Messy Relationships, Blog 10: Finding Your Place to Serve - A Game Plan for Defeating Messiness
I love team sports! Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer – you name it! I love! After years of playing and watching team sports I have come to realize that one of the key ingredients to success in any team sport is making sure you have the right athlete in the right position. When everyone is in their “sweet spot” magic happens! The results are that the individual player enjoys the game a lot more, the team members relate better with one another, there is chemistry, harmony, oneness, unselfishness, the team rises to a higher level, the team is successful and the messiness and failure that was once so prevalent now seems to be a thing of the past, everybody gels, championships are won!
This same principle is true in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, I would submit to you that one of the most strategically important things in your Christian life is for you to find out what position God wants you to play on His team. Romans chapter 12 is the central New Testament passage on this subject. Romans 12 provides the Christian with much needed instruction when it comes to finding his/her all-important sweet spot. Romans 12 answers the question of: where do I plug in, where do I serve, where am I best suited for service and ministry as part of the body of Christ? And most importantly, Romans 12 reveals the incredible community that is created when everyone within the body is positioned correctly. It is a community typified by brotherly love for one another, devotion to one another, deference to one another, honoring one another, meeting one another’s needs, hospitality, etc. You say, I want this for my life, I want this for my church! How can I get started? 2 steps from Romans 12:
(Step #1) Present Yourself to God – Romans 12:1 -- Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Again, Romans 12 is a chapter that focuses on our place of service and ministry as part of the body of Christ and it is also a chapter that talks about Spiritual Gifts! But before you and I can even begin exploring what our spiritual gifts are, we must first come to a place where we in all humility say “God, I am available, I am willing to play whatever position You have gifted me to play on this team. God, I am totally Yours!” Do you want to enjoy your Christian walk more? Do you want to start winning in the Christian life? Do you wish a lot of the messiness in and around your life (broken relationships, sinful patterns and attitudes, etc.) would dissipate? Well, this is where it all starts! Present yourself to God!
(Step #2) Know Your Spiritual Gift – Romans 12:3 -- For just as we have many parts in one body and all the body’s parts do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually parts of one another. However, since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to use them properly.
Did you know that after His mighty victory on the cross and His ascension on high that the Bible says that Jesus has now given gifts to His Church? These gifts are in essence the spoils of His victory. The bottom line is this, God has given to each of us as believers a supernatural gift – a supernatural capacity/ability to serve Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. There are no excuses, we have all been gifted and thus we all need to be serving.
Romans 12:4-6 (see above) tells us that for the Christian, there is one team but many different positions. And as a member of that team, I am not to play your position and you are not to play my position – we are to each play our own position. God has a place for us to serve within the body of Christ and it is critically important to know what that position is. Romans 12:5 tells us that there is a comradery (intimate togetherness) among us in the body of Christ. We are on the same team, pressing toward the same goal, trying to defeat the same enemy!
Romans 12:6 tells us that we all have different spiritual gifts and Paul lays many of them out for us (serving, teaching, exhortation, leadership, mercy, etc.). So, you and I need to know how God has gifted us and we are to play the right position on the team. If we as a church body are playing somebody out of position the whole team suffers, the whole team is penalized. The key for overall team success and the key for us as individuals to have maximum return on the investment of our lives is for us to know what our spiritual gift is and then employ it for the glory of God.
Finally, in verses 9-21 Paul provides us with a snapshot of what it can look like when a community of believers has, (1) presented themselves to God and (2) employed their spiritual gifts. Listen to how Paul describes it:
. . . . Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality . . . . .
So, what we see in Romans 12 is the apostle Paul acting much like a modern-day Director of Player Personnel as he exhorts us to present ourselves to God and then find our unique position of service within the body of Christ. As we do, relationships flourish, messiness abates, joy and victory abound and God is glorified!
Pastor Scot Overbey