Gifts

I used to long to have a voice to sing. I used to love to even have some sort of voice that would allow me to sing in the church choir. Instead, I have nothing. I can’t hear music, I can’t hear tone, and when I sing my 2-year-old asks me to stop with his hands covering his ears. It makes me sing very very quietly during worship time at church, to be honest.

But over the last several years, I’ve started to realize that God really does purposefully equips us with gifts, and His purpose in giving us those gifts are to worship Him, minister for Him, and to further His kingdom.

I have a good friend who is an AMAZING singer. She gets up on the platform at church, tambourine in hand, and just leads worship in an awesome way. She can get a crowd of 200 people waving their arms in the air and singing praises to God at the tops of their lungs. She can reduce that same crowd to their knees, praying and seeking God privately and personally.

Sunday night was our church’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun. I made yeast rolls along with some other things, and because of the quantity that I made, I just did a lot of my work at the church. We came home after morning services, I fed the kids and laid the boys down for a nap, then prepped my yeast roll dough for the first rise, made cornbread and put together the ingredients for cornbread stuffing, and got my asparagus prepped and marinating.

As soon as all of that prep was complete, I took everything to the church, rolled out the yeast rolls and cut them, getting them ready for the second rising, scooped the cornbread stuffing into individual servings and baked that, and roasted my asparagus. Once everyone started getting there, I took the broth from the turkeys that others had cooked and made a huge pot of gravy. By the time it was all said and done and we went home, I’d been there for seven hours.

The day before, after baking six loaves of bread to sell at the booth, I helped a friend who cooked three huge pots of soup and prepared about 200 sandwiches in the church kitchen which we then served up to paying guests at our women’s Christmas bazaar at church.

I have no doubt in my mind that God has given me the gift of cooking, serving, and hospitality. Everything about me is fulfilled when I can serve others a meal I’ve created, even more so if the people eating it are in need (soup kitchen), at church, or in ministry (visiting evangelists.) When I come across a new recipe or cooking tip or something like that, I can’t wait to share it and minister to you with it. When I get feedback here on this blog about a recipe that was a success I feel joy and excitement.

I realize that I’m not in a sequined top that sparkles under the spotlight, bringing a crowd of hundreds to their feet with my voice. But what I do is no less an act of worship than Kari Jobe leading a crowd through Revelation Song. I do it in the background, with way less glamor and with little pizazz. At the end of the night I’m not signing autographs, I’m scrubbing pots and pans. But people who know me will look forward to a meal or a dish from me as much as I used to look forward to my friend singing. When I do it in God’s name, for God, as an act of worship for Him, I don’t think that He thinks any less of the way I utilize my gifts than the biggest Christian rock star out there.