Living With an Eternal Perspective: A Guided Reading of Peter's Letter to the Persecuted ChurchSample

How are you gifted? What comes naturally to you and has the potential to bring out joy in others? Do you love to host people and cook for them? Are you an artist, be it musically, on paper, spoken, or painted? Do you love to serve? To sneak around the gathering in order to pick up trash and offer refills or seconds without asking? What about teaching? Do you seem to have this innate ability to unpack complex concepts and explain them to people in a way they understand?

Whatever your gifting may be, Peter makes one thing clear: use it to serve others.

Our gifts are meant to be exercised, developed, and deployed for the benefit of others. Peter refers to us as “stewards of the multifaceted grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10 NASB). We aren’t the owners; God is, and we should treat our gifts accordingly. Investing in them. Developing them. Using them!

Jesus tells His disciples in Matthew 5:14-15 NASB, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.”

Your gift is not meant to be hidden away. It’s meant to be seen. For the glory of God, the Giver of all good gifts.

A Question To Ponder:

How do you currently exercise your gifts in the service of others?