Finding Your Place to Serve

Last week, we started talking about edifying others through ministry and service.

We said that God has uniquely equipped each believer to serve him and his church, and that every person is vitally important. The Bible at times refers to that equipping as “spiritual gifts”.

We saw a list of several spiritual gifts, and I mentioned briefly that there are four major lists of gifts in the New Testament.

This morning, I want to take us to one of the other gift lists to get us thinking together about how God may have gifted you.

Go ahead and open to Romans 12:3-8 so you are ready when we go through these gifts.

While you are turning there, let me acknowledge that much of what I am sharing this morning is not original with me. The content on gifts is largely based off what I heard from Tim Hight, the pastor at GraceLife, when I was younger.

Some of the practical information at the end actually came from a conversation I had with Tim Repass, which is loosely based on some of the ideas presented by leadership expert John Kotter.

As we go through these, let me give you a couple of quick pointers:

1) Your gifting is not an excuse.

Your giftedness does not excuse you from obeying Jesus.

For example, you see “giving” in this list— You can’t look at that and say, “Well, I don’t have the gift of giving, so I don’t have to give.”

As Christians, God calls us to recognize that he is in charge of everything we have, and one way we do that is by giving back to his work and to help others.

For those with the gift of giving, it may come more readily as they grow in their relationship with Christ, but it doesn’t let you off the hook.

It doesn’t let those who are more merciful have an excuse for not standing up for the truth, or those with the gift of prophecy an excuse for being jerks.

That will all make more sense as we go through the list, but I wanted you to know up front that your gifting doesn’t give you an excuse.

2) This list is a guide.

We said last week that there are four main lists of gifts in the New Testament, and none of the four gifts matches the others perfectly. There is some overlap, but each list highlights different ways God equips us to serve him through the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.

Because of that, we are simply using this list as a guide to help you start thinking about the kinds of ways God may have gifted you. You may not fit cleanly in any of the seven, and that’s perfectly okay. This is just a representative list to get your brain thinking along those lines.

With that said, let’s read through the list here in Romans 12:3-8.

Just like at Corinth, Paul is reminding the church that God has given different gifts, capabilities, and even measure of faith.

We can’t allow our gifts to become a source of pride, especially because anything you have has been given to you by God!

Each part of the body is unique and needs the other.

Now, the list of gifts from verses 6-8:

Prophecy

Service

Teaching

Exhortation

Giving

Leading

Mercy

We don’t have time to go into extensive detail about each of these, but let’s give a quick overview:

Seven Motivational Gifts.

Prophet – Use Bible to move people to action.

Let’s talk about this one for a minute, because it is probably the most confusing one.

We most often think of a prophet as one who foretells the future. While God did historically give prophets insight into his plans, we believe that that kind of prophecy is no longer needed because we have God’s written word.

However, the prophets also delivered messages to the people about their own sinful state at the time, confronting them about sin and pointing them to how to honor God by living righteously.

That is what we believe God does through the gift of prophecy today—uniquely equipping people to call people to action using God’s Word.

Service - Meet the practical needs of other believers

Teacher - Give accurate facts about the Bible to help others learn the truth of the Bible.

Exhorter - Encourage Christian growth and maturity

Exhorters are encouragers who want to help people grow to their full potential for Christ

Giver - Use resources to advance the work of the ministry

Leader - Manage resources and organize them in order to reach a final objective

Resources include people, teams, buildings, systems, etc.

Leaders are likely goal-oriented

Mercy - Give comfort and support in times of distress and crisis.

Let’s take a few minutes to go over some examples that help you see this.

We are going to look at three different scenarios, and we are going to think about how someone with these gifts might react in each of these situations.

While some of this is overstated to make a point, be thinking about which category you might fall into....

<<Spiritual Gifts Slides>>

In this first set of slides, we are going to see what happens when someone spills a cup of coffee. We’re going to take a look at what motivates them.

We then shift to how folks might respond during a hospital visit.

The last set is how a person with each gift might finish the statement, “What this church needs is...”

