Service and Hospitality | 1 Peter 4:7-11
Brian Hedges | September 14, 2025
I want to invite you to turn to 1 Peter 4. Last week we began this new series called “Love One Another: The Keys to Biblical Community.” We talked last week about the consumerism that now marks the church in our culture and the call for us to mature out of that. You might wonder, “Where did this consumeristic mentality come from?” In a scholarly book, a book of history written several years ago called The Juvenilization of American Christianity, author Thomas Bergler argues that this is really an outgrowth of the youth movement of the mid-twentieth century. He says,
“Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, Christian teenagers and youth leaders staged a quiet revolution in American church life which can properly be called the juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescence became accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages. Like other revolutions, juvenilization swept away both good and bad elements in church life. By personalizing Christianity and creatively blending it with elements of popular culture ranging from rock music to political protests, youth ministries helped ensure the ongoing vitality of Christianity in America, but these same ministries also sometimes pandered to the consumerism, self-centeredness, and even outright immaturity of American believers. For good or ill, American Christianity would never be the same.”
It’s a remarkable book that really explores the sociological dynamics of the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s…how that affected the American church and how we now live with that. There are both good and bad effects that really came out of the juvenilization of American Christianity. It renewed the Christian church in some ways while also undermining Christian maturity in other ways.
My concern this morning isn’t with the particular cultural elements that Bergler discusses in the book, whether rock music or political protests or whatever, but rather with the effect of consumerism in the American church and in our own lives, consumerism that underlines Christian maturity.
This ties in, of course, with the Peter Pan Syndrome that we talked about last week. It’s that impulse within us that doesn’t really want to mature into Christian growth as a part of the church. We talked about that last week from Ephesians 4, and today we’re going to dig into one particular aspect of this, what we might call service and hospitality, from 1 Peter 4.
As we do this, let’s just remember what previous generations modeled for us in contrast to today. In earlier generations, Christians faithfully showed up, and they showed up every Sunday for Sunday school, for Sunday morning; they came back for Sunday night service, they came back in the middle of the week, and they were involved and engaged in service to their community. There was this rhythm of presence and participation and service.
Today, for many of the people in the church and perhaps for many of us, the rhythm has shifted to one of convenience, and it has stunted the growth of the church, meaning that we’re lacking in maturity. Listen: consumerism is a form of spiritual immaturity, and this whole series is a call for us to grow up in Christ and mature together as the body of Christ as we live out these “one another” commands in Scripture.
So, today we’re going to look at some of these commands in 1 Peter 4. Let me begin by reading 1 Peter 4:7-11. Notice the “one another” commands as I read. Peter says,
“The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
This is God’s word.
The big idea this morning, the main point of the sermon, is this: In his grace, God gives us spiritual gifts so that we can serve one another for his glory. In his grace, God gives us spiritual gifts, and the purpose of those gifts is that we serve one another in order to bring glory to him.
So I just want to ask three questions about these gifts:
1. What Are Spiritual Gifts?
2. How, When, and Where Do We Use Our Gifts? (That’s three questions in one.)
3. Why Should We Use Our Gifts to Serve?
1. What Are Spiritual Gifts?
We can be brief here, but just notice the word “gift” in verse 10. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” This is a word that Peter just uses one time, but we know it especially from the writings of the apostle Paul. It’s used sixteen times in Paul’s letters, and you find it in those lists of spiritual gifts that are found in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12.
Paul also uses this word more broadly. He uses it to refer to the gift of marriage or the gift of singleness in 1 Corinthians 7. He uses it to refer to the gift of salvation itself.
At its very root, this really is connected to the word “grace.” The word “gift” is charisma; the word “grace,” charis. A gift is something that God by his grace has given to us so that we can then minister grace to others. That’s really transparent, I think, here in 1 Peter 4. So, a spiritual gift has this broad range of meanings and applications.
Professor Don Carson, in his book Showing the Spirit, says,
“It is very clear that the term is not a technical one for Paul that refers only to a select set of supranormal gifts, like healing and tongues. Not only can it embrace gifts like encouraging and generous giving, but it can be used repeatedly for the gift of salvation itself, not to mention the gift of celibacy and the gift of marriage. In that sense, therefore, every Christian is a charismatic.”
