Day 30 - Shaped for Serving God
August 18, 2005 – 9:39 pm | by Duncan
“Your hands shaped me and made me.”
Job 10:8 (New International Version)“The people I have shaped for myself
will broadcast my praises.”
Isaiah 43:21 (New Jerusalem Bible)“God don’t make no junk.”
Ethel Waters, African American jazz singer
“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvellous.”
David, Psalmist
Rick Warren introduces us here to his famous acrostic, SHAPE. Everyone of us, he says, is created by God to serve God in a unique way. If Ethel Waters said “God don’t make no junk”, we could say that “God don’t use no cookie cutters”. Coming through strongly here is a value of diversity in God’s creation, along with design and consistent purpose.
As he introduces his SHAPE acrostic Warren reminds us that these five descriptors are only part of who we are. Of course he hasn’t mentioned gender, age, life style, ethnic background, theology or environment.
Spiritual Gifts
Heart
Abilities
Personality
Experience
Unwrapping Your Spiritual Gifts
Question One: Why do we talk about ’spiritual gifts’? Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14 about blessings that come from the Holy Spirit - given to people in whom the Holy Spirit is living. As Warren says, “Whoever does not have the Spirit cannot receive the gifts that come from God’s Spirit.”
Question Two: Do we have the capacity to choose which spiritual gifts we will serve God with? Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 about the sovereignty of God’s Spirit. It is the Spirit who decides which gifts to give each of us. (1 Corinthians 12:11)
Rick acknowledges two common dysfunctions when it comes to spiritual gifts: gift envy and gift projection. Gift envy is comparing our gift with others, leading us into dissatisfaction, resentment, jealousy. I’ve seen this mostly with envy of upfront high profile gifts such as teaching, healing, miracles and so on. Mind you we sometimes buy into a culture in which public performance is more readily rewarded than behind the scenes hard slog. Gift projection is expecting everyone else to have our gifts, do what what we are called to do. Classic cases are prayer and evangelism - when people with these gifts get frustrated with the limited enthusiasm and capacity of others.
Warren finishes with a short warning - “Spiritual gifts can be over emphasised to neglect of other factors.” I must admit it’s not too often we hear about people signing up to do a course on passion, or a course on experience. Spiritual gifts and personality both have a feeling of novelty to them.
Listening to Your Heart
Warren begins the H section by pointing us to the meaning of “Heart” in the Bible. The brain of course wasn’t referred to by anyone in ancient times. In the Bible the heart is referred to as the source and indicator of desires, hopes, interests, ambitions, dreams, affections. We’re talking about the source of all our motivations - what we love to do and what we care about most. Rick could have talked more about our thoughts here as well. The heart in Hebrew culture was as much the source of thought as the source of emotion. Interestingly, the bowels and kidneys were also referred to in the Bible as the container of emotions and soul. But most translations today replace them with heart to avoid confusion!
In Matthew 12:34 Jesus talks about his critics revealing with their hearts what is in their hearts. I don’t think he’s trying to distinguish between thoughts and emotions here. It’s more about making explicit what was before implicit.
Warren gives us another word for Heart - Passion. He invites us to consider the subjects and experiences that we feel passionate about. What is it we pay attention to? This is a turn around for some people I’ve worked with. For many years passion or fervour has been distrusted and has been replaced by a strong sense of duty, loyalty. Of course passion can lead us astray. But unless passion is stirred in people, a passion connected with staying power, loyalty usually leads to resentment and dropout.
Throughout Scripture leaders call their people to serve the Lord with all their heart. That implies, from my perspective and Warren’s too, serving with a sense of passion, rather than merely out of duty. That doesn’t mean we have to feel gushy everytime we think of God and serving God!
Rick uses an argument I’ve heard often. We know we’re working in our passion or God-given heart if we are able to sustain enthusiasim in our field and if we are able to grow in effectiveness. True - if we hate the work we’re doing maybe it’s because we’re not wired for it. And if we have to work twice as hard as everybody else, perhaps there’s a field in which we could achieve our goals more naturally. But as Warren said earlier, there are always other factors at work. It may be a relationship or an internal attitude at work.
Warren finishes with a challenge to money-motivated careers. He encourages people not to waste their lives doing something that is unfulfilling. If we are to use our God-given passion we should be able to find a way of doing that even if it means taking a cut in pay.
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