The Spirit-Filled Life · Week 3 · Thursday

For the Common Good

He always figured he did not really have a gift.

He is not a speaker. He cannot command a room or play an instrument or stand up and teach a class. For years he looked around at church at the people who could do those visible things, and he quietly decided he was just a regular guy with nothing much to offer the kingdom of God. So he sat on the sideline where he figured he belonged and let the gifted people do the gifted things.

He decided he was just a regular guy.

The Thing He Can Do

But there is a thing he can do. He can fix anything with a motor or a pipe or a wire. He notices when something is broken before anyone thinks to ask. And he shows up, quietly, with his tools and his Saturday, makes it right, and slips out the door before anyone can make a fuss over him.

When the widow down the street had her heat go out in the cold, he was on her doorstep by dark. When a family barely holding on had their only car die, he had it running again by the weekend and would not take a dime. No speech, no platform, no spotlight. Just the thing he can do, handed over to people who needed it.

He thought of all that as nothing. Just being handy. He never once connected it to the Spirit.

To Each

To each. Not to the impressive few up front. To each one, including the man who is sure he is ordinary. The Spirit hands out his gifts far more widely than we think, and they look far more ordinary than we expect. Encouragement. Mercy. Hospitality. A steady presence in a crisis. The patience to sit with someone. A pair of hands that can fix what is broken. These are not lesser gifts. They are the manifestation of the Spirit, given on purpose.

And notice what they are for. The common good. The gift was never meant to sit inside you for your own benefit or your own pride. It was given for other people, for the exact ones God put within your reach.

Stop Sitting On It

The gift you have been dismissing because it is not flashy enough to count might be the very thing the Spirit anointed you to give. The kingdom does not need you to become someone else with a more impressive gift. It needs you to stop sitting on the ordinary, anointed thing already in your hands and start spending it on the people around you.

You’re anointed for the room you’re in.

Tomorrow · Singing in the Kitchen