Spiritual Gifts - 1 Peter 4:7-11

                  

Christmas wasn’t that long ago, and many of us can still remember how special it felt to get gifts from our loved ones, whether family or friends. What are some of your favourite gifts that you received, and were you able to give people you love special gifts too? God loves to give us gifts too! Just like the people like to pick out just the right gift for you so that you’ll love them and use them, so God loves to give us gifts that are spiritual and fit who we are, gifts that we can use. Spiritual gifts and abilities given to us by the Holy Spirit to help us for ministry, to bless the church, and to help others come to know the good news of salvation through Jesus. The best thing about God’s gifts is that they don’t wear out, in fact they get better as we use them, and they can’t be taken away from us by anyone else. God gives us these gifts to help us know him better and to become more like Jesus as we use them.

The fun part of being given these spiritual gifts from God is discovering which gifts we have and how we can use them to serve others. You can take a spiritual gifts test, or talk to your friends and other people that you respect and ask them what gifts they see in you. Then try using them. Sometimes it’ll come really easy and you’ll go ‘wow,’ and sometimes you’ll try them and see that you’ll need to work on growing your gift, and sometimes you’ll find out that you don’t really have a gift in that area, but that’s alright too, the important part is trying. Our gifts are not to make life easier for us, but to be used for others and for God.

Why is it important to know our gifts and use them? Peter reminds us that Jesus is coming back again as king over everything and everyone. Jesus returned home to heaven after being resurrected from the dead, dying on the cross so that our sins are washed away. Peter wants us to be ready for when Jesus comes back. Jesus said we should always be ready because he’ll come like a thief in the night when no one’s expecting him, but God doesn’t want anyone to be lost, so he’s patient in sending Jesus back so everyone will have an opportunity to know Jesus. Peter wants Jesus’ church to be ready and strong, praying for each other and for all people to come to accept Jesus as their Lord. We’re using our gifts to build our church on Jesus and his teachings and life. Prayer’s a powerful gift from God to help us in this.

Part of being ready is learning to live with love for each other. Peter tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. We hear an echo to the cross where Jesus’ love for us takes him to the cross where he dies to wash away our sin. What amazing love! Jesus tells us in John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Love strengthens our gifts: we receive gifts from God because he loves us, and he wants us to use our gifts in love to bless others, to help them see God’s love through how we use our gifts, especially when we forgive them when they do something wrong against us. We forgive them out of love like Jesus did. We pray to God to forgive them and help us to forgive them like Jesus, because this helps us to build strong relationships with each other. I see this happening every Friendship evening as you pray for each other and with each other, showing love, God’s love to each other, using your gifts of prayer, a really special time.

Part of love is showing hospitality to each other without grumbling. Hebrews 13:2 reminds us, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Hebrews is talking about when Abraham invited 3 strangers to eat supper with him and his wife Sarah. After they ate, it turned out that 2 of the strangers were angels and the third person was the Lord! This is why Paul reminds us in Romans 12:13 to “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” We never know when we might need to help someone out by inviting them to have a meal with us, or even providing them with a room and bed for a night or two. Hospitality is a spiritual gift that God gives some of us. This gift is rooted in love that comes from God, caring about each other and even strangers.

Now Peter tells us, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.” We’re all called to use our gifts to serve others, and by serving each other, we’re sharing God’s grace with them. Jesus tells a parable about a king giving his servants talents to use while he went away. He was excited about the servants who used his talents and even made more, but he was angry at the one who did nothing, and so he kicked him out.

The Holy Spirit has given a lot of different kinds of gifts to the church because the church has so many different kinds of people. There are many different types of people in the world, so one kind of gift isn’t enough. Yet even though the gifts are different, they all come from the same Holy Spirit, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4–7, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

Some of the gifts the Holy Spirit gives are the gifts of teaching, showing mercy, wisdom, helping others, praying, encouragement, hospitality, giving, and lots more. The Holy Spirit gives each one of us gifts, there’s no one who doesn’t have a gift. My brother Glennie never spoke, never walked, he could smile and make different sounds for each one of us. But happiness was his gift, every time he saw you, he smiled and reached out to you.

Our gifts are not about making us look better, or to use for ourselves, they’re meant to be used to bless the church, to bless others, and to bring glory to God. When we use our gifts the way that God wants us to, we bring glory to God, and other people praise God through Jesus. When we use our gifts, we’re doing ministry for God, meaning that we’re all ministers! All Christians have things they can do in church or community for Jesus. We’re not called to simply receive the blessings of other people’s service, we’re also called to use our gifts and then, as Paul shares with us in Ephesians 4:16, “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” The other wonderful thing about using our gifts is that using them for God’s work, it brings us joy, knowing that it pleases God. When we use our gifts to serve others, we should do it with confidence that we’re doing it for God and it makes the church stronger.

For us to use our gifts in healthy ways, we need to stay connected to Jesus. Jesus uses the image of a vine and branches in John 15:5–9, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” So, as we leave from here, go knowing that God has given each of you gifts to use to serve others and to build his kingdom. As we work together using our gifts, we’re able to accomplish much more than on our own. May you continue to discover new gifts that you’ve been given, new ways of serving and loving the Lord and each other.

