A gift

Amanda MacQuarrie August 31, 2017 0 0

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Romans 12: 1-8

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Up until his conversion Augustine had been a Professor of Rhetoric in Milan, but around the time of his conversion a lung condition (asthma?) began to make carrying out his work difficult and he decided to resign his Professorship and he retired to his villa in Milan where he began writing instead and using his great gifts of language and rhetoric in the service of God…

“Now was the day come wherein I was in deed to be freed of my Rhetoric Professorship, whereof in thought I was already freed. And it was done. Thou didst rescue my tongue, whence Thou hadst before rescued my heart. And I blessed Thee; retiring with all mine to the villa. What I there did in writing, which was now enlisted in Thy service…”

Whatever our gifts are - what might it mean for us to use them in God’s service?

It doesn’t always mean being ordained to Ministry, though it might, but it can also mean using our gift of friendship to share a coffee with a friend in need, or our gift with people to take time with the people we serve while working at the till in a shop, it might be our gift of hospitality that we are being encouraged to use, or something else. 

What gifts do you have? What opportunities do you have to use them? Or perhaps you are cultivating a new gift? Where might you use your gifts for God?

Thank you God for the things you’ve made me good at,

Things that make me - me…

Teach me how to use them for you,

So that your body might be built up.

In Jesus name, 

Amen.