This is ministry month and we’re in the series on teamwork. The message today is going to conclude with an opportunity for you to let us know which ministry teams on which you believe God is calling you to serve this coming year.
We’ve been looking at a paragraph from the Apostle Peter’s first letter to the early church. The last few weeks we’ve looked at chapter four, verses 8 and 9: Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. 9Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.
Today we’re going to receive God’s Word from verses 10 and 11.
1 Peter 4:10 (NLT) – God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God’s generosity can flow through you. 11 Are you called to be a speaker? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Are you called to help others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then God will be given glory in everything through Jesus Christ. All glory and power belong to him forever and ever. Amen.
I want to talk to you today about God’s generosity flowing through you. Circle that phrase in verse 10 if you would please - "God’s generosity flowing through you."
No one is more generous than God. He’s the greatest giver of all time. And here the Bible says there’s a way to have His generosity flowing through you! That’s absolutely incredible and exciting! The great Creator and Savior of the universe offers to channel His charitableness through you! You have an opportunity for God to do His work through your life!
You have the prospect of your hands becoming God’s hands! You have the chance for your works to be His works! When you speak you could be speaking for God!
So what are the conditions for all of this happening? The Bible tells us what we need to do.
1. Manage your spiritual gifts well.
Look at verse 10 again: God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God’s generosity can flow through you.
God’s Word teaches us that every individual that believes on Christ receives spiritual gifts.
1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT) A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church.
God gives every Christ follower Supernatural endowments in order for His generosity towards others to flow through them.
Most people who come to Christ actually receive more than one spiritual gift. But I’m not going to get into a lengthy explanation of spiritual gifts right now. I just want you to think about how you’re handling the spiritual gifts God gave you.
[If you’re not yet a follower of Christ I want to make you thirstier for becoming one. This is one of the many blessings that come into your life when you make a faith commitment to Christ! You get to have God working through you – and He even supplies the tools – spiritual gifts!]
How do you "manage your spiritual gifts well?" If God gave you Supernatural abilities, Supernatural tools to allow His generosity to flow through you, how does this work? The Bible tells us how.
Look at the first part of verse 11 again: "Are you called to be a speaker? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you."
If you have the God-given gift of speaking, for instance, then good spiritual gifts management calls for you to "speak as though God were speaking through you."
Now Peter is only giving an example of one spiritual gift but the application is for all spiritual gifts. The point is to let God do the talking through you. Not as if you are a marionette, a puppet on a string, not as if God were a ventriloquist, but by yielding yourself to Him.
That’s how you manage your spiritual gifts well. You yield yourself to God. No matter what spiritual gifts you possess, they won’t do anyone any good unless you’re yielded to God!
If you don’t yet know your spiritual gifts then ask God to help you discover them. Seek the counsel of mature believers. Read some reliable literature on the topic. But even before you do that, make sure you have yielded yourself to God. Then remain yielded to God as you use your gifts. One of the greatest joys you will experience in life is when God’s grace flows through you because you yielded yourself to Him!
Yielding yourself to God is a personal decision, and it’s not something God makes you do.
Isaiah put it this way when he yielded himself to God’s generosity flowing through him, he said to God, "Here am I, send me." (Isaiah 6:8) God said that He was looking for someone to do His work and Isaiah said, "I’ll do it."
That’s what you have to do to manage God’s spiritual gifts properly. You have to tell God you’re available and mean it. You have to volunteer for service according to the spiritual gifts God has given you. Yielding yourself to God is as simple as telling Him from your heart that you are willing for Him to work through you. God does not force Himself upon anyone. He doesn’t make you serve Him. He offers you the opportunity to enlist but He doesn’t draft anyone. He calls but He does not coerce.
Romans 12:1 (NLT) And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice--the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask?
Romans 12:6 (NLT) God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out when you have faith that God is speaking through you. 7If your gift is that of serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, do a good job of teaching. 8If your gift is to encourage others, do it! If you have money, share it generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.
Here’s the second condition for God’s generosity flowing through you.
2. "Operate in the strength and energy that God supplies."
That’s what the Bible says in verse 11. "Operate in the strength and energy that God supplies."
The opposite, of course, is relying upon your own strength. Bad idea. You aren’t strong enough to have God’s generosity flowing through you on your own. Do you know why? Because this is spiritual territory – not physical territory. It’s not intellectual territory, it’s not emotional, it’s not vocational, it’s not financial, it’s not territorial; it’s not racial, it’s not national, it’s not familial, it’s not paternal or maternal, it’s spiritual.
"Operate in the strength and energy that God supplies."
I’m preaching to you about teamwork this month. The devil hates teamwork in the church! That’s why he’s always trying to get you at odds with other members of the team! That’s part of the spiritual territory I’m talking about. That’s just one of the reasons why you must operate in the strength and energy God supplies.
