“Sing praise to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!” Psalm 47:6-7
“Look carefully then how you walk… making the best use of the time… understand what the will of the LORD is. …be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the LORD with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Ephesians 5:15-20
“Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” Colossians 3:16-17
“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency/all contentment in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” II Corinthians 9:7-8
For the past three months I’ve been playing the piano for my local church. I’d taken ten years of lessons growing up and thoroughly enjoyed playing the piano for myself, but had never been able to share it with others, even my mom while practicing at home nor my husband of eleven years, due to ‘stage-fright’.
I’ve always wrestled with my understanding of spiritual gifts, and have had much faulty teaching and instruction about them. I’ve taken far too many quizzes and courses and trainings on discovering your spiritual gift. Even in seminary I took a career counseling class to try to figure out how to make a living off of my ‘spiritual gift’, thinking that that is how a Christian is to determine the LORD’s will for their career.
Strengths and weaknesses… finding your passion… All the things we pressure high school students to figure out for choosing their direction for life after school: colleges, careers, tech schools, apprenticeships, taking a year to find themselves backpacking through Europe.
And then if they go to college it’s the same thing all over again: further education, internships, choosing majors (while hearing from almost everyone and their mother that no one ends up using their major that they’ll be in debt for forever!), semesters abroad to find themselves.
And then again if they pursue even higher education: ever further education, internships, choosing a specialty, just become a professional student because it’s really learning that you’re passionate about?!
The church has committed the very same sin Israel kept getting itself caught up in: mixing with the world, conforming with the world, blending worship of the LORD with the world’s religious activities.
Our earthly skills, talents, abilities are part of God’s common grace to everyone – believers and unbelievers. So to call such giftings ‘spiritual gifts’ or even ‘callings’ has caused so much confusion, frustration, abuse and oppression, and sin in the church.
“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” I Corinthians 12:7
The manifestation of the Spirit is the ‘spiritual’ part of ‘spiritual gifts’, only given to those in Christ. The display, the evidence, the fruit of the Spirit is given to each person in Christ for the common good, for the building up of the Church, the local church, and the individual members of the Church. And we know that the fruit of the Spirit is love. So spiritual gifts are special ways we love God, we love His people, and we love the lost.
To each is given the experience of the love of God personally. This is not something we horde and keep to ourselves; for the love of Christ compels us to share this experience of the awesome love of God for His people; for the common good, for the building of the Church, for the glory of God. We are commanded to share these displays of God’s love to us individually with one another first, stirring one another up, encouraging one another; and then to the lost by proclaiming the gospel, the good news, the special love of God for His people.
Spiritual gifts are in a way specific means that we enjoy God. Ways that we are overwhelmed and captivated by tasting and seeing His love for me. Feeling, believing that I am His child, His beloved, His treasured possession.
God taught me, made me personally experience, His steadfast love (hesed: covenantal love) for me through obeying His MANY commands to sing. So the spiritual gift that He has been giving me the past few years is to experience His love through singing. Proclaiming, declaring publicly His deeds, His love, His character and nature through song.
This spiritual gift has nothing to do with earthly skills or abilities. I do not sing well. I can’t hit the higher notes, but I can’t hit the lower notes either. I don’t know how to pace my breathing, and I most certainly do not know how to steady my voice when I cry out of pure joy and adoration at the beauty of the LORD.
Going back to playing piano for the past three months… I had been praying and meditating on Scriptures, asking others to lift me up in their prayers to learn to serve the LORD cheerfully, joyfully by playing the piano. I had been praying for a greater hatred of my pride, mortification of my pride in regards to how poorly I played each Sunday after practicing perfectly all week. I had been praying to deny myself, my desire to be able to sing with the congregation on the Lord’s Day. I had been praying that He would restore His joy that He has flooded me in through music. I had been praying to good steward of the ‘gifts’ He had given me, and how I did not want to be the wicked servant who buries it in the ground as I had for the past few decades.
I was growing bitter. I was growing weary with no strength in the joy of the LORD. I was losing my delight in the Lord’s Day altogether. I was murmuring and complaining. I was ‘serving’ my gracious Father reluctantly, under compulsion, and very far from any hints of contentment.
Have you ever witnessed this type of ‘service’ to the LORD? We outwardly exhibit a ‘servant’s heart’ through much service, activity and ‘good works’, but we develop a haggardly spirit about us. Our faces, eyes, conversations, voices have a heaviness, a weariness, an appearance and tone of being absolutely miserable, exhausted, and utterly joyless.
It’s an abomination. It is the opposite of glorifying God to not be enjoying Him! It is dishonoring to Him, His name, His reputation.
God wants our hearts, not our acts of service. He does not need our acts of service. He could make the rocks rise up and play the piano! But the rocks to do not have hearts to enjoy Him, to adore His, to give thanks to Him, to praise and glorify Him. God wants our hearts.
How do we determine what our true spiritual gifts are?
Ask the Spirit to show you what is it that awakens you to experience His love. What is it that makes you most enjoy Him? Enjoy God for who He is, not for the things God can do for you or give you. What is it that makes you so full of hope, joy, peace by knowing that you are His, and He is yours? What is it that opens your eyes to who He truly is, who you truly are, and brings you to the end of yourself?
“I saw the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the Temple. …. And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Isaiah 6:1, 5
“But when Simon Peter saw it (the massive catch of fish), he fell down at Jesus’ knees, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’” Luke 5:8
When we have such encounters with God, our hearts cannot help but be captivated by Him, glorify Him, enjoy Him, and so it does not feel like a sacrifice to leave everything and follow Him. It does not feel like a sacrifice to offer up a sacrifice of praise to God in all circumstances, at all times.
“Through (Jesus) then lets us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.” Hebrews 13:15
To acknowledge His name is to confess and accept the truth of God’s character, of who He is. This feels like a sacrifice when we are focused on ourselves, when we exalt ourselves, and are thinking we know better than God what it is to be love, to be merciful, to be kind, to be just, to be wise, to be good.
The most transformative encounter I had with the living God was when Joel and I sang hymns to Hezekiah as he laid dying in my arms. We had purposed that we would proclaim the gospel to Hezekiah till his last breath, just as I had been proclaiming the gospel to this precious little soul from the moment I found out I was pregnant. The soul does not need ears to hear its Savior's call.
We wanted all of our loved ones to have such a transformative encounter with the LORD, particularly in the midst of grieving, and so his 'memorial service' was centered not on remembering Hezekiah, but on acknowledging God’s name through singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving for who God is.
Proclaiming and declaring to everyone that God is good and does good when the natural man would be most tempted to doubt and question His goodness and sovereignty, is only by the awesome, miraculous work of the Holy Spirit of Truth. I cannot imagine a greater spiritual gift than that in such circumstances we were made to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is good and does good, all the time. This was the answer to decades of prayers to keep and guard our hearts, and our minds.
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…” Philippians 3:8-9
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Romans 8:18
“And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
We got a taste of heaven, of intimately knowing God and Jesus Christ, in the very midst of our greatest taste of hell on earth.
“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving/Make thanksgiving your sacrifice to God… The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies Me…” Psalm 50:14, 23
And to glorify God is to enjoy Him…
-Soli Deo gloria
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