Gift Giving

Do you like giving gifts to people? My son is almost 5 years old and we have been hearing about all the gifts that he wants for his birthday and we still have to make it to March 16th. I love getting my children gifts, it blesses me to be able to watch the joy on their faces as they find out what is inside that box. They like opening gifts so much that every time we get a shipment from Amazon it's like Christmas all over again. My youngest son for a while had a hard time understanding that only some gifts are for him, he wanted to open everybody's gift. He is just now realizing that on his brother's birthday he does not get any gifts. Sometimes that can be a struggle when he thinks that his brother is getting something that he is not.

There are lots of places that God talks about giving us gifts in the Bible (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Peter 4:10-11). Paul gives multiple lists of the gifts that God has given those in the church, and often it is easy to highlight the gifts in those lists that we see in others. Maybe we put certain gifts on a pedestal while we diminish others. Paul spoke to this and said that the parts of the body that are unseen are just as important as those that are seen. It can be easy for us to look at the gifts that God has given others and feel like my youngest son. To question why that person gets to have that gift and we do not. I want to look at what Peter says about gifts:

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace 1 Peter 4:10

There are three things that I see in this scripture about the gifts that God has given us.

Everyone receives gifts - The word each in the verse means every single person, and no one is excluded. God has left no one out, we don't have to look at others and wonder why God has left us out, he hasn't. Maybe we just need to do some searching and discover what he has given us. Maybe we need to acknowledge and give the proper value to those things that he has given us. God does not give trash, when he gives he gives things of worth and value. The platform and the size of crowd that gift attracts does not determine the value of that gift. Receive means to take hold of something, to embrace something so tightly that it becomes your own. We have a responsibility to embrace and take possession of what God has given us.

We must use it - I love what the ESV says next, "use it to serve one another." Peter emphatically says here that you have been given gifts now use it! God is a giver and he has freely given us gifts. God wants us to operate just like him here on the earth and give of what he has given us. The whole purpose of the gifts we are given is to exercise them, not for our own gain but for the benefit of others. Our highest call is to serve others and we have been supplied by the Holy Spirit with ways to help others. God will bring people across your path that need exactly what you are gifted in.

We must steward our gifts - The Greek word used here for steward is a compound of the word for "house" and "to arrange". It is easy to just picture stewardship in regards to arranging our finances, Jesus did after all talk about in a parable associated with money. When we steward our gifts though it is about investing in growing them, developing them. This requires time and dedication, developing the gifts God has given us is not something that magically happens it does require exercise. When we take care to focus on the gifts that God has given us something else happens, the whole body of Christ is built up. Serving of others with our gifts we are strengthens and sets in order the house of God.

The church can't fully be what we are called to be unless we all use our gifts to build others up.