Thinking Sensibly About Ourselves
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When walking the narrow road of the Christian life, many of us fall into one of two traps when it comes to our gifts: viewing ourselves too highly or too lowly. Some of us have permanently taken up residence in one of these ditches and refuse to move. There is water flooding in, garbage pooling around us, and frogs laying eggs in our hair, but we refuse to move from our ditch.
Maybe you battle with pride. You don't only know you're gifted in this way, but you kind of flaunt it. You're always telling people about your gift and you're constantly fighting to get your gift front and center at your church. Perhaps you even get a bit frustrated when people don't recognize your gift. Your gift has become an opportunity to draw all eyes on you rather than God.
Or maybe you're in the other ditch. You see all the other believers around you flourishing in their gifts, serving with beauty and speaking in truth, but whenever you look down at your ordinary hands you see nothing to offer. Perhaps your mom or friends nag you to use this talent of yours that they all see in you, but you shake your head and assure them that there are many other people who are far more gifted with this talent than you, so they should be serving instead. You see yourself simply as a failure who could never get any gifting right, let alone use it to glorify God.
We shouldn’t think too highly of our gifts from God.
I tend to struggle to spend time on the actual road and avoid simply jumping from ditch to ditch. One day, I'm beaming and proud of my gifts and climbing the towers to get myself and my gifts in front of more people—and, in turn, blocking God from receiving any glory for them. Then one day, something happens to knock me off my pedestal, and I curl up in the other ditch to sulk in my inadequacies. The world calls us to pride. Some Christians and our overactive consciences call us to hiding. Yet, Scripture calls us to sensibility:
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Rom. 12:3-8)
We shouldn't think too highly of ourselves. Remember, you are gifted because God, in his abundant mercy, gifted you, and he didn't gift you so that you could grow your platform. Rather, God gifted you to build up his body and demonstrate his goodness to the onlooking world. Don't pridefully clamber for the spotlight, but rather let yourself grow blurry in God's light shining through you. Think of yourself sensibly.
We shouldn’t think too lowly of God’s gifts to us either.
At the same time, don't think too lowly of your gifts either. God gifted you in such a way to serve his church at this particular time. You do not have the same function as your brothers and sisters in Christ. Without you working as a hand, the rest of the body isn't functioning to its best capacity. By his grace, God crafted you with your gifts and plunked you down in your local church to serve his people and bring glory to his name.
If you struggle to have confidence in your gifts, seek out the leadership in your church and find ways you can get involved to test out your possible giftings. Let the local church confirm your giftings (not a personality or spiritual gift test) and lean into them. Trust the words of Scripture—God didn't forget you when he gave gifts to his church.
Let's stop living in ditches or jumping between ditches. Let's think sensibly about ourselves.
This article was originally published on July 21, 2022.
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