Most people are right-handed, but the strong overcome it.
Good morning. Let’s read a couple of verses first of all. I know a lot of times I read verses at the beginning and people wonder, “Well, what do they have to do with the ministry?” So I’ll try to tie them in as we go.
In Luke 24, beginning at verse 1:
Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb,
bringing the spices which they had prepared.
But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this,
that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments.
Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth,
they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?
He is not here, but is risen!
Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee,
saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men,
and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’”
Then in Luke 24:12, after the ladies went back and told Peter and the other disciples:
But Peter arose and ran to the tomb;
and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves;
and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.
In Mark 9:41, Jesus says:
For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name,
because you belong to Christ,
assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.
Our Father, we come before Thee, just needing You to help us today. We thank You for all that You’ve given us. You’ve given us a Savior. You’ve given us Your Spirit. You’ve given us everything that we need, and we just want to lay hold on those things this morning.
Lord, I pray that we would hear You. We would hear Your word spoken to us in a way that will cause us to respond—not in a way that will just cause us to feel sorry for ourselves. Sometimes we hear something and say, “Well, I’m just not measuring up.” But Lord, that’s not Your purpose. Your purpose is to bring us up and bring us to the place where we are working the works of God, doing the things that You want us to do, because You’ve won these things for us and You’ve made us new creatures.
Lord, we need Your help in doing this. So open Your word to us, and not just open Your word, but make it so alive to us that, in some ways, we can’t get away from it. Let it make that impression that will bring us to the place that You want us to be: living not just in the good of it, but finding the joy that it is to serve You, the living God.
We ask this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
I’ve been speaking out of 2 Timothy for the last few times, and it’s been on my heart to bring at least something from the last epistles of the three most visible writers of the New Testament: Paul, Peter, and John.
Today, I’d like to talk about the practical side. So far, from Timothy, we’ve been looking at Paul setting him on good ground—talking about him being beloved, knowing that the Lord Himself is praying for him. We’ve seen that the Lord wants us to respond to a calling, that we have a calling, and that He would have us respond to it. We’ve also seen what the Lord has given us: He has given us His Holy Spirit. He has not left us as orphans. He has not said, “Hey, you’re on your own now.” He has given us the Spirit that we might work the works of God. Last time, we saw that He has also given us His word.
Now the question is: what do we do with all these things? This time, I’d like to talk about the practical charges that Paul gives Timothy. There are eight of them that have really struck me. Then, after these, I believe the Lord has given me other messages from Timothy, concerning three people mentioned in 2 Timothy, and then perhaps something from 2 Peter and 1 John, Him willing.
These are not verse-by-verse studies, but things from this letter specifically to this person. In looking at Timothy, we should look at ourselves. Now, I know these are called the pastoral epistles—1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus—and if we’re looking for loopholes, we’ll say, “Well, this is written to pastors, so it really doesn’t apply to me.”
Timothy was put in the position of overseeing the church at Ephesus, and Paul is talking to him. But we throw out the baby with the bathwater if we say this does not apply to us. We need to be careful, because the word is good for us. It is good for teaching, for reproof, and for all those things we talked about last time.
As we look into the word today, we should ask, “Lord, what are these charges that Paul has to Timothy?” I believe they are the charges that the Lord has to us as believers. We have to take them seriously, because the Lord does not give charges frivolously. He wants a return for what He gives and for what He says. If He wants a return, that means there is grace available for us to give that return.
We cannot simply say, “Oh, gee whiz, we’re never going to be good enough. We just can’t do these things.” A lot of times, that’s what we do. We listen to messages and say, “Oh my gosh, how can I ever do these things? I can’t.” Then we have a spirit of heaviness around us for the rest of the week, the rest of the month, or even years.
The Lord has not given us a spirit of heaviness. Even as we’ve sung today, it talks about joy. One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy. It is joy because we find ourselves enabled by the living God, by the Spirit of the living God, to do His very bidding and to do His will. That should bring us joy.