Your strength is limited – God’s might is never ending.
Sometimes you feel like you can’t go on in the Christian race. Do you know part of the problem when you feel that way? You are trying to do the spiritual thing in your own strength.
It’s evident that God sometimes purposely lets you get hammered with the tiredness and defeat of operating in the flesh because He’s trying to get through to you that the work of the Spirit cannot be accomplished in your strength! You must have God’s power – His might – His strength – His energy – His grace – if you are going to do His work!
Even great Christ followers sometimes forget to fill up on God. They too can fail to remember that the outer world is not more powerful than the inner. The importance of the material world does not outweigh the importance of the spiritual world. Quite the contrary is true. But sometimes we live by the premise that our difficulties are insurmountable because we’re overly focused on the outer world. When we do this we are failing to "operate in the strength and energy that God supplies."
We also fail to "operate in the strength and energy that God supplies" when we try to serve God without worship, without prayer, without communing with Him through His word. You can’t ignore God and expect His generosity to flow through you!
E. Stanley Jones tells of the missionary in the jungle. He got lost with nothing around him but bush and a few cleared places. He finally found a small village and asked one of the natives if he could lead him out of the jungle. The native said he could. "All right," the missionary said, "Show me the way."
They walked for hours through dense brush, hacking their way through unmarked jungle. The missionary began to worry and said, "Are you quite sure this is the way? Where is the path?"
The native said, "In this place there is no path. I am the path."
Jesus says the same to us. "I am the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6) He’s not only the path to salvation and to the Father. He is the path to God’s generosity flowing through you in the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
God’s generosity must be shared in His person and power. In order to have His power you must walk His path! He is the path. It is knowing Him, loving Him, worshiping Him, praising Him, listening to Him, walking with Him, being filled with His Spirit, that enables His generosity to flow through you.
You say, "but sometimes I get tired serving God. I get tired when others reject my advances to bring them to God. I get tired when I see so much that needs to be done for God and so little time and so little resources, when I see how small my strength is. I get tired when I face difficulties. I get tired of needing to change in my own life." Sure you get tired of all these things and more. You’re only human. That’s why you’ve got to "operate in the strength and energy God supplies."
Okay – the conditions for having God’s generosity flowing through you:
1. Manage your spiritual gifts well – which basically means – yield yourself to God.
2. Operate in the strength and energy that God supplies. Don’t expect to have personal spiritual victory any other way than through God’s grace.
But the third condition in this Scripture is certainly not the least. If you desire God’s generosity flowing through you this is absolutely essential:
3. Do all for God’s glory.
Notice again how verse 11 concludes: Then God will be given glory in everything through Jesus Christ. All glory and power belong to him forever and ever. Amen.
When you manage your spiritual gifts well by yielding yourself to God, and you follow through by operating in the strength and energy that He supplies, He receives the recognition. And He deserves the credit. He deserves the honor.
You should make this the number one goal in your life. Your goal should be that whatever you do will bring honor and praise to God.
1 Corinthians 10:31 (NLT) Whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, you must do all for the glory of God.
When the Apostle Paul penned these words by God’s inspiration, the context was a disagreement in the church at Corinth over the eating of meats that had been offered to idols.
Some of the Christians thought it was okay to go to the marketplace and buy the less expensive cuts of meat that had been leftover from idol ceremonies. Other believers felt like this was wrong. Paul concluded there wasn’t anything inherently wrong in eating meats offered to idols. Worshiping idols was wrong of course - but you couldn’t be guilty by association of eating meat that had been leftover from these idolatrous ceremonies.
The key for Paul was, "When you eat or drink or do anything else, always do it to honor God." The main concern is - is God being honored by your actions? One great rule of thumb for all of life is to do something if it brings God praise and not to do it if it impairs praise to God.
The biggest roadblock to God getting glory will be fallen human nature. Don’t make it your primary motivation in life to do what people want you to do - even your self. Make it your primary motivation in life to do what brings honor to God. Don’t worry whether or not other human beings approve of everything you do. Concern yourself with whether or not what you do is approved by God – whether or not it brings Him glory.
I’m going to close today with an article that describes what it’s like to have God’s generosity flowing through you.
[The greatest evidence for the truth of the Christmas story is the generosity that flows out of followers of Christ who are celebrating their Savior’s birth. What kind of case is your church making for Christmas this year?]
Making the case for Christmas
by Lee Strobel
Against the backdrop of a Christmas season encrusted with self-centeredness and materialism, churches have a tremendous opportunity to crack open the hearts of people in their community through humble acts of generosity and sacrifice that truly reflect the attitudes of Jesus.
