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)]
While writing about the spiritual gift of healing these last two days, I recalled a conversation about this spiritual gift with a pastor friend. I asked if anyone in his church was gifted with healing. He said no with a caveat: just because he knew of no one didn’t necessarily mean that no one had it. Having a gift doesn’t guarantee it will be used.
Take our Aunt Margaret, for example. When she died, we found several boxes of brand new shirts and nightgowns stashed in the corner of her closet. The same size and style as the stained and threadbare ones she always wore, they were birthday and Christmas presents we’d sent her through the years. Aunt Margaret’s receipt of her gifts didn’t mean she used them and receiving a gift from the Spirit doesn’t mean we’ll use it either!
Unlike Margaret’s gifts, spiritual gifts aren’t mass produced or come in a box from Macy’s. They are individual gifts God designs expressly for each person that are given to us when we become Christ’s servant. His gifts are capabilities like wisdom, teaching, encouragement, helping, administration, pastoring, giving, hospitality, evangelism, leadership or healing that enable us to build God’s Kingdom. If we are going to be good stewards of these gifts, we must both recognize and use them by responding when the Spirit offers us opportunities to do so. Unfortunately, willfulness, fear, and lack of faith often keep us from doing that.
Several years ago, in our small group at church, I met a troubled young woman who needed encouragement. At the Spirit’s urging, I surprised myself by offering to email her each day with an uplifting Bible verse. Originally, I expected the emails to stop when our group study ended. God, however, had other plans and, before I knew it, I was adding a few words to the day’s verse and sending out messages to sixty people. When a friend (one gifted with encouragement) urged me to post my devotions on a website, I pushed back in fear. Like Moses, I thought of all the reasons I was unqualified rather than trusting God to qualify me! Eventually, in obedience, I stepped out in faith, started using His gift and fulfilling the purpose He had for me. Now, more than six years, 2,000 devotions, and 500 followers later, I know the ability to do this is a God-given gift; I couldn’t do it on my own.
In Sunday school, the children sing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” before asking, “Hide it under a bushel?” and answering with a rousing shout, “No!” What about our lights—those special gifts designed just for us and given to us by the Holy Spirit? Are we letting them shine? I’ve been a follower of Christ for a long time but it didn’t take the Spirit decades before He gifted me. It just took me decades to shine my light and use His gift as He intended!
Only God knows if anyone in that pastor’s church is gifted with healing. One day, however, we all will be asked to account for the way we used our spiritual gifts, whatever they may be. Let’s not make the mistake of hiding them under a bushel or leaving them ignored and unused in the corner of our hearts.
Your spiritual gifts were not given for your own benefit but for the benefit of others, just as other people were given gifts for your benefit. [Rick Warren]
When writing yesterday’s message (“Jehovah Rapha”) about my ski accident, I thought about the ten lepers healed by Jesus. Only one returned to thank Him. Did the others assume they would see Jesus some other day and could express their gratitude then? Jesus, however, was on His way to Jerusalem. The lepers had a week’s worth of purification ceremonies, cleansing, isolation, and offerings ahead of them and that “other day” would not come. By not returning immediately, they missed a precious opportunity to thank Jesus.
The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. … It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. [1 Corinthians 12:9,11 (NLT)]
Around 67 AD, Peter wrote to the church at large to warn them about the danger of false teachers. In a stark contrast to the Messiah’s living water, they were likened to wells without water and Peter warned that they were dangerous, especially to those new to Jesus. The Apostle’s words reminded me of Jesus’ caution to the disciples about causing one of His “little ones” to fall into sin. “What sorrow awaits the one who does the tempting,” He warned while mentioning a fate involving a millstone. It’s bad enough when we sin but even worse if we drag others down with us. We can do that by preaching a false message, inviting them to share in our sinful behavior or, in a far more subtle way, by causing them to distrust the gospel message or turn from their faith.
Depending on the Bible translation used, there are five strange words we might encounter when reading the Psalms: maskil, miktam, shigionoth, gittith and selah. Maskil is seen in the titles of thirteen psalms and once in a psalm’s text (47:7). Believed to be derived from the Hebrew word sakal, meaning to be prudent, understand or ponder, maskil may indicate a psalm of wisdom with instructions for godliness. It’s sometimes translated as a “contemplative poem,” “instruction,” or “skillful psalm.” It also could refer to the skillful construction of the psalm (like a sonnet with its 14 lines and fixed rhyme scheme). The Amplified Bible covers both bases by calling a maskil “a skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem.” Since the maskil psalms don’t share a common theme or a unique form, maskil could just be a musical term relating to its performance and its exact meaning remains a mystery in the Psalter.
Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their meticulous tithing of herbs and spices while missing the more important aspects of the law. While both gnats and camels were forbidden food, in a wonderfully graphic hyperbole, He compared the way they poured their wine through a strainer to avoid accidentally swallowing a gnat (the smallest of prohibited “unclean” animals) while actually swallowing a camel (the largest)! Feeling self-righteous over their adherence to minor details, the Pharisees entirely missed the foundational principles of the Law: loving God and loving others.
Devotions of the Heart 