There are eight things. I am going to read them in chronological order, though I am not going to go over them in chronological order.
From 2 Timothy 1:6:
Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
You can put your name in there if you want.
From 2 Timothy 1:13–14:
Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me,
in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.
That good thing which was committed to you,
keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.
From 2 Timothy 2:8:
Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David,
was raised from the dead according to my gospel.
From 2 Timothy 2:15:
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God,
a worker who does not need to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.
From 2 Timothy 4:2 and 5:
Preach the word!
Be ready in season and out of season.
But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions,
do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
We want to start with the charge in 2 Timothy 2:8: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” All Paul’s exhortations hinge on this one. There will be no charges without this being foremost in all that we say.
That is one reason why we sang that hymn, and why we read about Peter in Luke 24. Peter came and saw that the Lord was no longer in the grave. He had risen. Peter came, looked, and then went away marveling—or really wondering—“What does this mean?”
You have to understand that when Peter went away, he had denied the Lord. In Luke 22, he denied the Lord three times. The Lord had said, “When the rooster crows, you will have denied Me three times.” Then the rooster crowed, Peter denied Him, and the Lord looked at him. Peter went out weeping.
Peter was not weeping because the Lord was being crucified. He was weeping for himself because he saw who he was. And I do not think the Lord was looking at Peter saying, “See, I told you, Peter.” I think the Lord was looking at him and saying, “Peter, I love you. I just love you.”
We know that the Lord loved him, because the Lord appeared first to Peter. So Peter was marveling: “What does this mean?” Then the Lord came and restored this brother in the way that He did.
What does this idea of remembering mean? We can think of remembering as merely recalling facts. We can say, “I remember Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and that started World War I. I remember Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers, two-nothing. I think Dale Mitchell was the last guy struck out.” Yeah, I have a great memory, don’t I? That’s why I teach history.
But one definition of remember, and I think this is what Paul means, is to keep in one’s mind. I do not mean merely keeping it filed away. I mean keeping it at the forefront.
Suppose my wife were leaving on a trip and would be gone for a year. As I was weeping and watching her go away—on a boat, we’ll say—and I said, “Remember me,” what would I actually be saying? “Keep me there. Keep me fresh there.” Because if you do not keep me fresh there, you are going to forget about me. You might fall in love with someone else.
When Paul says, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” he is saying: put this at the forefront. When you wake up, let this be the first thing that comes to your mind: Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
What does that mean? Does it simply mean that He got up out of the grave and said, “Okay, here I am. I’ll see you guys”? No. First of all, it means that God is satisfied.
If God was not satisfied with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, He would never have raised Him from the dead. His wrath and His righteousness have been completely satisfied. There is nothing else to add.
Sometimes you get a meal and think it needs something more. I salt everything, and my wife hates that. She says, “I already salted it.” I say, “Yeah, but it needs more salt.” It is as if something must be added further down the line. But to God, it is completely done. He is completely satisfied. He has given His amen: “So be it. It is done. I am satisfied with it.”
Is that not what we read in Isaiah 53:10? It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, that He would take away the sin of His people. He is satisfied—completely satisfied. We do not have to think, “Oh, gee whiz, what do I have to do? I know the Lord died for me, but what else?” No. He is satisfied.
We have to live on that by faith. We have to take that by faith and say, “I believe what He said. I do not care how I feel. He is satisfied.” It is not my feeling that counts anyway; it is His. His satisfaction is shown by His raising Christ from the dead, by demonstrating with power how satisfied He was, and by seating Him at His right hand.
Secondly, what does it mean that Christ has risen? I have been reconciled. Nobody knew that better than Peter.
Peter denied the Lord three times, and then the Lord Jesus came to him first and said, in effect, “Peter, I forgive you. I know who you are. You cannot fool Me.” Sometimes we think we have to fool the Lord into accepting us. We think we have to shield ourselves with some good work and say, “Okay, now You are okay with me?”
