“God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another”
—1 Peter 4:10 (NLT).
An individual’s treasure trove of talents, skills, and other spiritual gifts can remain hidden and may never be used for God’s glory. Many factors could be reasons why talents, skills, and abilities are not used because of demotivation, burnout, or discouragement. The apostle Paul’s disciple named Timothy experienced burnout too when he was pastoring the church in Ephesus defending their faith against false teachers. That is why Paul wrote him with encouragement “to fan into a flame and rekindle the fire of the spiritual gift of God…” (2 Timothy 1:6, PTP). In our present time, many self-help books are available on how to manage frustrations written by motivational authors and speakers and these books are even claimed to help achieve life’s full potential. Yes, self-help books can help change some aspects of life as they provide instructions on solving personal problems, managing frustrations, improving internal communications, and many more. However, these secular books are never pointing out that sin is the root cause of the problem where God’s glory has fallen short (Romans 3:23). Without God’s grace in one’s life will result in a lack of willpower to finish the race and aggravate the situation. In general, people are so busy with so many things in life without giving full attention to spirituality, that is because of sin encroaching on life causes spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1-3).
However, Jesus’ perspective on Lazarus’ death was only referred to as sleeping (John 11:11), and was awakened to have his life back again (John 11:43-44). Is your spiritual life sleeping? The good news is there can be a reawakening of your spiritual life through these three S’s pointers below:
- Surrender Your Life to the Lordship of Christ Jesus. Many people claimed that they surrendered and accepted Jesus in their hearts but never made Jesus to be the Lord in their lives, therefore, no real transformation happened. Real surrender should result in a new person in you. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says: “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (NLT). That act of surrendering and accepting, is a manifestation that Jesus is your Lord! Listen to His voice and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and follow Him (John 10:27). However, you need to realize that you cannot depend on the strength of your inner being, enabling you to complete obedience apart from the Holy Spirit. You must rely on the power provided by the indwelling Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17) because even your obedience is through His grace (Ephesians 2:8-9).
- Subscribe to Spiritual Disciplines. Discipline in this context is like a military or sports training exercise with self-control. You don’t indulge in what you want like extending more sleep. You will wake up at an appointed time and start your training. Therefore, it is a norm among Christ’s followers to wake up early in the morning and spend time with God through reading His Word and prayer. The Psalmist has beautifully expressed this and said: “As for me, I will see Your face in what is right and good. I will be happy to see You when I awake.”—Psalm 17:15 (NLV). There are many spiritual disciplines and not only limited to prayer & fasting, bible studies, and discipleship. But, we also expected to grow in grace and be equipped with the knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18) and be drawn closer to Him (James 4:8).
- Share Your Spiritual Gifts. God’s Word tells us that God has given certain spiritual gifts such as wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, signs, and wonders that lift people’s faith, preaching and teaching, discernment of spirits, gift of tongues, and interpretation of tongues. These are personal spiritual gifts to be used for the common good of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). We are reminded that these gifts including our talents, skills, and abilities are not for our use to benefit from, but they are for the benefit of other people (1 Peter 4:10).
Reawakening your spiritual life will result in a life of holiness. Having the above 3S’s cannot be earned solely through our works but with God’s help and mercy. He is the vine, and we are His branches, apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:4). Salvation, spiritual disciplines, and spiritual gifts are all gifts from God, and it is all by His grace that one can pursue a life of holiness (Leviticus 11:45; Peter 1:16).