One of my students remarked that her journey with Christ during childhood took her through a Pentacostal church, where she was told that she needed to speak in tongues in order to be baptized and saved. At her age, she decided to mumble some gibberish just to get it over with.
Other people will complain that their gifts are not glamorous. They don’t feel they have a gift for evangelism, and unless they’re out there winning souls for Jesus Christ, they feel that they’re doing nothing for the Kingdom. Others will complain that they are not teachers or preachers or in a position to do so. Sometimes, I wonder even if the complaints are less about doing work for our Lord and more about not getting recognized for doing work for our Lord.
One of the first things I learned as a new Christian (and I’m glad that I learned it) was to realize that everything I did was to be done for God, and that if I looked hard enough in what I was doing, I could see God’s work being accomplished through me with the gifts He has blessed me with. For example, I am using the gifts of writing and communication right now to talk to you about these things. I might not have as much impact trying to speak it aloud in person, and I have a greater capability of far-reaching communication by placing this on the internet. I thank God that He has given me these gifts to compose such a message, that He has given me a message to communicate at all, and that He has provided a means to do so where I can use my gift and be expressive.
Even if your gift is working behind the scenes somewhere as an administrator or someone who cleans or someone who takes notes, you are accomplishing the work of God by allowing churches to run smoothly, events to run easily, and needs to be met. You never know if a new believer might come to your church some day and take notice of what you’re doing, and you don’t even know it. That is why we cannot be proud or boastful of the gifts we have in comparison to others, sowing seeds of envy among them, and likewise we cannot diminish the gifts God has given us and minimize them in comparison to the gifts that others have. We must utilize our own gifts to the fullest for the glory of God.