That is not it. We are reconciled. He has nothing against us, because His wrath, His righteousness, and all His righteous requirements have been satisfied in Jesus Christ and in what He did on the cross—not only in what He did on the cross, but in His whole life. His whole life satisfied the Father. That is why He could offer it up: a pure, spotless Lamb.
God accepted it with power. Therefore, He can say to us, “I receive you.” Charles Wesley wrote:
My God is reconciled;
His pardoning voice I hear;
He owns me for His child;
I can no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And “Father, Abba, Father,” cry.
We have been brought to Him reconciled. Do you believe that? Then walk like you believe it. You cannot simply say, “I am reconciled.” If you are reconciled, then you walk like you are reconciled. You go into His presence. You give Him the praise and thanks He deserves.
You say, “Lord, I thank You that through Jesus Christ, I have been reconciled to You. I come and present myself as alive from the dead. Here I am. Take me.” And He will. He will take you just as you are in Jesus Christ. He will not leave you that way, though.
Thirdly, a great victory has been won. A great victory has been won, and a great victory is yet to be manifested when He comes back.
When He rose from the dead, He conquered death and hell. He conquered the curse. That is a wonderful statement: the curse has been broken.
Those of you who have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe know something of this picture. The victory began at that little stone table when Aslan gave himself up for Edmund. We are all Edmunds, brothers and sisters, but there is one Aslan—our Lord Jesus. What a wonderful allegory.
If Aslan had simply been slain on the stone table and left there, Edmund would only have escaped with his life, still to be ruled by that evil and cruel monarch. There would be no joy in that, and there would be no hope either.
If Christ has not risen, we are of all men most miserable, most to be pitied. How can we please God? We cannot, because all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. But a great victory has been won, and a great victory is yet to come. We will see our God present His Christ to rule over all the earth when He comes back.
What a hope we have. How can we look poorly at ourselves and not look at what the Lord has done and simply say, “Thank You”? How can we not be full of praise for what He has done?
I was raised Catholic, and this is just so real to me. In the Catholic Church at Easter, they have the crucifix. A crucifix is different from a cross because it has the body of the Lord Jesus hanging on it. On Good Friday, they would veil the body because it represented Him being in the tomb. Then on Easter Sunday, they unveiled Him—and He was still on the cross.
“Lo! He sets in blood no more.” He does not. That is why Protestants do not have the body of Jesus on their crosses. The cross is a symbol of what He has done, but He is risen. A great victory has been won for us.
Fourthly, a new life has been given to us—a whole new life, a life that we have to experience. Some of us do not know anything about this new life because we still live in the old life. But this new life has been made available to us through the Holy Spirit because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
Kenny was talking in the testimony about what was in the ark: the rod that had budded. Life came out of a dead rod. How did it get there? The rod did not suddenly say, “Oh, I have to put my roots in the ground,” because they did not even put it in the ground. They put it in the ark. There was no possible way except by the miraculous working of God.
Jesus said:
I am the resurrection, and the life.
It is not simply, “I rose from the dead.” It is, “I have risen, and My life—this life that is victorious over sin and death—I give to you.”
This is yours. This is My gift to you. This is salvation. Salvation is not, “I have forgiven your sins; now try and please Me. I dare you.” No. God would never be like that. He has given us a whole life: the life of the risen Lord Jesus.
Finally, and I think this is the most important one of all, Peter said at Pentecost, at the end of his sermon, that God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ.
He now is Lord. Do we not sing:
He is Lord, He is Lord,
He is risen from the dead, and He is Lord.
Every knee shall bow,
Every tongue confess
That Jesus Christ is Lord.
Brothers and sisters, this is the testimony of God to the world: Jesus Christ is Lord. He has to be Lord in us—not merely a generic Lord somewhere in heaven, but Lord in my very life.
