only thing that need routine service. We do too! We need to take ourselves. I mean this in the physical, social, and spiritual sense. Talking about how this plays out in the physical is for a different time and a different blog. Today I'm thinking on the spiritual side of life. I know, I know all of this should be one thing, not compartmentalized. However, I want to take our spiritual lives out for a second examine it and then we can have everything join together again.
When people talk about taking care of our spiritual lives we mostly will talk about quiet time, solitude, sabbath, reading our Bible, prayer, meditation, listening to God, and serving others. And all of these help build and maintain our spiritual existence. All of these are important. So if this is what it is, what is there left to talk about?
How about our gifts? This past Sunday I spoke about being useful for the Kingdom (What's The Use?) and discovering our spiritual gifts and using them for the Kingdom. The response and discussions have been amazing. You have to admit, it feels good to find out what God has given you and being affirmed in His kingdom work. I know I felt good to know how God could use me and from what people have shared with me, it made them feel good too.
Not only that but there was another revelation by some after that sermon and discussing the idea of spiritual gifts. What do we do with those gifts that are in us, but aren't the strongest?
There are at least two schools of thought. 1) Focusing on the things that you are not good at are a waste of time and energy and take away from the power of what you are good at doing. 2) Understanding where you have weaknesses, allows you to continue in your strengths while opening yourself up to God to strengthen your weaknesses at the same time. In other words only focus on what you know works or split your focus between the two (not necessarily 50/50).
Focusing on your top spiritual gifts and not wasting time on those you struggle with has its merit. This way you are able to streamline your life and take a direct, specific path that will lead you into the things of life that will immediately bless you and others. When taking this path you will really need to surround yourselves with people that have strength in the gifts that are weakest for you. This is actually a good strategy and works for productivity and efficiency. Not to mention it hits at a sweet spot for us internally as we feel like we are accomplishing more and useful. My caution with this approach is that in light of working towards your best and doing what you do best, you don't lose sight of self introspection or squelch the Spirit's work in our lives through our weakness.
The second option is to split your focus on your strong gifts and your weaker gifts. The rationale may be, after all this is God giving you these gifts and he can make them stronger and weaker if He pleases. Another thought may be that you are in situations where your strongest gifts cannot always be used exclusively and you are need to express gifts that are weaker. It is still crucial that you surround yourselves with people that are gifted differently than you to make up for what you might lack, but also so you can learn from them and them from you. This option is good for introspection, humility, and reliance on God's power. The caution for this approach is that some will tread water in the depth of their weakness and miss their opportunity to swim laps with their strong gifts.
My caution to all of it is that we don't simply stand on the idea of where are gifts lie so we can simply ignore what we are weak in or so we can make excuses for not doing some things God would have us to do. My other caution and encouragement is that we believe in a God that wants all of his people to be a part of the body of Christ. This means we don't have to do everything, but rather everyone is doing their thing. What would be absolutely dangerous and crazy is if everyone took a spiritual gifts inventory test and then we modeled everything we do based on everyone's gifts. It's a dream, but I would be absolutely fascinated to see how that kind of system worked.
Nevertheless, we are a dangerous people because we live with gifts from our Father and we journey with a Savior who is not bound by this world and its deficiencies. I pray we are people who aren't simply living in a fog, but have a purpose and use our gifts for God's glory. And on those days when we take time for a tuneup or service our spiritual selves we see God's power and might that can pour through us
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