[00:00:00] Well, hey friends, welcome to another edition of the weekday podcast. I'm super grateful you're here today. If there's ever anything we can join you in praying for, drop us a
[email protected] now. One of the things that I've seen in my own life and a lot of people that I get to walk through life with is that they love the idea of telling people the good news about Jesus, but they rarely have a plan to do it. And the way that this usually comes up in my life or somebody else's life is we talk about everything. Like we hang out with people and we talk about the latest game that we were at, or we talk about the latest gadget that was just announced. We talk about something going on in our personal lives. But oftentimes I've felt this. Maybe you've felt this, that you're walking back to your car, about to drive away, thinking, man, I've never told them about the reason for the hope that I have, right? Here's what Ephesians 4, verse 7 says. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gifts. So as he's writing this, it's not to the professionals, not to the ones that are on a stage, but to Paul says each one. In that culture, gifts typically flowed downhill from a wealthy patron, and it always came with strings attached. You owed the guy who gave you something. And Paul's making a jarring claim. He's saying, Christ handed our gifts with zero strings and he handed them to everybody in the room, including the ones who never called themselves gifted at this.
[00:01:24] And here's the uncomfortable pattern that researchers keep running into.
[00:01:28] The longer somebody's been a Christian, the fewer non Christian friends they typically have. Now, nobody decides this on purpose. Church fills the calendar. Church friends become the whole friend group. And somewhere in there, we quietly lose the very relationships we'd actually be speaking into.
[00:01:44] A gift you never use isn't humility, it's rejection with better manners. Think about the co worker you've been friendly with for two years and never once told the actual story of why your life looks different.
[00:01:56] The neighbor. The person in your group text who's carrying something heavy and doesn't know you'd talk about it if they asked. This week, protect one relationship outside of the walls of your church or small group on purpose. Not a program, not a project, just one person and let awkward be okay. You are not disqualified from this by fumbling it. Nobody remembers the delivery. They remember that you cared enough to say something. What would happen if. If a ton of us today, hundreds and hundreds of us today, if we were doing what one paid mouth has been doing all along?
[00:02:31] Why not you? Why not me? A gift you never use isn't humility. It's rejection with better manners. Tomorrow we're headed to the church potluck where three people cook like they've entered a competition nobody told them they were in. And 40 people show up with a 2 liter and plastic forks. There's a reason that story isn't actually about food. We'll see you soon.
