What Do You Bring to the Table?

Have you ever attended an event where everyone brings a dish of food to share?

I used to attend a church where people liked to gather together regularly to eat and to be together just to encourage each other. Everyone brought a dish of food to share. I loved those dinners because each person cooked food differently, so the tastes were always interesting. Even though someone may have bought the same type of food that someone else brought, the two dishes tasted different from each other, but each one was nutritious.

Each one of us is different but valuable.

Every voice is different, but the message of Jesus is the same. Everyone’s style is different, but when it’s presented to the group of people where God directs, it’s impactful.

Comparing yourself to someone else doesn’t produce anything of value. You’re not designed by God to do what they’re designed to do. But more importantly, it’s time for you to recognize that God looked through eternity and uniquely crafted you for this time.

We are at an important time in history, and each of us has something vital to contribute to the people around us and to the world.

When you connect your talents and gifts with other people, knowing that you are bringing something to the table that will bless others, and others have something that will augment what you’ve brought, then God can take all of that and use it to reach the world with what is needed.

Your gift of music, your sister’s talent for inspired art, someone else’s gift of teaching, another person’s ability to write, and others’ abilities to coach, lead, serve, prepare, facilitate, document, disseminate, and more, are used by God to create encouragement, instruction, and the opportunity to have a full life in Christ Jesus.

Paul wrote about this to the Ephesian believers, saying, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:15-16 (ESV)

We fit together. We augment each other. When we look for opportunities to work together and we’re doing what we’re created to do, everyone benefits.

You are valuable. God made you for this time. You have something unique to offer.