#1095 – Resurrecting Gifts

I’ve always enjoyed singing. In the fifth grade I told my mom that I wanted to be in the children’s musical at church, much to her surprise. I performed in our church’s choirs for children and junior high students. In high school I started singing on our high school worship team and by the time I graduated I was leading worship. For five years after I graduated from high school I led worship on a regular basis. In the ten years since then, though, I haven’t led a lot of worship.

This weekend, though, that gift is getting resurrected.

I have the opportunity to co-lead worship this weekend in our church’s worship services. I’m very excited for the opportunity, but also a little nervous. At our church I’m best known for giving sermons and going off the rails while giving announcements. Singing is something new and I hope that the people in our congregation will accept me in that role.

I’m also nervous because singing is a gift that I haven’t used in a while. I haven’t been nervous about preaching for a while; that muscle definitely gets a lot of use. My singing muscles really only get a workout in the shower and no one is around for those performances.

We really shouldn’t be nervous about using any of our gifts, whether they get a lot of use or we only dust them off every so often. Our gifts aren’t just innate talents or genetic abilities. The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual gifts when we commit our lives to Christ. So more than just mere talents to be used for our own desires, gifts have been given to us for a very specific purpose.

Spiritual gifts are given to us so that we can encourage the body of Christ and glorify God. So whatever gifts we have, we should never be too nervous about using them. If our focus is on encouraging our brothers and sisters and glorifying God, then we’ve got nothing to worry about. When we start to use our God-given spiritual gifts for our own purposes, though, then we should be a lot more than nervous.

So I’ll try not to be nervous about singing in church this weekend. Instead I’ll focus on glorifying God, encouraging others and drinking a lot of Throat Coat tea.

What are your spiritual gifts? How often do you get to use them?