That is what it is all about. That is what the world wants to see. They are looking for this One. They are looking for this life, and they are to see it in us: Jesus Christ is risen, and He is Lord.
We are to have this at the forefront of our minds, not buried in our minds like a document in some file. At the Lord’s table, we remember the Lord. Often, our remembering looks back and says, “This is what the Lord has done for me.” That is good, righteous, and necessary.
But to keep in mind means this is now. He died then; now He has risen. Now He is Lord. Now all these things are mine. We are to live in this now, not merely live in the past.
Please do not think that I am belittling what the Lord did on the cross. The fact that He has risen infers that He died on Calvary’s cross. That is the basis. He died first, then He rose. But we are to live in this present condition: Jesus Christ is risen, and all that means for me.
When I wake up in the morning, my first word should be, “Hallelujah! I serve a risen Savior. My Savior is alive.”
Everything else is based on this. You cannot serve God outside of knowing this. You cannot. All your good works are filthy rags. You have to serve in the power and life of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
It is not for us to look down into ourselves and say, “Oh, I can never do this.” It is not you. It is Jesus Christ. Oh, that we could get hold of that truth. It would revolutionize us. It would make us different people.
Instead of walking around saying, “Oh, I am just suffering because I cannot do this,” we would walk with our heads high—not in pride, but in joy. Our heads would be high because the burden has rolled off of us.
How many are carrying a burden because they are trying to please God the wrong way? It is like the Flintstones. I used to think their cars were so cool: two big stone wheels, and they flapped their feet to get going. But how would you like to drive that thing uphill? It is all manpower.
Take your SUV, remove the engine, and say, “Let’s take it for a spin.” It would be a lot different. Yet a lot of us are living our Christian lives that way because we do not know any better.
It is like when Paul met those brothers in Acts 19 and asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit?” They said, “We did not even know there was a Holy Spirit.” Some of us are living like we do not know that. I am here to tell you: the Spirit has been given to us so that we can live unto God in the power of the resurrection.
I know I am going to step on toes here, because in studying this, my toes got crushed. Please do not take things personally. Look at them in the light of the resurrection and in the light of what the Lord has really planned for us—not in the light of, “Oh, I have to do this.”
In 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul says:
Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
A lot of people say this is the ministerial gift and position given to Timothy through ordination. I am not focusing on the laying on of hands. I want to focus on this: “Stir up the gift of God which is in you.”
Do you know that you have a gift from God that is not a natural gift? I have some natural gifts. I am a good athlete—or I was a good athlete. There was a time. You get old, and some things go, but the shot never goes. The legs go, but the shot is still there. It may take me a few times, but it gets there.
Here is that word again: remind. “I remind you to stir up the gift.” Do you know that you have a gift? You all have a spiritual gift. Some of you have more than one gift. But do you know you have one? Do you know what it is? If you do not know what it is, how are you going to stir it up?
Stirring up is like tending a fire. This is fireplace season. Gas stoves are cheating. There is nothing like building a fire. Guys will back me up: there is nothing like it.
But you cannot leave a fire alone, because it will go out. You have to bring more wood, tend the kindling, move things around, and let the air in. I do not even like to let the fire get too far down. I like to stoke it, because then it gets really hot.
That is what it means to stir up the gift. You are giving the Lord air. You are giving Him room to work. It can also mean to stir to a flame, to keep at full flame, or to keep active. Activate your gift.
The gift given to us is not the same in every one of us. We are one fellowship, but we are not the fellowship of one gift. The Lord puts gifts in each one as He wills.
A gift is a manifestation of Christ. It is Christ manifested. It is a deposit of Christ in you that is to be worked out of you. I am not talking about the Holy Spirit Himself, but about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There is no use of spiritual gifts and no spiritual service to God and His people without a spiritual life. What is a spiritual life? It is a life lived out of fellowship with God. More specifically, it is a life lived out of a vital relationship with God.
