Message from Staff
Kia Ora and welcome to Week 6 of Term 2,
“The gifts God has given us can bring hope to others.”
God has given each believer a spiritual gift that He wants us to use for His glory, but we often don’t use it. We may deny that we actually have a spiritual gift or if we do acknowledge it, we may doubt its usefulness to glorify God, and then just bury it. But we must realise that God wants us to be involved with His work. He is so gracious that by His Holy Spirit He freely distributes gifts to all who are saved. He not only wants us to know our spiritual gifts, but He expects us to grow in them each day.
Being members of the body, we need to work together. In 1 Corinthians 12:12 it says, “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.” And in verse 14, “For the body is not one member, but many.” Each of us is a specific body part. It sounds strange but it is a great analogy of the church. In verse 27 Paul says, “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.” If you read verses 13-27 you will see that Paul affirms the importance of each member. He also declares that we need each member to function properly as a whole body. He says, in verse 26, “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”
In Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus tells the parable of the talents. It is a parable about stewardship of the grace that God has given to all believers. In the story, a talent equaled about 75 pounds of coinage and would be the equivalent of 15 years of normal wages for one person. This was an enormous responsibility for each of the servants to bear. The master was leaving on a journey and to one of his servants he gave 5 talents, to another 2 talents, and to another 1 talent according to their ability. What happened when the master came back to settle accounts was this: The first two servants had put the money to use and were able to double their amounts and present the master with his principle and profits. But the servant with one talent hid his master’s money and was afraid to use it. His talent was taken from him and given to the one who had ten talents. This parable shows us that Christ wants us to use the gifts He has provided to us, not to bury them. Spiritual gifts are also called “grace gifts” and should be valued as gifts of God’s grace toward us. We are called to “bear much fruit” that lasts, and our spiritual gifts play a significant role in doing that.
Nga mihi nui,
Amos Pilgrim
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