"But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as He chose." -1 Corinthians 12:18
Often
times as women we can get discouraged because it seems like men have
all the roles. Now I know I talked about this recently (and you can
read about it if
you click here) but I'm sure you all know about how you can teach
Bible class or visit widows and shut-ins, or bring in food for your
church pantry, etc. However, I feel like people don't talk about why
we
need different people doing different things. A lot of times it's
just assumed that everyone does different things because God said so.
Some people are elders, some are deacons, some are preachers, and
some are teachers simply because God said so. However, this is not
the case.
1
Corinthians 12:12-31 talks about the body that is the church. It
talks about how some people have certain abilities while others
don't. In fact verses 27-30 break away from the parable and ask if
everyone is a teacher, or an apostle, or can speak in tongues, or
heal the sick or perform miracles. Clearly people no longer perform
miracles (which is a whole other article altogether) but the passage
doesn't become less true. Even if it's less obvious, even if it's
behind the scenes, everyone has a part in the church.
A
carpenter went to build a small play house for his daughter. Now,
typically he worked in a large group of people and he was always in
charge of the wood. So he brought over a bunch of wood that was cut
properly so it would be sturdy. He started stacking the planks
together and within about 10 minutes, a gust of wind came and
everything fell over. The man scratched his head and tried thinking
of a reason why that would happen. The man was stumped so he called
up his friend who was usually in charge of hammering. He told the man
with the wood that maybe he should try hammering the wood to get it
to stick in place. So the man got up, put the wood back, and started
hammering. About 10 minutes into this, another gust of wind came and
knocked the wood over. Stumped again, the man called his friend who
usually handled the nails and thought that maybe he could help. The
man with the nails told him that maybe he should try putting the
nails in the wood before he hammered. Suddenly, it all became clear.
The man started building his house and about 10 minutes later a big
gust of wind came but what he had been building didn't fall down this
time.
Now,
if you were the man with the wood, you would have probably already
have known that you need more than just wood, or just a hammer, or
just nails in order to build a play house. It seems like this would
be obvious. However, it seems to be less obvious when we're talking
about the church. Sometimes it seems like we all have to be teachers,
or we all have to be preachers, or we all have to cook for potlucks,
etc. Now yes we should do as much as we can, but it takes a lot of
different people who can do different things in order to build up
God's church. Some people are better at starting up Bible studies
than doing the studies themselves, and some people are good at doing
the actual Bible study thing but not so good at setting them up. Now
I'm not saying that if you're not good at something now then you
never will be, but simply that some people have a higher advantage in
some things, and that it's important to use that advantage.
Today
I'd like to encourage you all to look at your abilities and your
advantages and use them to help in your congregation. Whatever your
talent is, whether you're good with kids or older people, or you're
good at encouraging people or just helping where help is needed, I'd
like to encourage you all to look for places where you can help the
kingdom grow.