These countercultural expressions of giving and caring can capture the attention of even the most cynical skeptics. I personally found this out when I was an atheist and working as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune.
More than 30 years later, I still remember the simple but profound Christmas lesson I received from a poverty-wracked family living on the hardscrabble west side of Chicago.
As I describe in my new book, The Case for Christmas, the Tribune newsroom was eerily quiet on the day before Christmas. As I sat at my desk with little to do, my mind kept wandering back to a family I had encountered a month earlier while I was working on a series of articles about Chicago’s neediest people.
The Delgados – 60-year-old Perfecta and her granddaughters, Lydia and Jenny – had been burned out of their roach-infested tenement and were now living in a tiny two-room apartment. As I walked in, I couldn’t believe how empty it was. There was no furniture, no rugs, nothing on the walls – only a small kitchen table and one handful of rice. That’s it. They were virtually devoid of possessions.
In fact, 11-year-old Lydia and 13-year-old Jenny owned only one short-sleeved dress each, plus one thin, gray sweater between them. When they walked the half-mile to school through the biting cold, Lydia would wear the sweater for part of the distance and then hand it to her shivering sister, who would wear it the rest of the way.
But despite their poverty and the painful arthritis that kept Perfecta from working, she still talked confidently about her faith in Jesus. She was convinced he had not abandoned them. I never sensed despair or self-pity in her home. Instead, there was a gentle feeling of hope and peace.
I wrote an article about the Delgados, and then I quickly moved on to more exciting assignments. But as I sat at my desk on Christmas Eve, I continued to wrestle with the irony of the situation: here was a family that had nothing but faith and yet seemed happy, while I had everything I needed materially but lacked faith – and inside I felt as empty and barren as their apartment.
I walked over to the city desk to sign out a car. It was a slow news day, with nothing of consequence going on. My boss could call me if something were to happen. In the meantime, I decided to drive over to West Homer Street and see how the Delgados were doing.
When Jenny opened the door, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Tribune readers had responded to my article by showering the Delgados with a treasure trove of gifts – roomfuls of furniture, appliances, and rugs; a lavish Christmas tree with piles of wrapped presents underneath; carton upon bulging carton of food; and a dazzling selection of clothing, including dozens of warm winter coats, scarves, and gloves. On top of that, they donated thousands of dollars in cash.
But as surprised as I was by this outpouring, I was even more astonished by what my visit was interrupting. Perfecta and her granddaughters were getting ready to give away much of their newfound wealth. When I asked Perfecta why, she replied in halting English: "Our neighbors are still in need. We cannot have plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do."
That blew me away! If I had been in their position at that time in my life, I would have been hoarding everything. I asked Perfecta what she thought about the generosity of the people who had sent all of these goodies, and again her response amazed me.
"This is wonderful; this is very good," she said, gesturing toward the largess. "We did nothing to deserve this – it’s a gift from God. But," she added, "it is not his greatest gift. No, we celebrate that tomorrow. That is Jesus."
To her, this child in the manger was the undeserved gift that meant everything – more than material possessions, more than comfort, more than security. And at that moment, something inside of me wanted desperately to know this Jesus because, in a sense, I saw him in Perfecta and her granddaughters.
They had peace despite poverty, while I had anxiety despite plenty; they knew the joy of generosity, while I only knew the loneliness of ambition; they looked heavenward for hope, while I only looked out for myself; they experienced the wonder of the spiritual, while I was shackled to the shallowness of the material – and something made me long for what they had.
Or, more accurately, for the One they knew.
I was pondering this as I drove back toward Tribune Tower a short time later. Suddenly, though, my thoughts were interrupted by the crackle of the car’s two-way radio. It was my boss, sending me out on another assignment. Jarred back to reality, I let the emotions I felt in the Delgado apartment dissipate. And that, I figured at the time, was probably a good thing.
As I would caution myself whenever the Delgados would come to mind from time to time over the ensuing years, I’m not the sort of person who’s driven by feelings. As a journalist, I was far more interested in facts, evidence, data, and concrete reality. Virgins don’t get pregnant; there is no God who became a baby; and Christmas is little more than an annual orgy of consumption driven by the greed of corporate America.
Or so I thought.
My subsequent investigation into the historical evidence for Christianity did end up persuading me that the baby in the manger really was the unique Son of God.
I tell the story of the Delgados, and the facts that convinced me Christianity is true, in The Case for Christmas. Yet as the Delgados demonstrated, Christmas is more than a compilation of information.
The Delgados amazed me by the way they sacrificially reached out to their neighbors with a tangible expression of Christ’s love. What an opportunity for all of us to follow their cue this Christmas season – and to watch as God cracks open the hearts of even the most hard-hearted cynics.
