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Friday, June 21, 2013

Gifts and Barbecues: Showing How God is Working Through Us

Over the past week or so, I had been doing the following three things: passing a social psychology course, trying to find a job, and continuing to explore more deeply into my relationship with Jesus. Mind you, trying to balance all of this is easier said than done. While I have been continuing to enrich my journey and have passed the psychology course, my job prospects have been very slim. Now, I'm starting to wonder if I'm looking for a job for the right reasons. Is God saying that I am supposed to be getting a "job" (a form of paid employment), or is that what society is pushing me to do? What is it that God wants me to be doing right here, right now? What about in the future? Things like this still plague me, no matter how often I try to wash it off.

However, this past Saturday was more of a lax day for me, especially since I had it in my heart to do something helpful. So when I had heard that my friend, Kayla, was putting on a "Love Halifax" barbecue party as part of celebrating her birthday and to show God's love to the city, I decided to jump on the wagon like many other people who attend Shiloh Youth and Shiloh University Church. It was definitely worth it; we cooked up hot dogs and burgers, we offered water, chips and freezies, all for free while there were people participating in road hockey competitions and the Walk the Walk for Autism around the Halifax Commons. We also had games and worship during those few hours when we were there.

Looking back at this event, as well as some recent venturing into understanding spiritual gifts, I can see how we were rather similar with each other but are also distinct. For instance, I had noticed some similarities between myself and my new friend Garret (pictured left): both of us appear to be very gifted in knowledge and evangelism, but he has more hands-on experience in practicing these gifts as well as his music skills (he was really good at leading worship). All of this had gotten me to reflect on 1 Corinthians 12, which talks a lot about spiritual gifts (among many other passages). I guess the whole point was to explain how God equips us to do certain things that all have a common goal: to bless others, but more importantly, to reveal the One who made us and loved us so much to die in our place.

I find it rather awesome as to how radical this journey with God has been so far. I feel that I learned so much and yet have a long way to go. I pray that as we continue to walk with Him that He will strengthen and equip us to do his work on the earth. Yesterday may be history for now, but there's still today to go through and if allowed, tomorrow will be another day set out for us as well.
Peace be with you all and God bless you!

Alex

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