Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the Weekday Podcast of Sugar Hill Church, where we desire to help you know God and discover your purpose, whether you're exercising, driving, meditating, or just hanging out while you tune in with us today. Thanks. We hope these next five minutes help you feel encouraged and inspired for your day.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Well, hey friends, welcome back to another edition of the Weekday Podcast. As always, we're so glad you're here. Today's title is a little bit different. It's called Don't Spleen, but By Yourself. And in case you're wondering, where does that even come from? This is a bit of a recap from a message given Memorial Day weekend, 2024. So if you want to catch sort of the full context, you can go to our YouTube page and scroll back and find that message. But here's the deal. When you think about spiritual gifts, one of the things that if we're not careful, that we'll miss is that our gift is connected to other people. In Ephesians 4:16, Paul says, From whom the whole body being fit, fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself. In love, Paul uses this illustration that every single person is part of the body, and every single gift is like a joint. It's like a muscle, it's like an organ. We need them to be fitted together.
And so let me just break it down this way. Your gift is given to you from for the body. And so in other words, your gift is attached to the church. And what happens is if we're not careful, we'll get so sucked into the beautiful part of our gift that we'll get so amped up by our gift that if we're not careful, we might be tempted to detach our gift from the body and say, well, I'm going to do my own thing. And we don't appreciate everybody else's gift. We think our gift is the best gift and the only gift. And what ends up happening is a gift overused and disconnected from the rest of the body actually has a dark side.
And so every part is accountable to one another. And when we pull away from the body, it actually leads to the dark side. And so we need to realize that our gift is attached to the body, to the church, in a similar way that your body is made up of parts of your body. And so if part of your body today just decided, I don't want to be part of your body, you're going to get sick. So for Instance, if today when I got up, my spleen said, bobby, I don't want to be part of your body anymore. I'm going to go over here and spleen by myself.
Guess what? My body's going to be sick. Now this is a terrible illustration because I don't know what a spleen does all that well. But what I do know is if part of your body just decides I don't want to be part of your body anymore, it's going to get sick. And that's the same thing with the spiritual gift. When somebody within the body says, hey, I've got a gift, my gift is the best gift and I'm going to go use it my own way, the whole body gets sick and quite frankly, the person that's doing that also gets sick. This is how we get so many people burned out. This is how we end up seeing people using their leadership for the wrong reasons. And so today I just want to encourage you. Don't spleen by yourself. In other words, bring your gift within alignment with the rest of the body.
And there's certain seasons where the body needs a certain gift more than others. There's certain seasons where different gifts are leaned into more than others, and that's fine. And there's certain seasons where some are are sort of tampered back a little bit. And that's great. And so I want to encourage you today, you have a gift, but but it's connected to the body. And don't allow your gift to show its dark side because it's there. We all have it. And so I hope that's helpful and encouraging to you today. Have a great day. We'll see you back here soon.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Thanks so much for joining us today for the weekday podcast. Our prayer is that the encouragement you just heard would help you live more like Jesus today. We would love to see you at Sugar Hill Church for one of our gatherings each Sunday at 9, 15 and 11. And we're always streaming live at Live Sugarhill Church. Thanks again for joining us today. As always, if today's message encouraged you, share it with friends and family by tapping the share button. Have an awesome day.
