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I have a friend who is a great storyteller. Whenever he tells a story, you feel like you are there. He isn't too descriptive or too vague, but knows how to hit all the right notes at all the times. I struggled a lot for a long time with comparing myself to him. I saw how his gift with stories touched people's lives, and I thought (and still think, at times) that I needed to be like him in order to make a difference.
When all this was happening, I also started writing. I found that my way of telling stories comes out best in my writing. I am a good speaker, too, but writing is the foundation that speaking comes out of. It is the opposite for my friend.
What was hardest for me was that, when I would hear the stories my friend would tell, I wondered why God wasn't doing similar things in my life. Do you ever feel this way - that God must be giving them more attention because they are doing something "better" than you are? I felt the same way until recently.
I realize now that God trusts us with our gifts. God gave us each specific gifts to do one thing: tell God's story. Gardeners tell stories. Writers tell stories. Painters tell stories. Teachers tell stories. Secretaries tell stories. And each person relates to God in a different way, because we need each other to get a more complete vision of who God is. When we are trying to develop gifts that truly aren't ours, we are quenching God's Spirit in our lives.
Which answers the question that has tortured me for so long: Why did my friend have such crazy things happen to him? Maybe because God knows he will do a good job at telling the story. Once I really got into my writing, let me tell you, the craziest things started happening. I met a girl online. I moved to Missouri. I got a full-ride scholarship in an urban education program. And now I am marrying that girl.
I'm not saying that all this happened because of something I did, and I'm not saying that this is my story. It's God's story, and He's letting me be a part of it. I embrace my gifts, and freedom comes from that. Maybe a reason why we so often can't see God is because we are too busy trying to be like other people, when God made us a specific way so He could reveal Himself through our gifts to us.
For people who speak, things may happen to them that won't happen to other people because God knows they will faithfully retell it.
For people who write, the world will look different because God gave writers different eyes.
And the list goes on, and on, and on.
So when we aren't living out our respective gifts, whatever they are, we are really shutting God out. But if we accept our gifts, then we give God elbow room to move around and reveal Himself to us and through us.
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| | Posted 5/23/2009 8:04 PM - 16 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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