Spirit Gifted - Equipped for One Another

Amen.

Amen.

Awesome.

Well, hey, we are in our series called The Church the Spirit Builds.

And we're looking at the distinct way that the church is built by the function of the Holy Spirit.

We want to be a church that worships and adores and beholds the fullness of the Godhead, the church that Christ purchased with his blood, the church that was decreed by the Father from before the foundations of the earth, and the church that is being made alive by the Spirit.

We want to see that and behold that as a part of who we are as disciples of Jesus.

And so we started off the series with the uh being spirit-born.

Last week we talked about being spirit-formed.

This week we're talking about being spirit-gifted.

So if you have a Bible or an app, Romans 12, open it there.

We're going to be working through verses 3 through 8, verse by verse this morning.

I don't know about you, but I love barbecues.

There is, in my opinion, not a better place for the best food to be enjoyed than at a cookout with people that you love, right?

Barbecue food is hands down the thing America brings to the culinary table that destroys anybody else, in my personal opinion, right?

And if you've ever been to a barbecue, here's what you know.

It is almost sure to have these types of people there with you.

The first person is there's going to be someone who comes who brings a very specific dish to the cookout because they love the response that it gets out of people, right?

They bring their signature dish, that one with the secret ingredient, the family recipe that's been handed down through generations.

It's sure to wow.

And what are they doing?

They're listening for it.

Who made this?

Oh, you think I could get the recipe?

Right?

That's what they came for.

That's what they brought that dish for.

They wanted to feed their ego.

They came to the barbecue with that dish in hand, not really to serve the hunger of the people there, but to have the hunger of their ego served.

Then there's that other guy.

That guy who comes to the cookout with nothing in hand and a belly that's just hungry.

And you watch him, right, as he grabs a plate and he starts loading it up.

And he's the dude who's like leaning back with chunks of meat balancing on his chest as he goes to plop down at his seat and just gorge himself, right?

You've seen that.

You know that dude.

And here's the reality: he may compliment your cooking.

Oh, this is some of the best food I've ever had.

Brother, that was a delicious dish that you brought.

But don't ever expect him to bring anything to the table.

He's not there to contribute.

He's not there for the benefit of others.

He's there to feast as he selfishly serves his own appetite.

And to be honest, you and I, we do the exact same thing with spiritual gifts.

Some of us, we use the gifts of the spirit to serve our own ego.

We want credit for what we contribute.

Others of us, we show up to serve our appetite.

We're here to be served through what others contribute through their gifts.

But the reality of spirit gifts is this they really have nothing to do with us.

They're not about us at all.

They have everything to do with the grace of the giver and the way that he's entrusted us to faithfully steward them and use them for the good of others.

So let's dive into this text together.

Paul in verse 3, he starts with grace.

Grace.

This is so important for us to observe.

Before he ever talks about the gifts at all, he wants our minds fixed on grace.

He says this, verse 3, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Paul wants us to see grace in two distinct places here in the text.

First, he wants us to see it in his own authority.

In his own authority.

He says this, by the grace given to me.

You see, he understands that even his office as an apostle, his authority to instruct the church, is grace that's been given to him.

It's something that's been stewarded by him and through him.

It is not something that he ever achieved or earned.

Back at the very beginning of this letter, Paul actually introduces himself in verse 1 of Romans 1.

He says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

He's been called by Christ.

He's been set apart.

He's been given.

And what Paul does with this grace gift is he uses it for the church's good.

Think about the way Paul exhausted and spent himself in the service of the good and maturing and building up of the church.

It's because he had in his gaze fixed the reality of Jesus' grace in his life.

He didn't deserve to be an apostle.

If anything, he deserved to be crushed under the heel of God's wrath for the way that he persecuted the church, right?

But but grace redeemed him and restored him and gifted him that he might exhaust his life for the ultimate good of Christ's body.

So that's the first aspect of grace that Paul calls us to pay attention to, his own calling.

But the second thing is the standard of which he gives for us to measure ourselves against.

Instead, think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Now, what does that phrase mean?

Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Some scholars believe it's referring to these kind of varying amounts of faith that is distributed through the grace of Jesus into the lives of his people.