Let me define vital. If I broke my back and became a paraplegic, it would not mean that my legs were no longer part of my body. It would not mean that they were no longer attached to my head. But it would mean that the vital connection between the head and the legs had been severed.
Therefore, those legs could not serve the body or function as the head would like, because that connection had been severed. Unless you are in a vital relationship with the Lord, you cannot function as He intends.
If you are not living in that relationship, spiritually you are asleep. I would even say that spiritually you are dead—not in the sense of going to hell, but in the sense that you cannot respond to any stimulus from the Head. You are as good as dead because you cannot respond.
The Lord has really convicted me about this: many of us as Christians are living life as if God does not exist. We go to prayer meeting. We do Christian things. But then we say, “I am just going to do what I want to do.” It is as if God does not even exist.
If you are living your life like that, you are not going to know your gift. Your gift is not going to function. Like that paraplegic, it will be lost to the body.
I used to drive a quadriplegic man to a Bible study. His limbs were so atrophied—so thin, not what a leg or arm was supposed to be. Yet praise the Lord, he had the joy of the Lord in him. But when you look at atrophied limbs, you know that is not what God intended.
It is the same way for us. God does not mean for us to be outside of this vital relationship with Him. He has paid the price for it. He has grafted us in—the wild olive branch to the good one. We have been grafted in.
Spiritual life is not measured by outward service. Look at the Pharisees: they were doing all sorts of things. Sometimes we mimic what we see, even though there is no life in us. People may think, “Oh, that person is so spiritual,” but it is only a façade hiding our real condition.
Spiritual life is not measured by how many meetings you attend. I can go to meetings, sit, and take notes. That is not spiritual life; that is simply sitting and taking notes. I can do that in a classroom. Nor is lack of spiritual life measured by how many meetings you do not attend. We need to stop judging in ways like that, because it is not right.
Spiritual life is not measured by the authors of the books you read. We can say, “Have you read R. C. Sproul? F. B. Meyer? T. Austin-Sparks? Watchman Nee?” Then we can think that because we read certain people, we are somehow more spiritual. That is not a measure of spiritual life.
It is not even measured by the way we talk. Sometimes we think someone must be spiritual because he speaks English with a certain accent or says “Isaiah” in a certain way. We can imitate the intonations of people we think are spiritual—even in prayer—because we think it makes us spiritual. These are outward things.
How is spiritual life measured? It is measured by answering this question: Is He Lord? In your relationship with the Lord, is He Lord? Is He the One pressing in on you, the One to whom you are bowing the knee?
It is measured by your relationship with the brothers and sisters. Do you love them—not merely in word, but in deed and in truth? It is measured by your relationship to the world. Are you the light of life, not merely a light showing what is wrong?
The world does not need us merely to tell them what is wrong. They know things are wrong. They want to see what is right. They want to see life. That is how spiritual life is measured.
What about your spiritual gifts? Some younger ones may never have thought about this. You may say, “I did not know I had a spiritual gift,” or, “How do I find out what my gift is?”
First of all, you will find your gift only through your relationship with the Lord and through your relationship in the Lord with the brothers and sisters. That is how you will find your gift. You cannot simply read a book and say, “Okay, this is it.”
Spiritual gifts are not natural gifts. They are not personality profiles or natural abilities. Our gifts are spiritual.
Another reason we sometimes do not know our spiritual gifts is that we have the strange idea that gifts only function in a meeting. We think that because a meeting is the only time we are all together, gifts can only operate in a meeting.
But Christ is more than a meeting. The body of Christ is more than a meeting. This house is not where it is at. We are the body of Christ. It is how we are related to one another—not merely related in a meeting, but related in life.
Some gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4 include:
Service includes hospitality and all sorts of practical service. As you go through the New Testament, how many of these gifts do you see happening in a meeting? You see some. The paralytic being lowered through the roof happened during a meeting. The man with dropsy was encountered in a gathering. But how many gifts happen outside meetings?
