Thought of the Day !!

A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.

                               1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT)

Have you ever wondered if you had any particular gifts or talents for ministry?  If so, you're not alone.  Several people over the course of my ministry have come to me and shared this feeling.  As a matter of fact, before I was called into ministry, I felt the same about myself.  I'm not good with my hands, so every time we worked on Habitat Houses I was used to clean up.  I had a terrible stage fright, so public speaking was out of the question (or so I thought - God showed me I guess).  I couldn't play the piano or sing.  So I felt pretty down about my giftedness, thinking that He may have simply passed me by when He was passing out talents that could be used for ministry. 

But in reality we are all gifted for something.  A spiritual gift is given "each" of us.  You may have the gift of never meeting a stranger.  Maybe your gift is the simple gift of listening to people when others don't have the time or inclination do do so.  Maybe your gift is the gift of encouragement or joy or giving or teaching or hospitality or working behind the scenes without recognition.  The list can go on and on.  But just remember that we all have gifts so that "we can help each other."   

Let me end with a story that Pastor Robert Schuller once wrote.   

A man once had a dream.  In his dream he died and a guide took him to a large room.  The room had a very large banquet table filled with different kinds of foods, and there were hungry people seated all around this table.  The problem was that they were all five feet apart and pushed away from the table.  Their arms were not long enough to reach the table and they were unable to rise from their chairs. 

As the man looked more closely, he saw a very large spoon that was five feet long that the people were fighting over.  In his dream, he watched with amazement how one person used the spoon to dish up some food and then carefully turned the spoon around toward his mouth with all the food falling off the spoon and onto the floor.  Then another person grabbed the spoon but was unable to feed himself because of the length of the spoon. 

Then the man turned to the guide and said this must be hell.  And the guide said, "You are correct.  It is.  But this is not the place for you."  He then led him to another room exactly like the one he had just seen, with a table and chairs and people five feet apart.  This room also had a single spoon, which each person took turns dishing up food from the table and turning and feeding each other.  The guide looked at the man and said, "This…is Heaven." 

The genius of God's plan is that He created each of us to serve one another so that each would be served, and each would be fulfilled by serving. 

In the love of Christ,

greg