James 1:17
What an awesome image that we have from our Father in Heaven! Your Abba Father waits to give you good and perfect gifts directly from Him! How precious and personal is our God to us!
Sadly, I am guilty of taking these gifts and forgetting their value. I take advantage of the years of music that has been engraved on my heart. I take advantage of the friendships around me and forget their worth to me. I even take certain gifts and expect God to make more out of them than what they really were intended to be. It's like God giving me a pocket knife and I try to cut down a tree with it. I expect the gift to do more than it was intended to.
How many times do we do this? Say my passion for music...God gave me songs to sing, but I expected my songs to reach the world far and wide and become famous! Maybe the purpose of his songs through me was to reach one person on Bash on the Farm. That was it...what if?
What if your desire to minister to lost souls gave you a passion to spread overseas....but God kept you in your community and church? Does this make the gift any less perfect? Of course not! God administers each gift to us perfectly. We don't have to tweek any design. It was perfect already.
I don't always believe this in my heart. I am very quick to want more than what God gives me. But I ask myself...what kind of daughter comes to her father and says "Dad, your gift isn't doing what I want it to do. I don't like this."
What kind of daughter would that make me? Especially to my Heavenly Father! If His gifts are perfect, and I'm not happy with them... the problem isn't Him...it's me.
"For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless."
Psalm 84:11
My prayer Lord, Abba Father, is that you would open the eyes of my heart to see your design for the gifts you have given me. I pray that my heart would be changed to find contentment in the life that you have given me. I pray that I would cast aside all worldy desires and find the treasures in heaven to be more desireable and filling to my soul. I ask, God, that you would grant me a joy in what I have and only what you have.
"Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways."
Psalm 119:37
May this be your prayer too. I love you all.
This is so true, and so easy to lose track of! I am guilty of this constantly. At the church I go to, we used to have a 45 piece choir and 5 octave handbell choir. I was close to the music director, and constantly played solos, was challenged by a great deal of music, and really felt the role of "performer" during service quite often. Then she moved, along with her husband, the former pastor. The new music director is awesome, but choir has dwindled to maybe 30 members, handbells fell apart, and my time playing solo flute dwindled because I am needed to help direct choir, lead handbells, or simply fill out a shrimpy soprano section. I don't get what I used to out of the music, and there have been many Sundays where I feel disappointed by this and question finding greener pastures, which is a terrible thought. I am able to help lead, and leadership is what my church needs from its members right now-sometimes your gift just isn't about you.
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