I am not saying we should not look for gifts in meetings. I am saying we should not limit the Lord to working in meetings or limit gifts to functioning in meetings.
Another reason we may not know our gifts is that we want certain gifts. We say, “I will take prophet. I will take teacher. I wish I had miracles. I will take healings.” We want gifts that put us in the forefront, where people can say, “Oh, he has the gift of healing. He has miracles.”
But what does James say about teachers? Do not let many become teachers, because they will receive a stricter judgment. Everything I am saying here, I will be held accountable for. That is a big thing. So watch what you desire.
Body ministry is not limited to this place. It is found in the relationships among all the saints. Outside of these walls, Christ still goes with us. The house of God is moving all over the place because we are all in it, not merely in these walls.
Spiritual ministry is not limited to meetings or conferences. We should be serving all the time. We should be using our gifts all the time, because the life of Christ is in us, and these gifts are the manifestation of that life.
I want to talk about a couple of what we might call smaller gifts, because these gifts are so important. Consider giving. I am not talking only about giving money. Some have money, and the Lord has given them jobs and resources so they can give more.
But Paul said that some gave more than money; they gave themselves. Giving yourself—that is giving. Are you a giving person? Is that your gift, that you give of yourself to the saints?
How about mercy? How many saints need to be ministered to by this gift? I am not merely talking about the fact that the Lord has mercy on us, wonderful as that is. I am talking about the Lord coming through a brother or sister and showing mercy.
Mercy knows that there is a need in the one who needs mercy, and the one who gives mercy has what is needed for that person. The Lord has given the adequacy.
If you have the gift of mercy, do you know how you are trained in that gift? Paul speaks about it in 2 Corinthians 1:3–4:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble,
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
How is that gift honed? The Lord lets you face trial and tribulation so that, when you see a brother or sister going through something really hard, you are able to sit alongside them and strengthen them.
You may wonder why you are going through these things. You may have the gift of mercy, and the Lord is honing it so that He can use you. People are not simply going to look at you and say, “Oh, you are so kind.” They are going to see God Himself reaching down to them and comforting them.
Is that not a testimony? Is that not a worthy thing—to so represent God that He would use you to show mercy to someone else, even when no one else knows about it? It may be only you and the person to whom you are showing mercy. Is God pleased? Is God blessed? Is the body built up? Yes, to all of those.
How about helps? We may think, “Oh, yes, I have the gift of helps. I stack up the chairs.” But that is not really the gift of helps. The Greek word is antilēmpsis, and it means to lay hold of so as to support.
One person said this gift is a function of those who devote themselves to ministering to the saints because they are aware. They are aware.
Our God is aware of everything. That is why you have to be in relationship with Him to know your gift. Tozer wrote, God Tells the Man Who Cares. That is the whole thing.
It is getting out of this “me, me, me” mentality and seeing outside ourselves what God sees. I see this person hurting, and the Lord moves me to prop that person up.
Helps is anything done for the poor, the weak, or the outcast brethren. Are these not the ones who need the touch of God?
Why are brothers and sisters outcasts? Why do some people feel judged? It is not because they believe in Christ. Sometimes it is because of little things that disrupt us: views on politics, schooling, or child-rearing. Sometimes these things cut people off and make them feel judged.
We have no right to judge another believer. Only God has that right. We need to take that seriously. We need to be in touch with the Lord and ask, “Who are those who are outcast?” Then those with this gift can come alongside them.
Do not shun gifts that seem small. These are the gifts that may be most needed. Yes, we have ministry, and praise the Lord that we have ministry. But if it is only ministry, what is Christianity? It is nothing. It is merely words.
Christianity is the life of Christ in believers ministering to one another by the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is what it is all about.
That is why we are a city set on a hill: others see your good works and glorify God. The attention is not on you. They are seeing God in you.
God wants His people doing the works He has given them to do. We are His workmanship, created for good works. This is not saying that we must do these things in order for God to smile upon us. This is what God has for us: to build one another up, not merely in doctrine, but in love.
