Has anyone ever told you that you’re really good at something? Maybe you’re a great baker and have a specialty in cheesecakes, or you’re someone who sees an old piece of furniture on the street, and takes it home to make it into something beautiful, or maybe you’re really good at deleting emails.

In this episode of The Sanctuary, MJ and Nicole discuss some of the gifts that every Christian has been graced with. Whatever it may be, the gift itself is not as important as how you use the gift. When we use our gifts to serve one another, we grow more deeply and fully like Jesus. And becoming more like Jesus, and loving how He loved, is the goal.

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In her book, Upon Waking, Jackie Hill Perry lays out two examples of how the church can be held back from being fully the body God designed her to be:

The one gifted to teach pours out insight, and it doesn’t take long before the gift and the grace to teach are attributed to the intellectual ability and personality of the teacher. Removed from their psyche is any consideration that what they were able to give they first received.

The merciful saint begins to think mercy is a part of their own nature, and so a diabolical pride develops in him, invisible to the eye of everyone but the Lord. They are thus tempted to test God, as Ananias and Sapphire did. Giving only as a means of honoring themselves. Using benevolence as a cover for selfish ambition.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. - Romans 12:3

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