Using Your Gifts

FROM THE INTERIM PASTOR'S STUDY:
 
We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
                                                                                       Ephesians 2:10
 
                                      Use your gifts always, to do good works!
 
Think about it this way, one of us gets news from a very reliable source that Jesus will return on January 1, 2019. So what do we do? Now you really don’t want to miss this as it just might end everything as we know it now. So would you keep doing whatever tasks you had been doing or would you spend your remaining days waiting where you learned he would arrive?
 
The inactivity option does not reflect at all what Jesus taught and certainly not the message Paul had in mind in writing this letter to the church at Ephesus. Ever since the encounter with Adam and Eve in the garden, we find God instructing people of the importance to continue producing fruit and caring for the creation that they were given. But to do this successfully, we find we are also called on to do many things that may seem to be beneath us, to do things that seem and feel ordinary. But then we are told that in Christ’s kingdom things are always reversed and “ordinary fruit” becomes exceptional and worthy fruit. Jesus' audience didn’t need rabbis, nor do we need pastors to produce fruit that pleases God. In fact, a quiet, peaceful life of doing something kind, appreciative or useful for our neighbor is generally just fine. The key is that we do it the best we can and with all the energy we can muster.
 
Are you:

• A father or mother?                    Then, encourage and admonish in turn.
• A son or daughter?                     Then, care for those who cared for you.
• Retired?                                     Then, get some rest and then get busy.
• An employee (or employer)?        Then, be the best you can be at putting others first.
• A baker?                                    Then, bake good bread.
• A bus driver?                              Then, bring a smile to everyone you encounter.
• Chronically ill or depressed?         Then, assault the throne of God with your prayers.

 
So why would we do these, and other, ordinary things? Because when God came among us as Jesus, God exchanged divinity for the ordinary. God exchanged an ordinary crib for a cross and there produced the strangest fruit of all - a way for all who were there, and through them us, to understand peace with God and the pathway to the kingdom. That is God’s desire.
 
Always be on the lookout for that call that comes from God,
 
Pastor Alan