 

 

 

 

Noticing God in the New Year - Luke 6:37-42

Today marks the beginning of a new year, 2026. As we look ahead, we make plans, we have dreams and hopes about what 2026 might contain, but ultimately, we place the year in God’s hands, saying with James, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” We have plans for the year ahead as a council. We plan on working together as a congregation on vision and mission. It’s a good time to reflect on the changes in our church family. There’ve been many events that have happened since our last vision/mission time: a new pastor, a pandemic, a complete turnover in our staff, new growth, and many important denominational conversations. We’re the same, and yet different church now than 10+ years ago.

While we cannot control the year ahead of us, we can choose how we’ll walk through the year ahead. I’m sure many of you wondered about choosing our passage this morning from Luke as a New Year’s Day passage. These verses come from what is often called, The Sermon on the Plain, which echoes a lot of what Matthew places in The Sermon on the Mount. Luke places these verses right after a call by Jesus to love your enemies and to do good to those who hate you. Now Jesus moves on to telling the people to be careful about judging others, or more importantly, the spirit with how you judge others.

At the heart of Jesus’ warning is that if you judge you’ll also be judged, so be careful how you treat others. As we enter the new year, we have a choice on how we are going to relate with each other, and with others in our lives and community. Will we look at others in critical ways, checking to make sure they do all the right things or hold the right values, or are we going to choose a different way? It’s important to note the context here, as the scholar David Brown writes, “The thing here condemned is that disposition to look unfavorably on the character and actions of others, which leads invariably to the pronouncing of rash, unjust, and unlovely judgments upon them. No doubt it is the judgments so pronounced which are here spoken of; but what our Lord aims at is the spirit out of which they spring. Provided we eschew this unlovely spirit, we are not only warranted to sit in judgment upon a brother’s character and actions, but in the exercise of a necessary discrimination are often constrained to do so for our own guidance. It is the violation of the law of love involved in the exercise of a censorious disposition which alone is here condemned.” It’s not wrong to hold each other to account for our actions, but it’s how you do it that Jesus is getting at here.

Jesus offers a different way, paraphrasing what he says, “don’t judge or condemn and you won’t be either, don’t worry so much about the speck in other peoples’ eyes, pay attention first to what’s preventing you from seeing more clearly.” Jesus offers a kinder way of living with each other, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” How we treat others will reflect back on us.

When we’re overly critical of others, they’ll return that same kind of criticism back on us. Over time, people withdraw from those who are harsh, recognizing that it will likely only be a matter of time before they’re the ones who’ll be harshly judged for not measuring up, and often, in self-defense will attack the critical person first. The reality is, none of us ever completely measure up. This is why Jesus came to take our sin and brokenness on himself and to bring healing and reconciliation with God and others.

The positive side of Jesus’ teaching is that “a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap,” goes with other passages that talk about how God’s cup of blessing runs over. Jesus is using a business image here, a merchant who is generous with his customers will be judged and evaluated in a generous way by others. Another way of saying this is, the way you treat others is the way others will treat you, kindness and generosity create kindness and generosity in return. At the heart of this is beginning the year with the goal of becoming more like Jesus and joining him in what he’s doing; the best way to do this is to keep our eyes on Jesus.

How do you create eyes for seeing God and what’s he’s doing? What are some spiritual practices or ways of looking at the world through the eyes of God that might be helpful for noticing and responding to what God’s doing in the midst of the chaos of life. The Examen is a way of prayer developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the late 16th century that invites prayerful reflection back over the events of the day in order to recognize God’s presence and figure out God’s direction for our lives. A good friend in Montreal, Father David, introduced me to Ignatius, who developed the Jesuit order. Ignatius required his followers to practice the Examen every lunch and evening. It involves 5 steps:

1. Become aware of God’s presence. As you pray, ask the Holy Spirit to help you see God’s hand at work in the events of the day.
2. Review the day with gratitude. Gratitude is an important way of engaging our day and helping us to recognize God’s presence and the joys and little gifts that are part of each day. Look at the work you accomplished, the people you met, those you helped, and those who helped you, the food you ate, the small pleasures in the day. Give God thanks.
3. Pay attention to your emotions. Ignatius recognized that we often experience the presence of God through our emotions. When did we experience happiness, boredom, resentment, compassion, anger, contentment, and asking what is God saying through those feelings. Often it will be to recognize where we need to still grow, but often it can also help us recognize when something is wrong and act as a call to be God’s agent in making it right again.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it. This may be an emotion you experienced, an event or person you encountered, or a direction from God to pay more attention to.
5. Look toward tomorrow. Ask Jesus for direction and guidance for the day ahead, and for the strength and wisdom needed for where he is leading.

End your prayer by talking with God, asking for forgiveness and grace, thanking Jesus for who he is, asking questions you have, and sharing problems you’re working through.

As we enter this new year, may your eyes and hearts be open to seeing the blessings and presence of God each day, and may this guide you through 2026.