Now, here’s what I want you to get: every single one of us has a gift. You have a spiritual gift that God in his grace has given to you—maybe more than one gift—that he’s given to you in order to bring glory to his name by serving others. We could define a gift in just this way: A spiritual gift is a God-given capacity to serve, encourage, or strengthen the faith of others. And you have a gift to use.
Now, what are some of those gifts? We could say that, based on 1 Peter 4, there really are these two broad categories of gifts. There are speaking gifts and there are serving gifts. You can see this in verse 11: “...whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies…”
So there are speaking gifts and serving gifts. You might think of these as word gifts, gifts which we utilized by using our words to benefit others, and then hand gifts, gifts that we employ by doing things for others.
I’m not going to explain every one of these terms, but it’s pretty obvious that things like teaching or prophecy—which in Scripture can carry a number of different connotations, including preaching and prayer and even singing—gifts of shepherding and evangelism—these are word gifts. These are gifts that people primarily use as they lead others through their words, maybe teaching the word of God or exhorting with their words to be faithful to the Lord.
Then there are these serving gifts where we use our hands, where we expend energy by doing things for others. These would include things like helping in any form of ministry—anything from helping on, say, our church’s hospitality team to helping in children’s ministry falls under that category. Also things like hospitality, so hosting people in your home, sharing your life with others, visiting others in their homes, giving and showing mercy, doing justice. All of these would be examples of serving gifts.
You might look at that list and you might say, “I don’t see my gift on the list. My gift is juggling asymmetrical objects while hopping on one foot.” Well, that’s a talent, that’s not a spiritual gift—but if you can do that, you should join the children’s ministry.
Now, this list is not an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts. In fact, all the lists we have in Scripture are more like representative lists that just give us possible expressions of spiritual gifts, and the exact combination of gifts is going to be unique for each person, but broadly, the gifts fall into these categories, word gifts and hand gifts.
What this means is that you and I need to discover what our gifts are. So if you don’t know what your gift is, a very simple step you can take is to take an assessment. In fact, we have one for you. This is not original with us, but there is the S.H.A.P.E. assessment. S.H.A.P.E. is an acronym: Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, Experiences. So it’s a little broader than just gifts; it’s also looking at things like the spiritual passions and desires that drive you, what’s on your heart, and what are the things that God has naturally gifted you to do, and what are your experiences, and how all these things combine together to give you a specific fingerprint by which you can serve others. You can scan that QR code; it’s fine if you do that right now, while I’m talking. It will also be up at the end of the service. Find this on our website. You can take this assessment; it takes about fifteen minutes or so. You ask these questions, and it will give you an idea of your spiritual gift. If you’ve never done that before, you should do that. I did it again this week, just to see what popped, and it was pretty much what I expected, but I think this would be helpful for you.
So, take the assessment, and then, this is the other thing about how to discover your gift: you have to start looking for needs in the church that you can meet. We need to understand that the gifts work as we use them to serve others. The gifts are not meant to lie dormant, and sometimes we don’t even discover that we have a gift until we get involved, until we see a need and we jump in and we start doing something in order to meet that need. The Lord begins to work through that service.
To give you a simple illustration, I’m wearing today an automatic mechanical watch. This is a watch that my son Stephen gave me years ago for Christmas. An automatic mechanical watch doesn’t run on a battery, right? It runs based on the kinetic energy of the wearer. The natural movement of my body when I wear this watch winds up the mainspring so that the watch works, but it only is working if I wear it. If I quit wearing it, the watch will come to a complete stop eventually and I’d have to reset the watch again.
A spiritual gift is kind of like that. It works as you use it. You have to use the gift! Sometimes you don’t even discover what your gift is until you get busy serving in the church. So be looking for opportunities to meet needs, take the assessment, and start using the gift that God has given you to use.
Okay, that’s the answer to question one.
2. How, When, and Where Should We Use Our Gifts?
Now, second question: How and when and where should we use our gifts? This is where I really want to get practical, and I think we can do this by looking, first of all, at the commands that you find in 1 Peter 4, and then considering context, especially in Redeemer Church, where you can obey those commands.
