MONDAY October 16th
1 Peter 4:10–11
‘As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.’
After encouraging the believers to love one another and to give hospitality to one another, Peter moves on to talk about the gifts or talents that God had given each one of them and to encourage them to use these gifts to serve one another. He uses these words ‘as good stewards of God’s varied grace’.
God gives to each one of us a gift, talent, ministry that comes from his varied grace, God is a God of variety, his grace is muti-faceted and from out of it springs the various ministries we have within the Church, the body of Christ.
There are some things that I can do well, but there are other things that I might struggle with, it is the same for each one of us, and the reason is because God has given those things that I can do well as a gift to me from his varied grace, and the things that I can’t do so well he will have given to someone else to do as a gift to them from his varied grace.
We are all familiar with the phrase, ‘jack of all trades but master of none’, which describes a person who will have a go at anything and everything, but he doesn’t quite master how to do it all, well. In the body of Christ, we are not meant to be a master of all trades, in other words not one of us has every single varied grace gift that God gives, what we need to do is to concentrate on that which he has given us and seek to do it well. Notice what Peter says, ‘whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies’, in other New Testament letters we read of other gifts, ministries, all given for the body of Christ to function as it should.
Another well-known phrase is about trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, it speaks of trying to do what we are not meant to do, Peter would say to us find out, identify what your grace gift is and seek to do it well, first to serve one another and then he concludes with a phrase that we will look at another time, ‘in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.’