Month: May 2025

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Using our gifts

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10 NIV

God is gracious to us, everyone of us. He has given each of us at least one gift, if not more, that we can use in our lives. Our choice is if we use it to serve Him or if we use it to serve ourselves. When I say we are given a gift or two, I mean that God has placed in each person a natural ability to do something. That natural ability is not present for all the things we can do, but typically for the specific gift that God has graced that person with. I am not saying that the natural ability means that you don’t have to learn things, work at things but the process of learning what you need in order to use your gift, is not typically difficult.

For example, someone who has the gift of teaching, still has to learn the material, how to present the information to others and how to prepare the material in a way that the desired amount can be covered. However, as they are learning those skills, they may not have many challenges in learning it, it may seem as if it just comes naturally to them.

Some examples of other gifts are the ability to play music, encourage others, lead, preach, provide comfort to others. This is not an all inclusive list, but only a few of the many gifts that God has graciously giving to people throughout time. Sometimes we struggle to figure out what our gift or gifts are. You would think it would not be a hard thing to figure out since I believe we have some natural ability to do it, but we don’t always want to acknowledge what our gift is and that can happen for a few different reasons.

Sometimes we just don’t want to use the gift that God has given us. For example, a person who is naturally musical may not want to be recognized as having this gift because they don’t want to play the instrument or sing in front of others. Another way to look at this is to think of the person who has the gift of hospitality and is amazing at it, but doesn’t want to do it because maybe they want to teach. At this point, our desires sometimes influence our decisions about whether we will or will not use our God-given gift.

There are challenges we may face if we try to pursue using a gift that God has not given us, and that is that we may not be very successful at it. Not accepting that God has given us a certain gift is one issue that we face as human beings. Another other issue is the idea of wanting a gift like someone else has. This is not just wanting to have a different gift and trying to pursue it, but I am referring to wanting a different gift because you have seen what having that gift looks like for someone else.

God has given us the gifts that He has deemed to be the perfect gift for us to use to further His kingdom. If we are willing to stop and remember that God is perfect and knows best always, then we should be willing to submit to His guidance and pursue using the gift He has given us.

We need to each figure out for ourselves what our gift is from God. There are assessments that can be completed to help us figure out what gift we have and the assessments are pretty accurate. When we do figure it out, then we should pray asking God to show us how we can use it. It is a gift from God and can be used to further God’s kingdom.

If you don’t know what gift you have been given by God, here is a link to an assessment that can help point you in the right direction. https://gifts.churchgrowth.org/spiritual-gifts-survey/

This is only one of many that are available on the internet. I pray that you are using your gift or gifts to being others to Christ and if you don’t know what your gift is, that you explore the many tools available to determine it.

Below are some questions that you can answer. Again, I would love to hear your responses if you are willing to put them in the comments section. If you don’t want to leave them where others can read them, you can private message me on my Facebook page ‘For His Honor.’

Do you know what your gift is?

Do you know if you have more than one?

How are you using your gift?

How would you like to use your gift?

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Walk in the Light

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7 NIV

John is talking to believers, children of God, in 1 John. It is believed that he is talking to those who were living in the area that is now Turkey. The believers were struggling with false teachers and these false teachers were effective. This led the believers to begin questioning what they believed, they were having trouble telling what was the truth from what was a lie.

This is something that I know many people struggle with today. We want to believe what we hear and see on social media, what we see on the news, what we read in papers, but it is hard to discern what is truth and what is lies. The devil is very effective in distributing lies. He makes sure that when he is telling the lie that it has some truth to it, that it is not so far out of reason that it can be easily believed as being the truth.

As followers of Christ, children of God, co-heirs with Christ, we have an advantage that non-believers do not have. We have God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. We are able to take the information we are given, whether it is from an outside source such as social media, the news, etc. or from inside our own minds and check it against the most consistent, reliable source there is, God’s word.

The light that John is writing about in this verse is Jesus. John is writing this letter to these believers because he wants to help them in their walk of faith. He is trying to lead them as they grow in their relationship with Jesus. What Jesus had been teaching during His ministry was a very new way of thinking for those who heard it. Some of the new believers had not been believers very long, and were struggling in changing what they had believed for years. John was reminding them that Jesus was the Light and was shining light into a dark world.

The dark world was not only the world of the unbeliever, but was also the world of those who proclaimed to be the religious elite of the Jewish nation. There were so many laws that had been created by man to accompany God’s laws, that keeping them was impossible. People began to not worship God and want to follow God’s laws, but instead became obsessed with the law and feared breaking it.