And so what that would mean, if that's what it meant, is that some of us have greater or lesser measures of faith given to us by Jesus through grace.

Other scholars, though, they say this.

They say that the measure of faith is something that we are called to measure ourselves against in sober judgment.

It's a standard or a rule.

Namely, it is the standard of the gospel of grace of Jesus.

So understanding it that way, what Paul's saying is if you ever are tempted to think too highly about yourself, behold the gospel of grace that is found in Jesus and measure yourself against that.

And that will humble you, that'll bring you low, that'll fill your heart with gratitude and thankfulness instead of pride and arrogance.

And so what I would submit is that the latter position is what Paul has in mind here.

If you are tempted to be haughty and self-exalting, look to the gospel of Jesus and measure yourself against that.

When you're tempted to think of yourself too highly, when you start feeling superior because of your gifts, measure yourself against Jesus.

Jesus who poured himself out for the ultimate good of his church that we might be exalted through his humble service.

Jesus had every spiritual gift in fullness.

Yet he didn't use them to exalt himself.

He emptied himself, he humbled himself, he poured out his life for us.

Obedient.

As Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, obedient even to the point of death.

Death on a cross.

That's the measure.

That's the standard.

That's the rule of faith that we're called to soberly contemplate to remedy our propensity towards self-exaltation.

So here's what Paul wants us to see right from the start.

Every gift that you have is grace.

And we've talked about this in so many other sermons and contexts, but we've said with clarity, your children are a gift of grace.

Your marriage is a gift of grace.

Your career is a gift of grace.

Your possessions is a gift of grace.

Because what are we tempted to do?

We're tempted to declare mine over the things we have a false assumption are in our possession.

And they're not ours, they're his, meant for us to faithfully steward for his glory and the good of others.

Paul's helping us understand right now: any gift that you might have in your life is one given by grace for his glory and for the good of those around you.

So when pride starts creeping in, when you start thinking you're more valuable because of what you bring to the table, the remedy is the gospel.

Look at Jesus, behold his humility, remember his grace.

He had everything, and he gave it all for you.

Next, Paul gives us a picture of how these grace gifts are interdependent to one another.

Verses 4 through 5.

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

So Paul states the obvious, right?

A body has many members.

We have hands and feet, eyes, ears, each though with these different functions.

But here's the key none of them exist for themselves.

Think about this for a moment.

The eye doesn't see for its own benefit.

The eye sees so that the body can navigate life.

The hand doesn't reach out and grasp for its own benefit.

No, it picks up food for the nourishment of the body.

It picks up a dumbbell for the health and fitness of the body.

It is working for the good of the whole.

And here's the critical phrase that Paul uses each member belongs to all the others.

Now, if you're listening, you might pick up on this parallel of marriage covenant.

When we think about the covenant of marriage, the scriptures are clear that the spouses' bodies belong one to another.

I belong to my wife, my wife belongs to me.

And there is this parallel even within the church, because here's the reality: marriage and the church is working to portray a glorious picture of the gospel to the watching world around us.

And so there's going to be discoveries of these parallel realities, these spiritual truths that are functioning and expressed through common everyday means, right?

And we're going to see it even here that I am not autonomous.

I'm not isolated or individualistic.

I belong to you.

You belong to me.

We are members of one another for the good of the entire whole, so that the watching world might see the beauty of the gospel of Jesus as we function in this mutual submission and service to one another, working and laboring for each other's maturity in Him.

You don't just belong to the body in this generic sense, you belong to the other members of it.

Because your gifts exist for them, not for you.

This is so important for us to grasp.

Because it helps us understand the church in its proper place.

The church is not a place for your ego to be served, it's a unified body where mutual submission, an absence of autonomy, a dependency on function exist for the greater good of the whole.

And the way that we become all that God has called us to be as a church is by stewarding and exercising our gifts for the greater good of one another.

It's as simple as that.

Now look at verse 6.

Paul calls us again to behold God's grace and to use our gifts from that foundation.

12, 6, the first part.

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

I think there's three things to observe in this short little passage.

First is this we all have different gifts within the body.

We all have different gifts within the body.

We can't function and operate in this comparisonism, right?

We're flooded with that every day of our lives through social media reels.

