This month, we are giving each CODE Missionary the chance to come to you with prayer needs regarding them, their ministries, and the countries where they serve. Each of these posts includes specific prayer requests as well as a YouTube video of a song picked by these missionaries. We encourage you to use these worship songs to center your heart and mind as you lift up our missionaries before God’s throne. Thank you for loving our missionaries well and soaking them in your prayers. We are all so thankful for you– our supporters, readers, and friends.
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.”
1 Corinthians 12:12-15
I love the book of 1 Corinthians. It is an amazing book, filled with amazing wisdom and insight! It was the first of two letters written by the Apostle Paul in the middle of the 1st century to the church in Corinth. It was written in hopes of correcting some practices and beliefs held by the Corinthians to help them become stronger and healthier members of the “Body of Christ.”
I want to focus on the 12th chapter of the book and talk about a struggle that I have recently been getting over and hopefully that will lead you to pray for myself and for the others who struggle with similar views.
Over the past year I have done a lot of traveling and have done ministry with many different people. I have seen people with gifts that I think are amazing and wish I had, and I have also have seen people with gifts that I am not really sure why I don’t have them. I see people who are great speakers and singers and wish I was better at those gifts and could be more skilled in those areas to better reach people for the Kingdom. Then I see people who are great evangelizers and can walk up to anyone on the street and just start talking with them about Jesus, and sometimes I wonder to myself, “Am I doing something wrong if I don’t do that?” or “If I don’t do more of that, am I even a good Christian?”
While I was praying through some of these things a few weeks ago, God revealed to me that not everyone was designed to be great evangelizers or great speakers or great singers. However, we have all been designed with a purpose and have been given gifts that compliment those purposes.
Then God revealed to me more of what my purpose was and that I need to stop wishing for or beating myself up because I am not those other parts of the body but instead embrace the gifts and talents He has already given me.
For instance, God has given me the gift of leadership, the gift of shepherding, and the gift of discipleship. I know I have been given these gifts because they are things that I use in my life every single day, my friends and colleagues around me have confirmed them, and they are the things in which I find joy and pleasure.
I can continue wishing I were a mouth or an eye and lose focus of the gifts God has already given to me, or I can walk more fully in being a hand and a foot and really dive into those gifts and trust that my gifts are the exact gifts I need to be successful in the plans the Lord has for me.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:10
I ask you to pray for my ministry and myself as I dive deeper and walk more confidently in the gifts the Lord has given me to fulfill the works He has planned for me! And I will be praying for all of you that God will reveal to you your giftings so that you may be able to walk more fully in the things He has set aside for you to accomplish!