I heard a great lecture on preaching this week from the always amazing Timothy Keller (hat tip to Jeremy for sending me the link), and among other things I was struck by this line:
“Don’t confuse the gifting and the grace.”
You may be gifted by God to do a certain thing, but the effectiveness you have in using that gift is determined by the amount of God’s grace in your life – the strength of your connection to him – not by the gift itself.
There’s a pattern that as leaders we easily fall into, which goes something like this:
We discover we are gifted in a given area and with great fear and trembling we pray our guts out and begin to exercise that gift. To our amazement, we find that God works through us and we enjoy seeing a little fruit! Over time though, as our gift develops and we get better at doing whatever it is we are gifted to do, it is easy to slip into a place where we rely less on prayer and rely more on the fact that we are now good at doing this particular thing. Or in Keller’s words, we confuse the gifting with the grace. And amazingly, God in his generosity often still chooses to bless our efforts! But in reality, we are operating in only a fraction of the power we could be were we faithfully leaning into God’s grace to set ablaze the gifts his Spirit has given us.
Jesus said: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing” (John 15:5).
Lord may we be those who do not neglect the simple disciplines: time spent in your presence, worshiping hearts and lips, honest prayer and listening to your voice in Scripture. And as your life fills ours, may you find us suitable vehicles for your work in the world.
