Last weekend Jacob began to crawl, and to pull himself up on things. Though his favourite is when we hold his hands, supporting him so that he can walk around. But over the week his confidence has grown, as you can see he's even letting go with one hand.Though he's had a few falls, he keeps getting back up. This non stop climbing is so bad for my heart as I keep having images of him falling and splitting his head. But he needs to do this so that his muscles, confidence and ability to walk and stand will develop and then we won't need to be as constantly on our guard, watching him with concern.
I thought this was similar to a Christian concerning Spiritual gifts. When someone is a young Christian they may have a lot of zeal and passion but often more mature believers need to be around helping and mentoring them. Especially when it comes to using gifts.
Every gift must be cultivated so that we are most effective in our ministry service.
Finding your gift doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately be in a place to use it, someone with the gift of teaching is not going to immediately teach thousands and write best selling books; No, that gift must be cultivated, you need to learn something to teach.
Matthew 13:52 tells us that everyone who teaches the things of the kingdom of God are like those who bring new and old teachings out of a storehouse!
What this means is that you need to possess something in order to dish it out… …if I was to invite you over for a meal, and you got to my house and I opened my cupboards to get the potatoes and steak or whatever else out, if there was none of that there in the cupboards and they were empty you wouldn’t be getting food that night no matter how good a cook I am!
So we need our cupboards full so to speak before we minister, our gifts have to be cultivated and built up before can we use them effectively!
As we use and cultivate our gifts, as others help, advise and support us, even when we are making mistakes, we are learning to be more effective in them.
