Focal Passage: Ephesians 4:1-7; 11-16
There is nothing quite like family. I have one older sister, Kristen, and in some ways we couldn’t be more opposite. She’s the blonde to my brunette, the Type A to my Type B, and the medical mind to my humanities heart. As different as we are, we share a number of family quirks – inside jokes, shameless sarcasm and scars from unfortunate brow piercings we got together in high school.
We could tell you our dad’s favorite dad jokes and our mom’s favorite movies. For better or worse, we’re family. We’ve seen each other at our best and our weirdest. To this day, Kristen is one of my best friends, and I’m so thankful God made us sisters because I don’t know that we would have become friends on our own. God knew I would need her and that she would need me, too.
When we come to Christ, we also join a family – the church. It’s a big, fun, hard and sometimes weird family, but a family nonetheless. And we need one another. We weren’t created to walk alone, and when we try we don’t get very far.
The Holy Spirit gifts us for the unity of the church and draws us together for the glory of God. The humbling, but beautiful thing about the gifts of the Holy Spirit is, well, they’re gifts. We didn’t choose them or earn them, so we don’t get to compare them. We don’t get to pit them against each other, because we need them all. We simply receive what God has given us for His gospel and His mission, not our own platform, and get to work together.