Calling (1)
2020-08-221 Corinthians 12:5 ESV
Theodore Roosevelt said that ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’ He was absolutely right. One of the biggest mistakes is to compare ourselves to others, especially when it comes to work that God placed us to do. We can’t compare our calling to someone else’s. 1 Corinthians 12:6-11 explains that ‘there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone… For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills’ (ESV). God calls each of us to do different things, in different places, at different times. The need around us determines what we do and who God needs each of us to be. 1 Corinthians 12 continues: ‘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. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose’ (v.12-18 ESV). We have to take hold of our own, unique place in the body of God’s Church.