I encourage you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, dedicated to God and pleasing to him. This kind of worship is appropriate for you. Don’t become like the people of this world. Instead, change the way you think. Then you will always be able to determine what God really wants—what is good, pleasing, and perfect. … God in his kindness gave each of us different gifts. [Romans 12:1b-2,6a (GW)]
When told that the gifts the Holy Spirit gives us are unique for our specific ministries, we get nervous. We already have a career, didn’t sign up for seminary, and aren’t interested in being ministers. While being a minister/pastor/priest is a vocation, the ministry is the work of every Christian. No matter what our professions, we are all called to minister and that doesn’t necessarily mean pastoring a church. It means serving God and His people in Jesus’ name, which is where those spiritual gifts come in. God is not about to send us off empty-handed.
In job interviews, applicants often are asked, “What do you bring to the table?” With God, however, it’s a little different. When we come to him, He doesn’t care about our resume, how much or little we know, or how many assets we bring to Him. When we come to His table, we receive our own personal coach in the way of the Holy Spirit who provides us with at least one spiritual asset personally designed for us.
In Matthew 9, Jesus spoke of the harvest being plentiful but the laborers being few. I wonder—is it the labor pool that is lacking or is it the willingness of the laborers to do His work that is missing? As Christians, we’re filled with the Holy Spirit and yet we often seem void of His promised gifts. Is it that we don’t recognize our gifts or are we simply unwilling to use them? Last week, while receiving Communion with others in the congregation, I wondered what gifts we each brought to God’s holy table and how many of those unused gifts we were taking back home with us.
I suspect that there are enough laborers but we’re just waiting for the ideal job, the perfect opportunity, or the ideal situation to arise. My brother remained unemployed for years because of that attitude; although there were plenty of opportunities, none were the precise one he desired! There should be no unemployment line in God’s Kingdom! We forget that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Not only does He equip us but He also offers on-the-job training!
I’ve taken assorted Spiritual Gift inventories and, while they can be helpful, I doubt their necessity. All we have to do is look at the harvesting needs around us and show up for work. We’ll soon figure out if driving the combine, baling the hay, swinging the scythe, hand-picking the berries, cleaning the tools, transferring the grain to the silo, managing the logistics, marketing the wheat, bringing water to the thirsty, or feeding the workers is the job for which we’ve been designed. The important thing is to show up for the harvest; in God’s Kingdom, there should be no shortage of laborers! Let’s get to work!
Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, is a song in praise of the Word of God. Since we don’t read this psalm in its original Hebrew, we fail to appreciate its intricate construction. Each of its twenty-two sections begin with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequence. Each of the eight verses in those twenty-two sections begin with the letter that introduced it. For example, the first word of the first section begins with alef, as do the next seven verses. In the second section, every line begins with beth. The psalm continues that way up to the 22nd (and last) section where every line begins with the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet, tav. 
The celebration of the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion/the Eucharist has been central to Christian worship since the early church. While Protestants think of the Eucharist as the sacrament commemorating the Last Supper with bread and wine, for Roman Catholics and some Orthodox, “Eucharist” specifically refers to the consecrated elements, especially the bread. How ever you define it, the word “eucharist” originally had nothing to do with this beautiful sacrament.
Mark tells of a time when a hungry Jesus cursed a fig tree and caused it to wither and die simply because it had no figs. As the only destructive miracle done by the Lord, His action is difficult to understand, especially since we’re told “it was too early in the season for fruit.” The same power that brought Lazarus back to life and turned water into wine easily could have given the tree ripe figs, so why did Jesus kill the fruitless tree?
One day, the disciples scolded some parents for bringing their children to Jesus for a blessing. After telling them the Kingdom belonged to those who received it like a child, He called the children to Him. Unlike adults, children accept their humble position and live by faith and trust. Without self-consciousness and knowing they are in complete dependence on the giver, they receive gifts with humility and enthusiasm. Like explorers, children have a sense of wonder on their quest to learn about the world around them. They are filled with excitement and awe at every new thing they experience because life hasn’t become routine, predictable, or run-of-the mill to them.
For centuries, access to the written Word of God was limited to just a few. The printing press wasn’t invented until 1439 and, at the time, only about 20% of the population could read. As a result, churches were decorated with paintings, stained glass windows, statues, carvings, and mosaics depicting biblical stories or illustrating theological concepts. For people who couldn’t read the book, religious art told the story. Consider how the Stations of the Cross in Roman Catholic churches illustrate the events of Good Friday. Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words! While most nativity scenes are inaccurate, our depictions of the nativity don’t have to be historically exact to be meaningful.
