Each of us as Christians are used by God to upbuild His Church and spread His glory to the nations. Our gifts are different from one another, and that is good. It’s awesome how God uses us for Himself!
However, our gifts can become gremlins. Let me use myself as an example. God has given me an analytical mind. I can analyze a passage of Scripture and, for the most part, interpret it and apply it very well. (Of course, I’m not perfect with my gifts and still need help.) The same gifting can be used for music. God has given me a musical ear to hear music naturally and play and sing songs without reading any notes.
I hope I’m not bragging. I don’t think I am. I have many faults and I have many things I am not gifted in at all. For example, I am nearly completely inept at performing very simple tasks with my hands. It used to take me hours to copy music for music rehearsal. I’m not joking. I would analyze how to do it, try it once, realize it wasn’t done well, then start over. My wife would accomplish the same task in 15 minutes tops. She just goes, “Okay, I got this.” Then, impossibly, has it finished. When I was trying to do it, I would be stuck on thinking something like, “Yeah, but what is paper, really, in it’s essence?” Three hours later the whole team would be waiting for me and I would be stressed to the core of my identity.
But back to my main point of this post. I have gifts, but those gifts can become gremlins. My analytical mind is a gift that God uses in really cool ways. But I can also use my mind for the purpose of my flesh–my sinful nature that unfortunately remains in me. When someone corrects me or does something that involves me, I can allow my flesh to use my analytical mind to overlook the great things the person is doing and hyper-focus on the things they’re not doing well. I’ll miss the forrest from the trees, as the saying goes.
A friend told me once that people can feel like I’m just looking for something wrong with them. Yeah, I can see where they’re coming from. Someone might feel that way because I’ve allowed my gift to become a gremlin.
Do you see the same thing happening in your life? Do your gifts become gremlins? It can look different depending on what the gifts are. Empathy for hurt becomes enablement of sin. Love for structure becomes legalism. Confidence becomes recklessness.
There’s good news for those of us in Christ. First of all, we are not defined by our gremlins, but by Christ in us. Our gremlins are not who we are. Christ is our life (Colossians 3). We can confess our sin to God and to one another. Secondly, Christ in us helps bring out our gifting and kill our flesh more and more. Over time, and as we walk closely with our Savior, He increases the frequency with which we walk in the Spirit and decreases the frequency we allow our gifts to become gremlins. In Christ, my analytical mind becomes used of God to rightly divide the Word of truth so the people of God can feast on Christ and His Word. In Christ, this ability becomes a gift to help counsel a brother through a confusing decision. In Christ, this gift is used of God to know the right direction a church or organization should go in.
Lean in to Christ, friend. Let Him take all of you and use it for His purposes. He’ll use how He’s made you and gifted you for great things and keep them from becoming gremlins.
