Monthly Archives: April 2018

Worship

Worship any Time, any Place

Tuesday, April 10

6:50 AM The light barely breaks through the trees. The sky dances. The sound of chirping begins.

You are bathed in the glory of Creation, in the presence of the Creator. Suddenly you begin to sing praises, not for the enjoyment of others but for your own pleasure and for the glory of God. That’s the Christian life. Spontaneous worship is just that. It’s worship that breaks out any time, any place, like when I washed the dishes this morning or wrote a check to someone or published the blog post you read earlier today. He surrounds us with evidence of His glory and love 24 hours a day, and so we never ever reserve “worship” for an hour on Sunday morning. Open your eyes and He is there, right there, in a sunrise or at the kitchen sink or in your office. A church building can no more confine Him than the entire universe. “God cannot be expressed but only experienced,” wrote Frederick Buechner. “In the last analysis, you can’t pontificate but only point.”

Point away!

(From Dave Black Online. Used by permission.)

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Divine Gifts or Natural Abilities

(Thursday, April 5, 2018) 9:50 AM “In your opinion, what’s the best book on spiritual gifts?” A student asked me this question after my NT class yesterday. That’s easy. Kenneth Hemphill’s Spiritual Gifts: Empowering the New Testament Church. That said, I cautioned my student to be aware of two things: (1) the lists of NT gifts are not exhaustive, and (2) none of the gifts is defined per se. Then I asked him this question: “What, in your thinking, is the difference between a ‘natural ability’ and a ‘spiritual gift’?” I had a reason for asking him that question. You see, in the end I think there’s very little difference between a so-called natural ability and a spiritual gift. When you become a follower of Jesus, two things happen. First, you acknowledge that every one of your so-called “natural abilities” is really a gift from the gracious hand of God. And secondly, you now employ those gifts in His service and for His glory alone. One of the gravest dangers of doing a spiritual gifts inventory on people is that it can all too often produce carbon copies of a stereotypical archetype. Instead, let’s ask people, “What do you love to do? What is your passion in life? What is it that you do that causes you to feel God’s pleasure?” Psychologists call this “self-discernment,” but for Christians, self-discernment is always connected to our relationship with God. The more we become like Jesus, the more we become authentically ourselves. What incredibly important theology. The path to self-fulfillment is simply discovering who our Creator designed us to be. (Side note. Here’s a quick test to determine if you’re doing the rightthing with your life and not merely a good thing. Do the satisfactions of your work outweigh the stresses? If your vocation is born out of a relationship with Jesus, then it will be a pleasure both for you and for others. After all, Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” So what are we complaining about?)

Our chapel speaker on Tuesday drove this point home. “Don’t waste your life! Don’t bury your God-given talents!” It’s simply too costly. So let’s give people the freedom to be what God wants them to be. The best we can do is give them Jesus, not a book about spiritual gifts. I have no confidence in Dave Black but I have every confidence in my Savior. He is utterly dependable, and if we look to Him, He will guide us in the right path for our lives. Trust me, no one wants to follow a fraud. Be who you are, the real you, the person God created you to be. The church is for real people with real families who lead real lives. And always remember the theology: Our true self emerges only from our uniqueness in Christ.

(From Dave Black Online. Used by permission. David Alan Black is author of The Jesus Paradigm and many other books.)