Alright, so you may have an idea here of how God may have gifted you.

So, here’s the next question for you: What is keeping you from using your gifts?

This is where my conversation with Tim came in. As we were thinking about our church family, he brought up some insight from John Kotter that I think applies well to our situation.

Some of you are serving at or beyond the limit. You are actively involved and using your gifts for God’s glory regularly.

However, some of you might be in a different category. You are sitting on the sidelines, not using your gift, and missing out on the blessing of seeing God work in and through you to expand his kingdom and build up his church.

Let’s think about it in this terminology: How many of you are familiar with the business rule called “The Law of the Unattainable Triad?” It is represented this way:

<<Show Triangle>>A triangle with good, fast, and cheap. In the business world, you get to pick two.

As we thought about this in the life of the church, we thought of another way to apply it.

For us, the triangle might look like this: Ready, Willing, and Able.

We might even call it

The Law of Unrealized Giftedness

<<Show Triangle>>

Let’s define each of these:

Ready: I am saved and maturing in my walk with Christ.

Willing: I have a God-given desire to serve and am willing to invest time and energy.

Able: I think God has equipped me and am developing my skills to serve.

Unlike the unattainable triad, all three of these components are necessary for us to realize fully what God has equipped us to do.

For those who are not actively serving right now, it may be that you recognize that you have two out of the three components here.

Even for those of us who are serving, it is worth evaluating where we are.

You are willing and able, but there is a sin issue that you haven’t dealt with, and you aren’t ready. Perhaps God is getting ready to call you to a different level of leadership, and you need to make sure your character is in line with what he wants to do through you.

Others might be ready and able, but you aren’t willing to make the investment. Maybe you have been serving for a while and the passion is gone, and you need to ask God to help create in you a greater willingness to see him work again.

Some of you might be ready and willing, but you still aren’t sure what or how to do it. Perhaps what God is calling you to do is going to require you to learn a new skill or get better at what you have been doing.

Let’s think about how you could address each of these:

Ready - First, make sure you know you are saved. From there, make sure there isn’t a sin issue that you know of that you aren’t repenting of and trying to remove and replace.

Willing - Ask God to help you recapture your awe of him. The more you come to know him well, the more readily you will want to serve him. Ask God to help you see priorities in your life need to be rearranged so you have space to serve.

Able - Figure out what you think God may have called you to do and give it a shot! If you need help getting better at someone, ask someone who is already doing it how they got better. If they can’t help, let me know and I will see what we as a church can do to equip you better for what God has called you to do.

While we have talked about a lot of things this morning, let me see if I can boil it down to the simplest advice I can give you: Just do it.

If, as we have gone through this, you have a sense that God may be leading you to step up, just do it! Talk to whoever is over that ministry and see what it would take to get you involved.

If you don’t know who that is, reach out to me and I will get you connected with whoever you need to talk with.

“But what if I’m wrong?”

In our sermon planning group this week, someone reminded me that God steers moving ships.

In other words, just start moving, and if it is in the wrong direction, God can sort that out.

With this, I am going to ask you to do us a favor: Cultivate an expectation that you are going to get feedback. God sometimes uses others to help us see things we don’t see ourselves.

I call this “The American Idol Effect”— Someone who has no ability to sing thinks they are the best in the world and sounds like screeching cats.

There may be something you want to do or feel like you should, and the truth is, that may not be where God has gifted you to serve.

As you start looking for a place, recognize that our church family loves Jesus and you enough to tell you that this area of service may not be the best for you.

No one likes to hear that, and not many people really like to say it, but sometimes that’s how God works in his church.

If you start somewhere and you aren’t in the best place, that’s okay! We will find somewhere for you to serve, even if it is informal.

So, which of these areas sticks out to you as the one God may have gifted you with?

Are you ready, growing and maturing in your walk with Christ?

Are you willing, wanting to serve and honor the God who loves you?

Are you able, or do you need to learn, practice, or get some help to get better?

What do you need to do to respond?