We jump on there comparing our life to the people around us, right?

We have a propensity toward comparisonism.

And the reality is this it is a futile endeavor to compare yourself to someone else because as unique as you are, God will gift you uniquely.

You may find similarities within your gifts, but they will be unique in their expression.

There are many people here at Sacred Mission who I believe have the gift of teaching.

They don't teach like me, I don't teach like them.

God has made it to where that gift is expressed through me uniquely through the way that He's created me.

There's gonna be people who have the gift of service, and it's not gonna look the same.

There might be similarities, but it is going to be unique, distinct in how God has made you and how it's expressed through you.

I want you to hear this.

Your gift is as distinct as you are, and it's a necessary aspect of the body as any other gift is.

What I need you to hear is that we need you.

We need you functioning and exercising the gifts that God has given you so that we can become all that Christ has called us to.

Second, they are gifts of grace.

Meaning they're not earned, they're not achieved, they're given.

They're given.

You did not work for your gift, you did not earn your gift, God graciously gave it to you, which means you've been called to steward it faithfully, not hoard it, or use it for yourself.

It's about stewardship.

Third thing.

I love the bluntness of Paul.

Use them.

Use them.

Here's what Paul faithfully assumes.

If you are in Christ, you have a unique gift that has been graciously given to you for the good and better of others in the church.

So use it.

And I think that assumption is biblically faithful.

I think that assumption speaks to the reality of Christ within the church, gifting every member for a unique function for the ultimate maturing and benefit and flourishing of the greater whole.

That assumption is safe to have.

And so what Paul is simply saying is get your hands dirty in the soil of one another's lives so that they can reach the maturity in Christ that God has called them to, so that they can be encouraged in their faith, so they can be strengthened in their beliefs, so they can be comforted in your presence, so that they can experience the presence of God through you.

So let's step back for just a moment and see what Paul has shown us just in this first part.

First off, your gifts are grace freely given to you by God.

Your gifts are for the body, you belong to one another.

Your gifts are meant to be used.

Shocker, right?

Stewarded for the good of others.

So Paul's painting a picture of the church that's radically different from what our culture tells us.

Right?

Our culture tells us that everything we have should be for the exaltation of ourself.

That we should do everything in our power to use what's in our possession for our own ultimate good.

And Paul says, no, that's not the reality of the kingdom of God.

It's flipped on its head and it's shown to us that actually what we possess isn't our own at all, but it's a grace gift given to us, and we're supposed to use it for the glory of his name and for the good of others.

That's what the kingdom tells us.

And so here's what I believe is the main idea of the text: that God gives us grace gifts to serve one another.

God gives us grace gifts to serve one another, not to serve ourselves, not to elevate ourselves, not to consume what others offer while we hoard or dismiss or displace what we've been given.

God gives us grace gifts to serve one another.

Paul then he lays out this short list of gifts and how we ought to use them in 6B through 8.

He says this, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

Now, as we look at that list, here's something that I want to put forward before us.

I don't believe that there is anywhere within Scripture that contains an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts.

Right?

We can't just look at this list and say, well, these are the spiritual gifts, and this is all that there is.

I don't think that was Paul's purpose or intention.

I think he just wants to spark our curiosity.

He wants to engage with us to help us see and understand with more clarity than we have before.

And so he's using this list here for this purpose.

So I don't think that there's a list that's exhaustive, nor do I see the gifts as rigid and mechanical.

Here's what I mean by that.

We try to see a gift and we try to define it.

That's the first thing that we want to do.

We want to define the mess out of it.

And we want to make this rigid, mechanical expression of what this gift is and how it ought to be used and how it functions within the church.

It has to look a particular way.

It has to be consistent when expressed from person to person.

And I think that the scripture does give us guidelines on certain gifts, but the spirit is much more wild than he is tamed.

And in our work to define the gifts, we confine the spirit.

I don't think that we're able to do that as clean and neat as we desire to.

You see, we try to categorize them, we try to define them, and in that we Confine them.

When we are seeking to receive and to use the gifts of the Spirit, it's going to be frustrating, and I would even submit harmful to view them so restrictively as if they possess these clean, articulated, set parameters and boundaries.