(1) But first, just note the commands. There are a lot of commands here, and most of these are pretty simple, pretty easy to understand. He begins by saying, “Be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.” This is calling us to a kind of watchfulness and seriousness in our spiritual lives. We are to be on our guard, we are to be self-controlled; we’re not to be driven by the desires of the flesh; we’re to keep all of that in submission to the Lord. And Peter says, “Do this for the sake of your prayers.”
He says, “Love one another earnestly and show hospitality without grumbling.” Just notice that for each one of these he gives a command, and he also gives a manner in which we are to obey the command, or a reason for obeying the command. It’s not just “show hospitality,” but, “Show hospitality without grumbling.” Some of you are doing a wonderful job of showing hospitality, but only you and your spouse know the things that are maybe coming out, that are bleeding out in the thirty minutes before small group shows up at your house. Are you showing hospitality without grumbling?
Use your gifts to serve one another as stewards of grace. Speak the words (or the oracles) of God. Serve in the strength that God supplies. Peter’s giving us these commands: speak, serve, show hospitality, love, but do it in a certain way. I think what he’s getting after here is a whole-hearted embrace of service in the body of Christ. He says we’re to do all of this because “the end is at hand,” and he has his eyes on the second coming of Christ, what Peter calls in this book “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This is what we’re waiting for, this is when we receive our eternal inheritance. And in light of what’s coming—the end is at hand—life is short—serve and love, speak, and do this in a way that brings God glory.
Those are the commands. These are pretty obvious. I think most of us know these are commands. We know that we are called to do this. What we need is some application about how to do it, and then we need proper motivation for doing it.
(2) Let’s consider some context by which we can put these gifts into use. I’m just giving you a list here. These are just ways of thinking. You can think about both formal context and informal context.
There are many formal ways that you can plug into the existing structures and ministries at Redeemer Church and serve. We’re going to consider those here in just a moment. But there are also informal ways. There are sometimes just spontaneous acts of service, spontaneous words of encouragement, and those also are using the gifts. It doesn’t always have to be in a formal, church-sponsored or church-sanctioned context. Really, any time you can minister to another believer, you should do so.
We can serve on campus, we can serve in the community; on Sundays and mid-week; as scheduled, but also as needed. Sometimes you feel like you’ve checked off the box once you’ve served your once-a-month rotation, but are you really looking for needs and where there’s a need for you to serve? You may need to serve more than once a month. You may need to serve two weeks in a row (gasp)! But this is part of what God calls us to, right? It is to embrace this call to service.
Now, think about it this way with this metaphor of the trellis and the vine. This is a metaphor, a word picture, that we use all the time in leadership training and leadership meetings at Redeemer, and it’s based on this book that was written a number of years ago by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne called The Trellis and the Vine. I’m not even going to quote the book, but here’s the basic idea.
You have in the church both structures like a trellis—structures that support the real, spiritual, organic, life-giving, fruitful ministry of the church, which is like a vine. And you really need both. A beautiful structure where every slat is in place and there’s no rotten wood and it’s well-painted, it’s well-tended—a beautiful structure is really of no use if there’s not a vine growing on it. But on the other hand, you don’t want the structure to fall apart, or that will hinder the growth of the vine. What we want is the real ministry that happens in people’s lives through the Spirit as he’s working in our hearts, in our lives, and in the lives of others. That’s vine work, but it happens as it is supported by the structure of a trellis.
What I want to suggest is that you have to think about both of these things at Redeemer, and really in any church you’re a part of. You have to think about both of these things and support both of these things, not one to the neglect of the other.
Let me give you some examples, and I’m going to go through several categories. Please don’t try to write all this down, okay? It will all be in the transcript; you can review the slides on the website later. I’m going to go through this quickly, but I just want to give you illustrations of what I mean to try to do this in a practical way.
Just think about children’s ministry for a minute. For children’s ministry, the vine work would be loving the kids and showing them the kindness of Jesus. That’s fruitful ministry. But there’s also a trellis side to this, which is, show up on time and follow established procedures. That is absolutely necessary, because nothing says chaos like twenty preschoolers without an adult, right? You have to have structure, you have to have times, you have to have policies and procedures, or the kids are not going to be well cared for, families are not going to be well served, things are not going to be safe. So you have to pay attention to both the trellis and the vine.