John is telling them that a light has come that will free all of them from this darkness. That light is Jesus. The challenge with follow Jesus, is that you have to actually follow Him. You can’t say you are a follower and then not change your path. John tells us we are to walk in the light, and walking, as we all know, requires action. When we walk in the light, we are walking with Jesus. What does walking look like?

When we decide to be a follower of Christ, we are choosing to change our behaviors so that they are in line with what God has laid out in His word. We try to be as consistently obedient as we can be. We will never be perfect while we are here on earth, but we strive to do what God is asking as much as humanly possible. The more we live in obedience to God, the more we are growing in our walk with God, the more we are walking in the Light.

John states that we have fellowship with one another. I believe that John does not simply mean that we go to church and see each other on Sundays. Fellowship in this context can also mean having relationships with other believers that are positive, peaceful and supportive. It is beneficial for us as believers to support and encourage each other as we grow in our faith, to maintain peaceful interactions with each other.

The last part of the verse says that ‘the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.’ If we think of light as having the ability to remove darkness, we can see that Light can be cleansing. Jesus cleans us with His blood and because He is the Light that takes away the darkness of our sin. This occurs all day, every day, as we are incapable of not sinning, we need perpetual cleansing from Jesus. That cleansing is not just for our guilt, but sin leaves a stain on our lives, on our very beings. Jesus washes that away with His blood. He took on, became sin when He died on the cross for each one of us. He defeated sin and death so that we can live in eternity with Him.

I pray that if you do not already have a personal relationship with Jesus, that you would not wait another minute and in this moment, commit your life to Him.

Below are some questions that you can answer. Again, I would love to hear your responses if you are willing to put them in the comments section. If you don’t want to leave them where others can read them, you can private message me on my Facebook page ‘For His Honor.’

How do you maintain fellowship with the believers around you, since we are all imperfect?

We all have moments where we fall back into the darkness, how do you find your way back to the Light?

Since our lives are our witness, how do you show God’s love and light to others?

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Witnesses in Jerusalem

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 NIV

Easter was a few weeks ago. During the time after Easter, after the resurrection, many people saw Jesus in His glorified form. Not fully glorified because He had not ascended to the Father yet, but glorified none the less. Jesus ascended 40 days after the resurrection and during those last days with His disciples, He was giving them final pieces of instruction.

In this verse Jesus tells them that they will receive power from the Holy Spirit. I can’t imagine what they may have been thinking as they heard that they were going to receive power through a spirit. They knew that Jesus was the Son of God, and they knew that He had given them the power to perform miracles in God’s name because they had done it while they were with Jesus.

In Luke 9:1-6, we read “When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. 5 If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” 6 So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:1-6 NIV

Jesus had empowered His disciples to spread the great news of the Gospel. The difference between what happened in Luke, before the crucifixion and what was happening, after the resurrection, was that Jesus was not going to be with them in person any longer. He did not go with them in Luke when He sent them out, but they were able to come back to Him when they were done. Now He was not going to be physically here on earth with them any longer.

As they traveled with Jesus, they went wherever Jesus went, they did not go alone very often. However, the idea of being witnesses is what was intended all along. Jesus had been preparing them for this very moment, when they would be without Him. He had prepared them for this the entire time they walked with Him. After Jesus was gone, the disciples continued to follow His instructions so they could be the witnesses He wanted them to be.

In Acts chapter 2, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit at what we now call Pentecost. This is the beginning of them spreading across the world, as they knew it, becoming the proclaimers of the great news of Jesus and God’s love. The act of being witnesses for Jesus did not end with the disciples, but continues today with each one of us who have a personal relationship with Jesus. Many people think that you have to be a missionary or a pastor to be a witness for Jesus. That is not true, everyone of us who has that personal relationship with Jesus can witness about what He has done for us in our lives, what He has meant to us and the changes we have made thanks to His indwelling power. Our everyday lives, how we handle situations, the language we use, how we treat others, those are all ways that we are witnessing either for Jesus or for the devil. I pray that it is for Jesus.

Below are some questions for you to think about and answer if you wish. If you want to leave a comment with the question and your answers, I would love to hear from you.

Do you consider yourself a witness for Jesus and what He has done in your life?

In what ways does your witness demonstrate the love of God?

In what ways have you seen the Holy Spirit at work in your life since you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

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Moving forward with posts

Good evening, I wanted to thank you for reading my posts. I have been silent for a while now but want to get back to writing and publishing my blog. I want to only post what God leads me to post. I am going to try and do one larger post with questions each week. It is a format that I have found helpful in my studies. I would love to hear from anyone about different methods that help you study God’s word. My first post in this platform is titled “Witnesses in Jerusalem”. I hope what God has led me to write helps those who read it.