Scripture doesn't give us one clean, simple system.

Here's what we see in the Bible.

The gifts they overlap.

They relate to each other in different ways.

And even here, they overlap with very ordinary Christian virtues.

Service, generosity, mercy.

The gifts aren't as clean and simple as we want them to be.

Let me give you an example.

The word for service used here in this passage, right?

To the one who has a gift of service, let him serve.

That same word is the word for ministry in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 12, where the pastors and elders are supposed to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Ephesians 4:12

Service.

So all Christians are supposed to be involved in service.

It is a virtue that is supposed to be fostered and cultivated in our life.

However, in this passage, it's distinctly shown as a gift.

And so for some within the body of Christ, service will be a spiritual gift, even though every Christian is supposed to see that virtue cultivated in their life.

You see, some spiritual gifts are simply things that God expects in some measure from all of us.

Service, ministry, mercy, contributing, exhorting, they're all just very ordinary Christian virtues.

But for some of us, they're a gift.

How so?

I think pastor and theologian John Piper really helps us see this clearly.

Here's his comment on this.

He says, some of these virtues come more joyfully and are more fruitfully for some than for others.

When that happens, I think we can call it a spiritual gift.

So here's the question.

How can we begin to discover and discern a spirit gift within us?

I think Pastor John gives us two really helpful factors.

The first factor is this.

What is the amount of joy you find in doing it?

What is the amount of joy you find in doing it?

Alright, so let me kind of tackle this at the head, right?

Just because you don't find joy in doing something doesn't mean you're dismissed from doing it in your Christian life.

That's not a reality, right?

We're not going to play that game.

Like, oh, I don't, I just don't feel like serving.

I don't care.

I don't think the Lord cares how you woke up feeling today.

I think He's called us to certain virtuous living, and that we ought to be obedient in seeing that cultivated in our life.

We may find joy in it, we may not.

What we're talking about here is this higher amount of joy discovered in doing something ordinary.

You see, does leading give you joy?

Does serving or contributing give you joy?

Does showing mercy to others flood your heart with delight?

That might be a sign.

God has gifted you in this season for that.

And here's the reality: maybe that season lasts your entire lifetime.

And you find this incredible sense of joy from exercising it.

You see, the amount of joy we experience in it, it's an indicator that it might be a gift.

I want to try to equip you on how to discover and discern what might be a spiritual gift in your life.

But I want to say again, the absence of joy in doing it does not negate our obligation to Christian service.

We're supposed to be like Christ no matter the amount of joy we find in doing it.

There's an obedience factor in the way that we live in relationship with Jesus.

Okay?

Now, the other factor he brings about is fruitfulness.

So the first one is joy, the second is fruitfulness.

If your doing is not bearing fruit in helping other people grow in faith, it's probably not a spiritual gift.

Right?

We have plenty of people who come to us and say, I believe the Lord has called me to X.

And one of the first things we ask is, what fruit has shown that to you to be true?

And they're like, well, uh none.

And we're like, well, then he probably hasn't called you to that, right?

I think the Lord's called me to lead a mission group.

Well, who have you discipled in the last five years that's shown fruit?

No one.

Probably not.

Well, the Lord's called me to be an elder, okay?

Who's following you?

Who are you shepherding?

Who's trusting your leadership?

No one.

Okay, probably not, right?

Uh I think the Lord's called me to do missions overseas.

It's like, have you ever been out of the state?

No.

Are you helping anyone in their indigenous culture?

I can't even speak English well.

Okay, then you're probably not called to that thing, right?

Is there fruitfulness in the work that you're doing?

So joy and fruit when these things intersect with one another, we might be discovering a gift that's in you.

But here's an assumption that I love.

It assumes you're working.

It assumes you're doing.

It assumes that you are laboring within the kingdom of God.

Because here's what's going to happen: God is going to show you your gifts in the long, faithful, obedient path of working in his kingdom.

What he's not going to do, more than likely, is show up to you in some fantastical way while you're eating chips and dip on your couch and show you the marvelous and glorious things he has for your life, right?

You're not going to get a soul experience, more than likely.

While you're driving down the road, he just blinds you and you swerve off, and then he's like, hey, you're supposed to serve me.