Think about teaching. The vine aspect of teaching would be leading a discussion with confidence in God’s word and sensitivity to the needs of people and to the Holy Spirit. You’re really trying to bring the word of God to bear in people’s hearts and lives. But the trellis aspect of this is you have to prepare the lesson well, otherwise you’re just going to ramble. You’re not going to know where you’re going, and that will actually not serve the people well. So you have to know your content and strive to communicate with clarity.
Think about the worship team. What’s the vine aspect of the worship team? It’s when those leading worship—and really this is true of all of us—when we sing to the Lord with real affection, spiritual affection in our hearts for Jesus and adoration for him. It’s what’s going on in our hearts. But the trellis side of this is knowing the music and a team that is well-rehearsed so they can lead without distraction. If you’re on stage, it’s being able to sing on-key, right?
Think about small groups. The vine work is loving and praying for the members of your group, but the trellis side of it is also important. You have to plan well, keep a schedule, communicate regularly. Listen, if your group discussion just goes totally off the rails, congrats; it means you are a real small group leader! This is kind of what happens. But you still have to follow a schedule, otherwise people are going to be at your house until 11:45, right? Then you’re going to see conflict in the group and really have to apply the forgiveness and forbearing with one another aspects of ministry.
So, do you see what I’m saying? I’m trying to get at the point that both aspects of this are important, the vine and the trellis. Just a couple more examples.
Ministry teams—any ministry team in the church—vine: serve cheerfully, with a heart to love others and meet practical needs. Trellis: read the emails. You do not have a spiritual gift of discernment that can tell the content of the email by just reading the subject line! You actually have to read the communication, sign into Planning Center, respond; that’s what keeps things running well.
Relationships—this one’s important—relationships in the body of Christ. The vine work is taking the initiative to meet new people and to form new relationships and to deepen your friendships. But there may come a point where that needs to be formalized and you turn that into a small group that comes under the equipping, leadership, care, and shepherding of the church.
What we’re after here is a certain mindset, the mindset of both the trellis and the vine, where we on the one hand develop and nurture a passion for what God is doing in our church and our role in it, and we also consider the needs of the church and support and strengthen its structures.
Listen, we need both of these things. We need both the trellis and the vine, and you can really go wrong in multiple ways. You can go wrong when you pit these things against each other. You can go wrong if you are impatient with the trellis. This will be some of you who have an orientation to things that is very spontaneous and creative, and you really prefer spontaneity and resist the order. So you’re impatient with the structures. You’re not interested in plugging into something that exists; that doesn’t feel natural to you. But that would be going too far.
On the other hand, there is a possibility of just ignoring the vine work. This would be the person who maybe shows up faithfully, but it’s almost like punching a clock. You’re not doing it prayerfully, you’re not doing that with genuine love in your heart for others. You’re just kind of checking off a box, and you’re not even really thinking about spiritual fruit. You’re ignoring the vine aspect.
Don’t be an only-vine person or only a trellis person. Don’t be a person that excludes one aspect of this ministry. We need both the trellis to support the life of the vine, but the structure alone is not enough. We also want real, spiritual ministry happening as God empowers us to love and to serve one another. That gives you context.
The next step would simply be, once you kind of fill that assessment out, find a place to plug in or maybe send in an email to info@redeemer.ch, and let us help you on the journey to find out where you can plug in. Use your gifts.
3. Why Should We Use Our Gifts to Serve?
Why should we do this? Why should we serve others with our gifts? This is what gets into motivation. The last thing I want you to do is motivate you to serve with a guilt trip. I don’t want you to serve out of guilt. There are better motives to serve. I do want us to serve; I want everybody to be engaged. I think we need it as a church, and I think you need it in your spiritual life; but there are better motivations for serving than feeling guilty if you don’t.
What are those motivations? Let me give you three words, G words—not guilt; guilt is not one of them—three other G words.
