Enabled and empowered saints!- Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my mind and heart in Romans 12:6,

"We have different gifts, according to the grace given us."

In a chapter where Paul provides instructions to the church members as
to how to live their lives, he points to the enabling each believer
has received from God to build up other believers and exhorts his
readers to utilize these "gifts". Prophesying, serving, teaching,
encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, leadership and
showing mercy are offered as examples. Paul says, "If a man's gift is
prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith." Romans 12:6.

This "faith" Paul refers to in conjunction with a gift of prophesying
is not simply a threshold that is crossed, as with the faith required
for our salvation. It, apparently, comes in varying degrees and
prompts varying levels of performance of the gifting God provides us
with. We are to utilize the gifts given us in the lives of those
around us in accordance with this "proportion" of faith. This
apparently is not faith we "gin up" ourselves, but is faith God
provides. Faith seems to be a part of the "gift" itself. A couple of
verses earlier Paul tells us to view our own selves with the humility
that is "in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you."
Romans 12:3.

Faith that brings us into God's family is not given us, but is what
the gospel message is greeted with by those who embrace Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Savior as their response. Jesus told Nicodemus,
"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not
believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the
name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come
into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their
deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not
come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But
whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be
seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." John
3:18-21. We will either choose to give up sin to embrace Jesus Christ
or we will choose to give up that opportunity to continue our embrace
of sin. The faith to do so is saving faith and is a threshold God
looks for in us when we are exposed to the gospel.

Paul points to all that God provides us in our service to him and
others in this chapter in Romans. He gives us gifts for service as
well as the faith to employ them such that we might be as productive
as he intends us to be. Whatever we do is provided by him, whether the
enablement of the gift, or the empowerment he provides through faith
given us.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to
hear from you!

Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com