Giftings and Callings

For those that don't know, in our student ministry and our church at large we have been talking about sharing our faith, what that means, how we do it, etc. It's one of those interesting topics. Everyone thinks we should do it, but most people also think it's someone else's job.

One reason that has come up for this is how people are gifted. Some are more gifted at sharing the gospel (evangelism) while some have different gifts, like encouragement or mercy. So there are those who feel since they are not gifted at evangelism, they don't necessarily need to do it.

But there's a few problems with that. For one, most of the people I work with have not done a lot of sharing their faith. So when they take tests that ask "do you feel comfortable doing ____" or "do you like _____", sharing Jesus never comes up because, well, they've never done it. Unless you have prior experience building a house, building a house will never show up as a gift from God... until you actually try doing it.

The other is there are some things God created us specifically to do and there are other things He expects all of us to do. We are all called to serve (Galatians 5:13), we are all called to love (John 15:17), and we are all called to go and tell people about Jesus Christ (Acts 1:8). You don't get to be excluded from these expectations because of your gifts, you use your gifts in different ways to live up to these expectations. We are all called to do these things.

So as you live out your life for Jesus, don't use how God wired you as an excuse to get out of doing the things we all should. Instead, use the way God wired you to uniquely live out the things Christ asks of all of us.

T