Psalm 64
1 Corinthians 12
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
1 Corinthians 12:27
When God reminds us often about a certain topic, we need to sit up and pay special attention. This year we looked at the spiritual gifts four times: in our study on the church, in our study in Romans and in our daily reading a few weeks ago. Which causes us to ask – what is God trying to highlight in our lives; and where may we not be listening? Does God want us to find out what our gifts are? Is God saying that we should be using the gifts that He has blessed us with? Is God saying be happy with the gifts that we have been given, or don’t be envious of others who have gifts that we don’t seem to have?
The answer may be all or some of the above. No matter whether it is one or all, the verse above indicates that God has made us, the church, ONE body and we should function as ONE body. What we do with our gifts in serving the Lord should also be for the good of the body. Selfish pride and personal gain should not be our goal. We should be seeking to build up the church. We cannot do this by being passive and doing nothing, or by being involved to seek the praise of men under the guise of working for the Lord.
We need to ask ourselves the questions: what we are doing that may be breaking down the body rather than building it up and what are we not doing that we could be doing to build the church. It is so easy to point fingers at others but so hard to take the log out of our own eyes. We need God’s help and so Paul commands us to seek the greatest gift. We will look at this gift tomorrow.
Prayer based on Psalm 64
Father God, thank You that we can come before You as our protector to seek refuge from our enemies. We thank You that You are the one who will avenge and judge the wicked, and that you are in complete control. Thank You that as children in Christ, You are our comfort and our shield and we honour and exalt Your name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.