#2 Worship God by Using Your Gifts

In Romans 12:4-6 we read,

4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

God didn’t give you gifts just to keep them to yourself!  He gave them to you so that you could use them to worship Him and bring glory to His name. 

Matthew 5:16 says,

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

We don’t strive to do good works to draw attention to ourselves, but we strive to do good works so others may give glory to our Father in heaven.

Last summer, I had a wonderful opportunity to go on a mission trip to East Asia.  It was a blessing to be a part of the class teaching about American culture and trying to build relationships with those students.  But, a personal thing that I like to do when I visit other countries is to try to find an authentic musical instrument from that culture.  So, one night on the trip we finished our evening plans a little early and a couple of us went to go search for musical instruments.  We talked with a few of the students in our class and they told us where the authentic instruments were.  So, we hopped on the subway and rode for over an hour to get to this place.  We made it and there was shop after shop of instruments and artwork.  It was great!  Except for one problem….we were too late and every shop was closed.  We didn’t think we’d have time to come back another night, so we just walked around and looked in the windows.  We were about ready to give up and started heading back to the Subway station, when we heard this beautiful-sounding flute.  We went toward the music and sure enough, she was standing outside a music store that was still open. 

We called her the flute angel.  She spoke a little English, so we tried to explain we were from the United States and I wanted to look at authentic instruments from their culture.  She immediately said, “Let me introduce you to the master.”  The master was the owner of the store and he actually hand-made most of the instruments they were selling.  He played several of them for us, we spent probably half an hour with them and just had a really good time.

If you go back to Matthew 5:16, we read again..

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The flute angel was simply using the gifts that she had to let her light shine in a very dark place with no open music stores.  And when we saw her, she didn’t want glory for herself, she wanted to introduce us to the master.

In much more powerful ways than introducing our friends to a musician, I believe when we let our light shine, we will have opportunities to introduce our friends to the real Master, our Lord and Savior.