Worship (Day 18): Using your gifts

If you're reading my 31-day series on Worship for the first time, consider clicking over here to my Day 1 post to see the introduction and to find the rest of the posts in the series!

 

Beginning in January, I resolved to make 2013 a year of creating beauty. No matter what that entailed, I wanted to be able to appreciate the beauty that God has put uniquely inside myself by bringing it out and bringing Him glory. So, I got to work. I simplified our home, created more, use my sewing machine more, intentional-ized more. And the result has been a huge, patchy, beautiful-mess type of lesson on the many ways God has created me to worship Him.

In fact, Emily Freeman just recently wrote an entire book on the million little ways that we can worship Him through our own unique art. I'm halfway through it and I'm already dying to finish it, then read it 3 more times, then read it a few more times until I can soak all of it in because it's just.so.good. I'll talk about it more when I can completely wrap my head around it, but for now just know these things about using your gifts to worship:

1. Do what you love

Worshiping by using your gifts should not be difficult. Your "gifts" are something that God innately created you to enjoy; the million little things that He put you on this earth to do. It could be anything: parenting, counseling, encouraging, painting, crunching numbers, crunching abs, homemaking, researching, or even baking tasty treats. What makes you come alive... even if it seems so tiny that it shouldn't count for anything? For me, it's teaching, sewing, and writing. I love all three things, and even though I may not be the best at any of them, I really thrive when I'm doing them. So rather than trying to fit into a box that you were never meant to go in, do what comes most easily. It's what you were created for!

2. Do it for Jesus

This doesn't mean that you post a little Christian fish symbol on your shop window and call it a day. It doesn't even stop at putting Christ's name somewhere in your business motto. Doing what you love and using your unique gifts for Jesus should come from a deep desire to give a gift of worship to God through the things that you do. I love the way Anne Voskamp sums up worship on her blog:

"When what you do isn't about gaining or getting, but giving a gift to God, only then does your work become worship."

It's easy to take a gift such as teaching or singing and turn it into worship. But what about the little things that are actually big things? Recently, I've been pondering ways to turn my love for sewing into a truly worshipful experience, and it's hard. So much of it allows me to gain and get for myself. But I'm asking and He's answering, and I can't wait to see how He will teach me to worship in little ways such as this.

3. Don't think too big

When I think about using my gifts for worship, I think too big. I think about things that are big and huge and grand, but in the end those things typically point a lot of shiny arrows at me and my big self: Look at me!! See how wonderfully I am worshiping God here with my awesome gifts!!

Start small, but worship Big God: it isn't about gaining or getting. Give your gift to God, humbly, and He'll do as He pleases... even it means that one day, without you even realizing it, it becomes something greater than you ever imagined.



Use your gifts, friends, and worship.