“I love you, so I will lay down my life.” That is God, and that is what He says should be us, because His life is in us.
Sometimes it is hard for us to lay down our lives for one another because we do not see each other. Who wants to lay down his life for someone he does not see or care about?
Jesus said:
Greater love has no one than this,
than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
I am not saying we all have to be buddy-buddy. But a friend is someone who says, “I will go the extra mile with you because I know you.” It is not simply that I am attracted to you because you like baseball. I am attracted to Christ in you. We are being built together.
A friend is related. That is the big thing: being related, not merely in a meeting setting.
You will discover your gift only when you start seeking to serve God—not saying, “God, what can I get from You?” Kennedy said in his inaugural speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Let us Christianize that: ask not what God can do for you, but how you can serve Him.
It is a whole change of heart. When we begin doing that, coming into vital relationship with God and becoming related to one another, God begins to show us. We become aware—not merely of needs in general, but of specific things that God makes us notice.
Otherwise, we could be aware of all kinds of needs and run around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to make everything different. That is not what I am saying. God has a gift for you, and you are to function in that gift. He will show you how to use it, when to use it, and with whom to use it.
But all of that comes out of relationship—relationship with the Lord and relationship with His people.
How do we stir up this gift? The only way is by obeying the leading of the Spirit. As the Spirit leads you and you obey, all of a sudden it will fan into flame. But if you ignore it, it will grow cold. It will remain unused.
In obeying the leading of the Spirit, complete the work He has given you to do. You may say, “I cannot picture myself doing that. I just cannot do this.” It is like the feeding of the five thousand.
The Lord brings you into a situation where people are hungry. You ask, “Lord, what are You going to do?” He says, “You give them something to eat.” You say, “What do You mean, me? I do not have anything.” He says, “What do you have?” “I have five fish. They are not even mine.” “Bring them to Me.”
How was that multiplied? This is all a matter of faith—walking in faith. You go out as the Lord leads you, and you may say, “I do not have what it takes.” The adequacy is not in you. It is in the gift.
God has given you a gift adequate for the very need to which you are to minister. You are right: you are not adequate for it. Maybe you are too proud. But the gift is adequate, and that is why God has given it to you. He wants to minister. He wants to touch that situation.
The Lord never backed down when the disciples wanted to send the hungry people away. He said, “You feed them.” Brothers and sisters, He will not back down from the things He asks us to do either.
In having a gift and functioning in a gift, there is always the laying down of your life. It is the life of Christ that serves. You have to get out of the way, bow the knee, and take those steps. Then the Lord will fill you as He sees fit.
What do you do about your gift? Do business with it. God gave you a gift not to hide it, but to do business with it. In the parable of the talents, people received different amounts, but they did business with what they received. That is what God is after: do business.
We might ask, “What is the Spirit saying to the church?” The Spirit is saying to us as the body of Christ:
Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?
Do you know that? Then blessed are you when you do it.
Heavenly Father, we can go away from this time feeling really, really bad. But Lord, You have not spoken to us to make us feel bad. You have spoken to show us what You have for us: that You have given us gifts, and that these gifts are to bless others.
You have called us to be blessings. Oh, what better news could there be, Lord, than that I could bless another? That we could bless another? And that we do not even have to say, “I do not have what it takes.”
But You have given it. You have risen from the dead so that we might have the life that serves You and is acceptable to You. Lord, take away our idea that this is just another thing on the plate that we cannot do.
Put in us Your real thought: “Draw near to Me, that I can show you what I have given you. Draw near to Me, so I can show you where I want it done. Draw near to Me.”
Oh Lord, this is what we ask. Do not let us go away feeling bad and beating our hearts. Help us draw near to You and say, “Oh Lord, what is it that You have for me? I want to see what You have for me. I want to be working the works of God that You have for me.”
Oh Lord, make that our attitude. We pray in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.