Gifts and Talents

Stephen spoke to the youth last night during their worship service. The place was full of middle-schoolers who, much to my surprise, were extremely attentive. They were incredibly attentive. His message was on service and he did a great job challenging the kids to allow God to use them wherever they are. He explained that God places us in certain places and those places are to be seen as our mission field, whether school, or a ballfield, or wherever. That kinda led to our discussion (which seems to be an ongoing discussion in our house) about God's call and how the talents we have are meant to be about Him and not about us. We are to use them to further His kingdom not our kingdom. We also talked about how spiritual gifts are only given to Christians to be used for the Church. We discussed how the things that we as Christians enjoy and are good at are placed within us by God to lead us to our calling. God places desires in our hearts. He wants us to have an abundant life. I just think it's amazing when our talents and our spiritual gifts collide and God gets much glory! I guess since sports has been such a huge part of our life we talk a lot about using that platform to serve God. I think so many of us get caught up in our service and ministry being "in" the church instead of "about" the Church. In our culture sports is such a god to people and people (even adults) will listen to athletes talk about God when they won't listen to anyone else. So I love to see God take athletes with their talent and mix it with say the gift of evangelism or service and get much glory. I love the Tim Tebow story and how he takes every opportunity to point others to Christ. There's nothing better than taking what we believe and the Truth we know and living it out in the real world. Stephen's challenge to the students to do that was great.
Another baseball weekend ahead for us. At least this time it's not 4 hours away only 2 1/2. I think this weekend will be special for many reasons even though it's about baseball nothing is ever "just about baseball". Last weekend God showed us some ugly sides of people being all about themselves in the world of sports and that led beautifully into this week with Stephen sharing on serving others. Believe it or not everyone isn't about their team or their teammates and most certainly not about God being any part of that atmosphere. God's great at taking the ugly stuff of life and teaching us what life is supposed to be about. I hate the ugly stuff but they sometimes make for better teaching opportunities with my kids than just the good, fun stuff. He is so good and so faithful. I can't wait to see what He shows us this weekend.