When we think of spiritual gifts, we must be careful to not fall into the trap of believing that spiritual equals intangible. The purpose of the spiritual gift given to us by the Holy Spirit is to enable us as believers to do something, to take action, for other believers and the church at large. We can not lull ourselves into believing that spiritual gifts are for us to receive, but not to exercise and employ. There may be no more succinct passage in scripture describing this than 1 Peter 4:10-11:

“As each one has received a gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God— whoever speaks, as one speaking the oracles of God; whoever serves, as one serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and might forever and ever. Amen.” (LSB) 

Peter wrote this epistle to Christians struggling under Roman persecution (after the fires in Rome set by Nero, but blamed on Christians), and as he begins to close it out he wants to encourage these believers that they are not only to serve one another, but that they have been supernaturally gifted to serve each other. A unique gift given to each believer, not only to be used to minister to other believers, but ultimately to glorify God.

So how should we approach employing and exercising our spiritual gift, to leverage it for Christ and His church? The first thing we need to have is conviction that God’s word says that all believers have been given a unique spiritual gift and that we are to use it (1 Cor 12:4-5). If you are a new Christian it might be easy to think that you haven’t yet been given a gift, or if you’ve been struggling to figure out how to serve the church you might think your gift is somehow weak or inferior to others. Neither of those are true. While the Holy Spirit progressively sanctifies and spiritually matures us throughout our lives, we are given a gift from the very beginning; your spiritual gift is not something that you receive once you’ve reached a certain ‘level’ of being a Christian.

Second, we must have a heart of humility in employing our spiritual gift. We have been given our gift to serve others, not to serve ourselves. Our gift is not for self promotion, building our brand, or being able to brag about how much we do (Rom 12:3). If we approach using our spiritual gift with an attitude of how we’ll benefit from it or how many others might see us use it, we run the very real risk of acting contrary to God’s will. Our first concern must be for our fellow believers and not for ourselves.

Third, we must steward our time so that we can employ our gift. It seems obvious to say, but maybe not so obvious in practice, that if we are going to use our gift to serve others it will take time. We all have so many demands on our time between work, family, activities, etc. that often it feels like we have to “make time” to serve others. That’s both right and wrong in a sense. We do have to allocate time but as something we are called to do by God, serving our fellow believers should be a top priority for our time, rather than something we’ll do if we have enough time left after everything else. As we have said, your spiritual gift is a unique gift given to you for you to exercise. We can’t simply say that we ran out of time and hope the Holy Spirit gets someone else to take our place. On the opposite side we also must guard against laziness and idleness (Prov 6:6-11). It can be just as tempting to spend our time “doing nothing” as it is to spend our time doing too much. 

Finally, we must put in the effort to serve others. We are not robots and our spiritual gift is not a simple instruction to go do a simple task and then we’re done. We are often willing to go above and beyond at work or at home, but then when it comes to serving fellow believers we tend to stop if it is in any way hard work. Serving others is difficult work, but we can rejoice that we have a Holy Spirit that Peter tells us is supplying the strength for us to employ our gift. What a marvelous grace it is that we do not have to rely on our own strength! We can trust that whatever gift God has given each of us, He also provides everything we need to employ it.

So as we approach each individual day where God’s mercies are new every morning, let us do so with joy and the resolve to truly seek to employ our gift for the good of our fellow believers and for the glory of God and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.