Season 1 Podcast 21, “Gifts of the Spirit.”
There is no deficit that God cannot make up, no sorrow that God cannot heal, no tears that God cannot dry. To those who are given more, more is expected. God’s grace is a match for all mortal deficiencies. Remember the widow’s mite.
In the eternities, our weaknesses here will be viewed as gifts given to us to make us stronger; our strengths here will be viewed as gifts given to us to make others stronger. God employs the strong to help the weak, but he also often calls upon the weak and insignificant to bring about his marvelous purposes. The chief apostles were fishermen, not empire builders, yet they were put in charge of building the greatest empire of all, the Kingdom of God on earth.
History has shown that great men and women always rise in a crisis to help bring about God’s purposes. With God there are no surprises, no accidents, and no uncertainties. Christ could have been born in a palace to rich and powerful parents, yet he was born in a stable, to a poor carpenter.
The temporal often imitates the spiritual. Just as there is an ecology of nature, one species helping another in symbiotic symphony, so is there an ecology of gifts. God distributes his gifts evenly among his children throughout the entire earth so that all will have access to his power and blessings.
Out of weakness comes strength, and the strong help the weak. Just as there is a balance of nature, there is a balance of gifts orchestrated by God before we were even sent to the earth. God is a creator who plans everything down to the tiniest detail. We see the analogy daily in nature.
Is he going to give animals, insects, and plants the ability to survive and ignore man? We are children of God. We lived for eternities as spirits with our Father in heaven. He gave us all gifts before we were sent to earth. By design, he determined exactly when and where he would send us to the earth. He knows our birth date and our death date and the environment we will be in. In Ecclesiastes 3 we read,
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
He gave us all gifts to improve our environment. There is an ecology of man just as there is an ecology of nature. The only difference is that man has freewill. The creatures of nature use their gifts like slaves for the good of the colony. Man may use his gifts for good or evil. Man has a moral conscience, a divine nature, and an unlimited ability for good and evil.
Insects follow their genetic code. Man, who has freewill, follows his desires. Earth’s creatures will always do what they are programmed to do. Man will go his own way. The disorder in the world is because man has freewill. Without freewill earth would run like a machine, but experience would be meaningless. Through logic we increase in knowledge, but only through experience do we increase in wisdom.
All ills of the earth have remedy in close proximity. Poison ivy is often accompanied by the jewel flower, its healing herb. Like the troubled waters of the pool of Bethesda, God will direct us to the place of healing, but rather than an angel troubling the waters, perhaps it will be Christ himself who awaits to heal us. When Christ heals us, he makes us whole. He not only heals the infirmity, he restores the soul.
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