Of Gifts and Self-Pity

It’s funny how God can use moments when you’re down to instill a new teaching in your life. During my self-pitying period at the start of the semester, I did nothing except to grumble and wallow in my self-induced despair, acting and feeling as though I bore the problems of the whole world on my numb shoulders (from lugging all those huge, hard-bound books to school). What added to my frustration was that I can’t seem to give an excellent recitation because I tend to freeze whenever a professor calls my name. Honestly, I now know the feeling of cats that are about to be turned into roadkill: instead of running away when they see a car approaching, what they do is that they freeze and see their entire feline lives flash before their lives a split second before they become completely squished (a friend said that he goes through the tunnel syndrome of those who are about to have a fainting session, wherein your vision fades until only a pinprick of light remains, only to eventually disappear – but that story is for him to tell). What I felt made the situation worse for me was that some of my blockmates seem to be performing exceptionally well compared to my horrible performances in class. I remember thinking whether I’m just someone wearing the façade of a law student, when in truth, I’m just some loser kid who has not reached that degree of maturity yet that is needed for the profession.
Thank God I’ve finally gotten rid of that loser outlook and for changing my perspective of looking at things (for explanation, see past blog). I met up with my discipler a few days ago, and behold – her topic was about developing a winning (not whining) attitude. When she discussed the traits of a whiner, I couldn’t help but be convicted, because I fall under at least one of the categories that complainers love to rant against:
Family relationships
Self-Image
Significance
Talents/Abilities
Romantic Relationships
Of all these, the ones that I’ve recently fallen victim of would be (3) and (4). As I’ve mentioned earlier, I had a case of severe insecurity from some of my blockmates who could recite as if they chewed, swallowed, and digested all the materials that we’ve read. I think this problem of insecurity, almost always along with (2) mentioned above, is felt by most of the young people today. What with the media and other people telling us how we should act, think, feel, and even just BE, we tend to feel like we’re always lacking something, and that who we are will always not be enough. In our minds, we have to reach a certain standard of someone else; otherwise, our lives are useless.
That is a very destructive mindset that the world is telling us. Not only does it mean that we will never be enough for something or the other, but it also implies that God is unfair, in that He only chooses to bless certain people and allows others to become complete losers, without even having a single gift to use. That is just not true. The God of Psalm 139 (which I highly encourage you to read) is not that of a stingy or unjust God – He is the One who has formed us from our mother’s womb (v. 13), and has made us wonderful creations (v.14). He has made us in His image (Gen 1:27), and He knows just how many hairs are on our heads (Mt 10:31).
It’s true that He has made each one of us different from each other, but this has purpose. Romans 12:6-8 says,
“Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”
When we go up a few verses, we find in Rm 12:4-5,
“For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, through many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.”
What do all of these mean? I believe it means that all people are given different gifts so as to be able to minister to other people, to bring other people to God. It’s not simply a collective of various assortments of pieces. We are many parts but compose one body: taking each section alone, we’ll be completely useless, as a bolt would be when it’s by itself, but if put together, we’ll form a working system, a structure living for Him. If we were created as exactly similar to each other and “perfect” by ourselves, wouldn’t it be going against God’s Will for us? It would mean that either of these two situations can happen: one, we won’t need Him, because we will be able to sufficiently provide for ourselves, or we become brainless robots following rules and whatever else (which is against God’s love and His gift of freedom to choose for us). This involves prayer and personal discernment. He gave is the freedom to choose, and that includes using the gifts that He has blessed us with. It’s there, but if we don’t use it, it will remain latent until we die. No one else can make that choice for us whether to use that gift or not, and also for what purpose. We might spend the rest of our lives trying to develop a talent that we’re not really blessed with, and if we’re lucky, we get to have a modicum of skill in it, but chances are, we’ll probably stink at it, all the while having an ability we do not use and will end up decaying just because other persons dictate us to do something else. 1,500,000 people can go and ram down our throats that we should be like this or like that, but the decision will always lie with us whether to accept and conform to what they are saying. We end up not really serving Him because our gifts are stifled just because we allowed others to make our decisions for us. Maybe what they’re saying is good for us, but then again, maybe not. God gave all of us brains for us to discern what’s going on, and we should also use that. We can choose to just blindly follow them, or we can think and see for ourselves whether we’re going on the right track. We make all these choices, for or against God.
The fact is, He has blessed us, possibly more than we could ever know. We’re different precisely because we’re meant to be different, and we could use our differences to bless others and to glorify Him. Comparing ourselves to other people will not bear fruition, aside from making us feel more horrible about ourselves. Instead of doing that, we should develop the gifts given to us and using it for His glory. In closing, here is 1 Pt 4:10
“As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”