God Says You Are Capable - August 29, 2013

2 Timothy 1:9
9 For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.

God says you have been gifted for ministry to serve other people. Every Christian is a minister. That doesn't mean every Christian is a pastor, but we are all ministers. Anytime you're using your talents and gifts to help others you're ministering.

Notice the Bible verse above says, "He saved us for his holy work." You are saved to serve.

You may be thinking, "How do I know what my ministry is?" You look at your talents, your gifts, and your abilities. You look at how God shaped you. God wants you to use those talents and gifts to help other people. Every time you do that, that's called ministry: nothing fancy, scary, or supernatural about it. It's just helping others.

Can you minister in a sales office? Yes, you can. Can you minister as an accountant? Yes, you can. Can you minister driving a truck? Sure! Anytime you're helping other people in the name of Jesus, you're ministering.

In fact, God says you're necessary in the church. You're a necessary part of this family. Look at it this way, if I don't use my talents - you get cheated. If you don't use your talents - I get cheated. Everybody else in the congregation gets cheated.

We are all on praise team which means that we are all musically talent so we decided to serve God with our talents. We are leading others into worship.
God has given all of us various different types of talents, and we should figure out a way to use our talents for God.
What we should take from todays devo is that God saved us for the sole purpose for us to serve him.
By using our talents for God we can learn from it and realize our other talents. it says "You look at how God as shaped you" Using our talents for God can change us and and help us mature spiritually.
The past year, I personally have changed drastically and I have matured drastically spiritually. If I did not take the opportunity to use my talents for God I know that I wouldn't be what I am today

We were saved for a reason. Products are valued based on their capabilities, what they could do and how well they do it. Similarly, we're saved to do something for His own greater purpose. Our lives are His, yet He gives us the free will to make our own decisions. He knows our true capabilities and how great they are. If he had not, we wouldn't have been saved in the first place. Although our capabilities may seem short in comparison to God's standards, He challenges us to see what we could do for Him. He'll even be pleased at our failures, just as long as we don't throw in the towel. In the future, I know that we'll all struggle with what He expects from us, and I pray that we'd all receive guidance, through people and through Him.

I guess this one calls for us to really be more well rounded as a Christian.

Honestly, a lot of what is being mentioned in this is applicable for my life. Well mainly because of the lack of it. I think being a praise team member, as much as it helped me, it messed me up in a sense that it narrowed my goals as a christian. Being a praise team member made me focus on praising God as much as it made me neglect my duty as a christian to focus on spreading the gospel.

I think that's something that we as praise team members are more prone to than any other christian. We're more prone to it in the same way a drummer is prone to being tone deaf. The difference is: the praise team member is told so that its job is to lead the congregation into worship. But only being told that is making us forget the main job of a christian which is to spread the gospel in the same way being told to work on a project makes a student forget about his/her homework.

Well at least until now, when I'm being told to shape up and remember what my duties are.

Well all this is just how I saw it apply to my life, but maybe you guys can feel the same.

After reading this devo I'm reminded of one of my best friends back in IL. Although he was not serving as a missionary or in the church, he had a love of God and served him in everyday school life. He shared his faith openly and publicly during class discussions- regardless of the mockery it sometimes caused him. His strong faith was a huge encouragement to the Christians in the community which was mostly filled with Jews, and I strongly believe his faith convicted some of the non-believers in the area. He is just an ordinary high school kid, but God made him in his own perfect image- to be capable of serving Him in any situation.
Because we all have different spiritual gifts, we should use them to our full potential to encourage and bring our brothers and sisters towards a deeper relationship with God. My friend is a perfect example of this, using his spiritual gift of faith- unshakeable despite the harsh words of classmates and what his biology teacher may say, to bring both believers and non-believers closer towards God. As praise team members we use our gifts of music to bring God glory and to lead the congregation into praise. I find it beautiful how God uses all of our specific and specialized gifts, not just for praise team members, to further His Kingdom.

I like this message because a lot of times, I think that we are all terrified at the prospect of sharing the gospel to our friends or people at our school. It's comforting to know that we can minister to others in a different way than just flat our speaking to people about Jesus. For example, I feel like I can minister to people by praising him with songs while others can minister to others through instruments, sports, godly actions or basically anything that God has gifted you with. I don't think ministry should necessarily be something that we consciously do in front of non-believers. It's something that should be shown through the way we live our life. Just like Christianity shouldn't be something that we consciously make ourselves do. If we really love God it should show through the way we live our life- and therefore show to other people. Living a godly life is the best way to minister to others.

Any talent or ability, whether it's as straightforwardly put as singing or whether it's something that can't always be put as easily into words, can be used for the glory of God.
What i got out of this devo is that you can and more importantly should minister doing pretty much anything. We generally do tend to put christianity in one part of our lives and for the most part live exactly like everyone else. But as this devo says, ministering can be done in every part of our lives. In our everyday lives we should use the abilities that God has given us to help others and glorify God. But I know this is much easier said than done.

God has given each and every one of us different talents, strengths and interests that make us who we are. We all have different gifts that He gave us to use for His glory, as it states in the bible verse that we are saved to serve. God wants us to be ministers and help serve others and be a positive part of the church and community. In this devo I learned that ministering others and serving others is not as hard as you would think. In our every day lives we can serve others in many different ways, whether it be at school, at a job, at home or even on the streets. We all have different talents that God has blessed us with, and we should start to use these talents for the right reasons. We are all more than CAPABLE to do so.

Our gifts, talents, abilities are given to us for a purpose. There's a reason why we can do certain things, and why we can't, and that reason will help advance God's Kingdom and bring others towards it. We think our involvement at church (praise team, leadership, etc.) mostly for our own spiritual growth, but we forget that it has an impact towards others as well. You don't know the struggles that each member of the congregation are facing as they attend church, but maybe an impact song that the praise team plays that week, or maybe an event that the leadership team arranges can help that certain member grow in their faith.
Our capabilities are given to us by God, to use to help others. It's not an elaborate statement, but we can make decisions with the gifts given to us that will ultimately have an impact on someone else, and hopefully a good one.

It's evident mostly on the praise team as we each have a unique, special ability which we contribute to the team. It's not highly likely that one person can do everything an entire praise team can do, in order lead worship effectively. We each bring something good to the praise team and we're stronger together. Our capabilities come together, and we become capable together lead worship effectively.

We were saved so we could save others, whether through worship, or leadership we all have a unique ability that contribute to what we were called and saved to do.

10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10