"The gifts of the Spirit as I understand them, are God's means of getting to men and meeting their needs through believers. I do not believe that spiritual gifts were meant primarily for the sanctuary. Some of them can operate there, that's fine. But many of them were primarily designed for the street."
I had a chance to operate in hospitality in the most unlikely place. During my daughter Emma's parent/teacher conference I noticed that every time her teacher would speak of Chicago where she recently moved from her eyes would well up with tears. Even though we were there for Emma and her education(of which I am not worried about in the slightest, her mother is a teacher after all) I decided to derail the conference from it's usual course and ask her teacher how she was adjusting to living here in Nevada. Long story short I invited her over for dinner. Strange, I know but that is what I think Jerry is talking about in the above quote.
"Christianity is not difficult to communicate. It's simple. We make it hard by our extreme efforts."
"We specialities out of ministry. We make Christian service difficult. The reason we make it so tough sometimes is to massage the ego of those who want to be specialists. I've seen specialty ministries come and go. God uses them for He will use anything as much as He can , but the majority of the time they are raised up for the ego satisfaction of men."
Finally, here is my favorite quote of maybe the whole book;
"The fastest most valid way to originality is to be oneself. You see , I am an original(and so are you). As I forgive myself for being as I am , as I learn to trust God's good judgement in creating me as He did and begin to accept myself, I am original. I can't help it. God has put my brain together and tutored it so that no one else can pick up the Word and see exactly what I see in it."
I think that is why I enjoy so much reading scripture with others because I love to hear the spin that their brain might have on a particular passage. It is what the makes the world go round all our differences and how we see things and I LOVE IT!!
3 comments:
Again, I love this book and the truth it speaks. And you have such a huge heart and are so loving on people to invite Emma's teacher over. As simple as it sounds... some of us would have a really difficult time doing something like that.
laura i bet not- it was so obvious that she was lonely.
that sounds like something my wife would do.
i'm not sure i'm allowed to invite women over . . . i'll check on that.
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