(1) The first one is Grace. Look again at 1 Peter 4:10, where Peter says that each one is to serve or use his gift as a “good steward of God’s varied grace.” What does he mean by that? You serve using your gift as a steward of God’s varied grace.
Peter means something that I think is tremendous if you get ahold of this. He means that you as a Christian are not only a recipient of God’s grace, you also are a distributor of God’s grace. The grace that you have received in salvation in salvation—that’s pure gift. You did nothing to earn that. But now God equips you with the capacity and the opportunity to share his grace with others, to be a distributor of his grace; grace that encourages, grace that equips, grace that points people to Jesus, grace that shows the love of Jesus, grace that expresses Christ’s love in tangible, practical ways, grace that ministers the word of God to others. You are called to be a distributor or a channel of God’s grace, and that should encourage you. That means that what you do for the Lord in the power of his Spirit is never in vain. It always counts, because God is always doing something more through your service than you can fully understand.
You know how Paul gives this encouragement at the end of 1 Corinthians 15? He says, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Your labor is not in vain. God will use it. That should motivate you, that God can use you, with whatever your gift is. He can use you to minister to others.
You might say, “Well, I don’t feel like I have a gift.” Every Christian does, and everyone can offer something; but more than that, God has equipped you with something special to give others. Listen, even if you can just talk and smile and stack chairs, you can serve. (And if you can do all three things at once, you should join the children’s ministry.)
You might say, “I feel so limited in my circumstances that I don’t really know how I can plug in in that way.”
Let me just give you an illustration that I think should be encouraging to you. This is an illustration from Spurgeon, but not this time from Charles Spurgeon, but from Susie Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon had a wife, and her name was Susie. She was a remarkable woman. They married in 1856, had a very beautiful love story, they were young—in their twenties—when they married. For about a dozen years, things went pretty well for them; but in 1868, Susannah became very ill, so much so that she became an invalid and was mostly homebound for the rest of her life, which meant that she rarely could even go to church. Only occasionally—we have some of the records of attendance from the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Spurgeon pastored—there were times where maybe only one month out of the year would Susannah be able to attend worship and hear her husband preach there in London, and eventually almost none at all.
So here she is; she’s homebound, her husband is the most famous preacher in the world, and Susannah is confined mostly to her bed and to her home as an invalid for half of her adult life.
You know what she did? She started a ministry. She started a ministry that became known as “Mrs. Spurgeon’s Book Fund,” and she started this in 1875 when Charles had first published his Lectures to My Students. It was a book for preachers, and Susannah said, “Oh, I just wish every preacher in England could have that book.” He said, “Well, you should make the first donation then.”
It took her off guard, but she looked at money she had saved and she decided she’d do it. She made a contribution and she bought books, and she started sending them to poor pastors. Her ministry was especially to poor pastors, pastors who made less than 150 pounds a year—that would be under 20,000 dollars a year in today’s world. And get this: in the course of her life, she gave away 200,000 books! It was a ministry, and she was an invalid.
There are no limitations that should keep you from being able to serve the Lord and serve others. It’s part of God’s grace in your life. He’s given you a gift; you need to find that gift and use it.
(2) The second motivation is the glory of God. Look at 1 Peter 4:11.
“...whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; we’re supposed to do everything to the glory of God.” Don’t just let those words pass through without making an impact! This really should be our motivation. You’re doing what you do not for your glory, you’re doing it for God’s glory. And when that’s really your motivation, that will cut against pride that so often gets in the way of serving others.
Think about this in a couple of different ways. Pride can show up in any kind of gift, but it shows up differently in different gifts. So, if you are someone who has more of a word gift—you have a gift for teaching or preaching, or maybe leading or singing or something like that, there’s a way that you use a gift that’s very public. It’s ministry to others. Pride can sneak in as vanity, where you are more concerned with what people think of you than you are with honoring and glorifying God and with actually helping people. It’s a very subtle thing that can sneak in, and if you’re in that kind of role you’re always going to be battling against that temptation.
