Grace Church Summer Reading Program: Lord, Make My Life a Miracle by Ray and Anne Ortlund. Chapter Seven: “Find your spiritual gift”
What is the shape of the grace of God? What color is it? If you were asked to sketch a picture of it, what would your scribblings produce?
If you’ve ever asked a child to draw a picture of an abstract item, like love, you’ve noticed that they usually don’t try to draw the thing itself—they draw a human manifestation of it. For example, if you ask them to draw a picture of love, they will likely draw a picture of a mom holding hands with her child, or a couple of sweethearts with a big heart circled around them. In the mind of a child love looks like people who love.
It’s the same way with the grace of God. It looks like you, and the unique expression of your spiritual gifts.
1 Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”
The grace of God is as varied as the people who administer it.
- It can look like mercy, or serving.
- It can look like teaching, or prophesying.
- It can look like counseling, listening, or faith.
- It can look like conducting business in a Christ-honoring way, or it can look like facilitating a work project as an act of worship to the Lord.
The grace of God looks like God’s work expressed through the unique spiritual gifts of His special sons and daughters.
In the 7th chapter of their book Lord, Make My Life a Miracle, Pastor Ray and Anne Ortlund urge each of us to discover, develop, and operate in our spiritual gifts. They plead with us to be devoted men and women who yearn for an ongoing infilling of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and they assure us that when these things are realities we will touch the beginnings of Christ’s promised abundant life.
I hope you’ve discovered your gifts, and I hope you’re using them to minister God’s grace to the world around you.
For more information about our summer reading program go to www.gracechurchlaverne.org.