You're like, all right, I got it.

I'm going now, right?

That's not gonna happen more than likely.

More than likely, I would say almost every time, God is gonna help you discover your gifts in the very ordinary, mundane, gritty, laborious serving of the body that we are called to as the church.

And he's gonna say, right there.

Remember when you helped that woman who's lonely and a widow and disheartened in life?

Do you remember when joy hit her face?

Joy hit your face too.

And look at the fruitfulness of her comfort.

You have the gift of mercy.

Remember when you were serving kids and you were sharing the gospel at the level of a five-year-old and his eyes lit up with hope?

Do you remember that?

You might have the gift of teaching.

We have to be busy at work if we're ever going to discover how God has gifted us.

Because spiritual gifts are not just natural abilities used within the church.

Spiritual gifts are spirit-enabled functions within the body that over time build up others.

So if God gives us grace gifts to serve one another, why is it that the church often looks so different?

Why is it often only a select handful who are exhausting themselves for the good of others while we either consume off of their gifts being spent, or we come into places like this to build a platform and a name for ourselves and get notoriety of the gifts that we want to express?

I've said this several times, but the church is the easiest place to build your own kingdom, hands down.

You can have a pastor of a church of 20 people and they will worship him and love him and be service to him and just adore him, and he will build his own kingdom out of just 20 people.

I've seen it over and over again.

It's so easy to allow yourself and your ego to just feast upon what others bring to you.

And I pray, I pray that this pulpit never, ever falls into that trap.

I believe that the men who are elders of this church love you, exhaust themselves for you, serve you.

We don't try to build a platform, we don't try to build a brand for ourselves or get notoriety.

I don't like it when you tell me my sermon was good because I know that it wasn't, right?

I don't want, I don't care about what are you gonna do?

Are you gonna go serve?

You're gonna get to work, you're gonna get, or are you just gonna tell me it was good?

I don't want to hear it.

I want us to be transformed by the Spirit of God for the glory of Christ's name.

So, why do we use gifts to position ourselves above others?

Why do we show up expecting to consume without contributing?

Because we've twisted what God intended.

You see, we see the gifts as something to serve us.

Our propensity is to take what He designed to flow outward and to redirect it back to ourself.

Instead of asking, how does my gift build up the body, we ask, how does this gift benefit me?

We use the gifts to get what we want, whether that's recognition through our gifts or satisfaction through the gift of others.

We twist God's good design.

We make the gifts about us instead of about serving one another toward maturity in Christ.

And I think we do this in two very distinct ways.

The first is this we see the gifts as something to serve our ego.

We've talked about this a lot through the sermon.

We use our gifts to elevate ourselves.

Oh, we'll serve.

We'll serve, but but we need people to notice that we're serving.

We'll teach, but we're really just building a platform.

We give, but we make sure that everyone knows about our generosity, the sacrifice that we've made.

And then we fall into this trap of comparisonism, and we begin to compare our gifts to one another.

Like we are plagued with this sin of comparisonism in our life.

You you open up social media, you're just constantly going to be comparing yourself to others, right?

And it's gonna flood into the church also.

How you're comparing yourself to each other within the body.

We position ourselves then over and above others when we think we're superior and we expect to be served because of what we contribute within the church.

We often treat spiritual gifts like they're resumes, right?

Things that make us look impressive to others, things that prove our worth and value to this organization.

Fundamentally, as Paul warned us, we think of ourselves too highly rather than in sober awareness to who we are in light of the gospel.

And so we're not using our gifts to build up the body.

Instead, we're using them to build up our ego.

But others of us, we see the gifts as something to serve our appetite.

We don't use our gifts to elevate others.

We simply just don't use our gifts at all.

And we come to a church to consume.

We show up expecting others to exhaust themselves in their service of us with their gifts while we simply just sit back and feast.

We want the teacher to teach us, we want the encourager to encourage us, we want the mercy shower to comfort us, but we don't ask what gift God has given us to serve them.

We have become consumers, and the church exists, in our opinion, to meet our needs, to satisfy our appetite, and if we're not being fed well enough, we will simply go down the road and find somewhere else that will.

We're gluttons.

God has graciously gifted us with something to bring to the table, church.