This is what will help you: remember that what you do, you do not for your glory, you do it for the glory of God, and you do it for the good of others. So you’re not overly concerned with what people say in terms of complimenting you or building you up or encouraging you. If that doesn’t happen, you don’t get discouraged. You weren’t doing it to get compliments; you were doing it in order to build up the church, you were doing it to honor the Lord. You keep your eyes on him.
If you have more of a serving gift, a hand gift, pride is also a temptation, but it’s a different kind of pride. It’s the pride of self-pity, because so often you’re going to be serving in obscurity. You’re going to serve where maybe you don’t get recognized, and it’s easy to get hurt. It’s easy to feel taken for granted. It’s easy to think, “Nobody even notices all the sacrifices I make, how many hours I spend at this church! The pastor hasn’t said anything to me in weeks about that.” It’s easy to get hurt. But you have to, again, look at your motivation. Are you doing it for the glory of God, or are you doing it for recognition? If we’re serving for the right motives, it will help us fight against those impulses of pride.
Listen to these words from Richard Foster, in this book The Celebration of Discipline. I think this is very helpful. He says,
“True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service. True service rests content in hiddenness. It does not fear the lights and blare of attention, but it doesn’t seek them either. True service is free of the need to calculate results. It delights only in the service. It can serve enemies as freely as friends. True service is indiscriminate in ministry. True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need. It knows that the feeling to serve can also be a hindrance to true service. True service is a lifestyle; it acts from ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need. True service builds community. It quietly and unpretentiously goes about caring for the needs of others. It draws, binds, heals, builds.”
That’s the heart we want. It’s a heart of service that is oriented to the glory of God and to the good of others, not to building up the self.
(3) So, two motivations: grace and the glory of God. One more, and it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. Friends, let us not forget that Jesus is the greatest servant of all. You remember that Jesus said, “Who is the greater, the one who reclines at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22). Jesus said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). It is, of course, an echo of the great servant songs of Isaiah. Jesus comes as the servant of the Lord, and as the servant of the Lord one of the things he does is he gives his life for us, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 53. That’s also in the background of Peter’s thinking. He quotes Isaiah 53 in 1 Peter 2:24.
Do you remember Jesus in John 13, when he girded himself with a towel and knelt down and took the position of a household slave and washed the feet of his disciples? He was one who served.
Then consider especially this passage—it’s the last one I’ll read this morning—Philippians 2:3-13. Let this be an exhortation that washes over you today that gets into the deep motivations of your heart.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
There’s your model. There’s your pattern. There’s your motivation. There’s your king, serving you even to the point of death. There’s no greater motivation to serve than understanding what Christ has done for you and, out of grateful love for him, wanting to offer something else in return.
So friends, we’ve seen this morning that God in his grace has given us spiritual gifts so that we can serve one another for his glory. We’ve asked what they are, how, when, and where to use them, why to do it.
Let me just end in this way. What I want to encourage you to do is to take the next step. That’s going to be different for different people. For some of you, that’s just going to be discovering your spiritual gift and taking the first step to plug into a ministry team at Redeemer. For some you, it may be committing to Redeemer Church as your church in membership and in ministry. For others, it may be a call to go deeper. It may be that you are serving. It may be that you’re serving regularly, but you’re not really serving to the fullest of your capacity. You have gifts that essentially are in the closet or on the shelf that are not being used. Maybe there’s a call for you to step up and to use that gift or to give more of your time or energy or resources.
Ask the Lord this week what the next step is for you, and take that step in service for God’s glory. Let’s pray together.
Gracious Lord, we thank you this morning that you are the God who serves, and that you have served us through the incarnation, through the humility of Christ’s humble and obedient, perfect life, and through death by crucifixion taking our sins and our judgment upon himself. In doing this, Christ has disclosed to us your very heart. We pray, God, that you would work in our hearts so that we also would have the mind of Christ; that in seeing and hearing and knowing Christ this morning, our hearts would be changed, and that we would be freed from the idols of self-centeredness and consumerism that keep us from really giving ourselves to you and giving ourselves to one another.
As we come to the table this morning, we pray that you would use the table as a tangible reminder to us of the costly, self-sacrificing love of Jesus. May we see what we are also called to, to give ourselves to you and to others. So Lord, work in our hearts this morning whatever is needed, and draw near to us, we pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
