Imagine yourself making macaroni & cheese. The pasta is boiled to your ideal al dente texture. The sauce, a tasty combination of your favorite cheeses, grated onions, minced garlic, and other choice seasonings, is added to the pasta. Salivating, you stir with eager anticipation of the feast to come later. Everything is ready to pour into a dish for baking.
Except that there is no dish.
The oven is preheated, your taste buds are dreaming of the first bites, but there are no casserole-sized dishes in your kitchen that are oven safe. What happened to the appropriate dishes?
Well, because the dish couldn’t guarantee the end result, it figured its role was useless. Overlooking the fact that its purpose is to hold ingredients, this is the only vessel able to withstand the high heat in an oven.
There are moments when we might have similar thoughts about ourselves. God has created us all with gifts. There are things that we have a passion for and are able to do well. When a need arises in our community, people know to call us specifically, to fulfill that need with our gifts.
However, there are times when we hesitate to use our gifts because we cannot determine the outcome. We cannot predict the end result or guarantee a positively definite end because we followed through on what God has asked us to do. While we cannot guess how successful a venture might be, we tend to assume on the negative side.
It will never work.
Will people even come?
But I can only do this one step; who will do the others?
Whatever God has gifted us to do, our role is to serve. Follow through on what He has equipped us to do. Don’t borrow trouble by stressing about the outcome. Our uncertainty of the end result is reason to rely fully on God and His Holy Spirit so that He is glorified.
God wastes nothing. When our gifts seem insignificant to us, let’s ask God to help us see things from His perspective.
______
by Sabrina Jacques-Rowe
Henderson Highway Church Communications Director
______
At the start of each year, the church participates in 10 Days of Prayer. This article explores the 2020 series, “Seeking God’s Spirit”. See other articles in this series here.