Stop coming with an empty plate expecting to be fed.

Come with an expectation of using your gifts for my good, for your sister's good, your brother's good.

Because too many of us we consume and we don't contribute.

And so whether we're using our gifts to serve our ego or to serve our appetite, we're both guilty of the same sin.

Taking what God designed for others and just simply making it about ourself.

It's the same sin.

And if we're honest, we can't escape this on our own.

Our hearts naturally bend inward toward ourselves.

Last week, the great reformer Martin Luther helped us tremendously.

He'll help us again this morning.

He described and defined sin in this way: Incurvatus in say.

Here's what he meant by that.

Sin is man curved inward upon himself.

Sin is man curved inward upon himself.

This is the despairing reality of our sin nature.

You and I, we will take every good thing given to us by God, and we will curve it inwardly toward our own selfish pursuit of satisfaction.

We'll do that to our marriages, our children, our careers, to one another.

We need something.

I would argue, someone outside of ourselves.

We need to see the perfect self-giving love of Jesus.

Because our hope is that Jesus became the spent gift to serve us.

Think about this.

Jesus had every spiritual gift in perfect fullness.

He was the ultimate prophet, priest, king, teacher, servant, leader, every gift flowing perfectly from the Spirit without measure.

And what did he do with those gifts?

He poured them out, he exhausted them completely for us.

He taught with authority.

But he wasn't building a platform.

Instead, he spoke to call tenderly the sinner to repentance.

He healed and served and performed miracles, but not for recognition.

Most of the time, Jesus would tell them to leave and to keep their mouths shut, to not spread the word about him that he might be veiled in mystery.

He led with perfect wisdom.

But not to position himself as the wise sage of culture.

No, he came as one who serves.

He gave with extravagant generosity not just his resources, but church his very life.

Jesus never used his gift for self-promotion.

Ever.

Nor did he dismiss them and allow them to lay dormant on the ground.

Every gift he possessed was spent for the ultimate good of his church.

Even his very life was spent in full for us.

Because at the cross, the perfectly gifted one, he became the perfect gift for us.

So the one who deserved all the glory laid down all his gifts, all his rights, all of his life, so that we would be restored to the Father, brought into the body, gifted by grace.

You see, he served us to the point of death.

So that you and I could be raised to new life.

Life in which now we're gifted by the Spirit to serve others in his body, the church.

And the mystery of the gospel is this: that Jesus didn't serve us, didn't just serve us with his gifts.

He became the very gift.

And because of this perfect gift, we now are gifted by the Spirit.

The same Spirit who filled Jesus, who raised him from the dead, now dwells within us.

So what do we do with this?

Wrapping up.

My prayer for us is that we would pursue and steward the gifts to serve one another.

The first one, pursue your gifts.

Again, get busy in work.

Get your hands dirty in the soil of one another's lives.

If you want to know what your spirit gift is, you will discover it in the ordinary means of work.

Get busy.

Pursue gifts.

Don't sit passively waiting for some sign to show up.

Work.

And in your work, ask God to reveal how He's gifted you.

Try different areas of service.

And I'm not just talking about Sunday morning.

This isn't it, I'm not gonna like, hey, there's sign-up cards in the back of your chair if you want to do coffee.

I'm not, it's not what's happening this morning.

What's happening this morning is for you to genuinely reflect and contemplate on your role and function in the body of Christ.

Man, if you think you're giftless, you don't get the gospel.

If you think you're just here and you have nothing to contribute, that's the lie of Satan that you are persuading your heart with.

You're allowing him to convince you of a false narrative that doesn't show any weight when held up to the truth of Scripture.

Try different areas of service.

Pay attention to where you find joy, pay attention to where you see fruit.

Second, steward your gifts faithfully.

Man, once you know how God has equipped you, exhaust yourself using it.

Exhaust yourself using it.

If you're gifted to teach, teach.

If you're gifted to serve, serve.

Don't bury this thing.

Don't hoard it and don't exploit it.

Don't use it to serve your ego or your appetite.

Remember, your gifts are for others to meet real needs in the lives of real people.

This is how the Spirit builds the church.

He does it by gifting each of us with grace so that we can serve one another.