But God Gifts Where He Will- Lent 27, 2021

I’m not a fan of coerced unity. We hear it all the time from politicians…unity, unity, unity…but on political terms. You give up your principles and agree with me and then we will have unity. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose. Anything to confuse you or distract you, so you won’t think about what it really means: subjugation by capitulation to someone else’s whims.

If God prepares and preserves where He calls, part of that preparation is in the way He gifts each one of us. We are different. We think differently and apply ourselves differently. But in Christ, we can get along. As we live between the City of Man and the City of God, we can experience His peace and be productive followers of Christ as we’ve noted in “But God…” our 2021 Lent Devotional series.

How can we have this peace and productivity?
By agreeing with His choice to gift us and His choice of where to employ us.
And moreover, His choice NOT to gift us in certain ways
or His choice to deny our use in an area for which we were never gifted.
It’s tough for Christians to swallow sometimes.
Even harder for those who don’t know Christ.

I Corinthians 12:20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

No one is a Do-It-All-Christian. We must depend on each other.

Father God, thank You for Your great wisdom. You have chosen to gift the Body called the Church in the way that You know will lead to the best outcome. We praise You and thank You for the giftedness in our brothers and sisters in Christ. We thank You that there is no favoritism with You and that in Your perfect knowledge, the gifts are ours to be peace-filled and productive. To yield much fruit. And all of this, Lord Jesus, for Your glory. Amen.

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If you’re already signed up on my Home Page sidebar to receive posts, you’ll get the 2022 Lent Devotionals automatically. Or you can “Like” Seminary Gal on Facebook and they’ll be delivered to your Facebook news feed. If you haven’t signed up, today is a great day to do so. Advent and Lenten devotionals remain among my most popular offerings. You don’t want to miss this encounter with God to prepare your heart for Easter! Understanding that prior years’ devotionals continue to minister, you may want to have access to a full series ahead of time:

Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.