Josh: 0:07

Welcome to Made for Good, the podcast where we explore how to live out our purpose through good works, guided by biblical truth. Hey, I'm Josh

Mark: 0:15

and I'm Mark. Today's episode is all about finding your groove, and what we're talking about here is discovering how God has gifted you for personal ministry and how you can serve him in a way that feels natural, it feels fulfilling and it feels encouraging to you. We believe the Bible teaches that every believer has a unique role in the body of Christ. We'll talk about that a little later in our episode. Today, part of our journey is figuring out where we fit in. So, Josh, let me ask you a question why do you think people struggle to know where they fit in, to find out where they fit in in ministry?

Josh: 1:02

You know, one of the things that Jesus said is he asked a question, he answered a question with a question. Yeah, can I ask you a question? Okay, could it be that some people don't know what ministry means?

Mark: 1:12

Okay, so let's that's good. Let's define ministry. It's a very complicated term. That means service,

Josh: 1:19

okay,

Mark: 1:21

so one word

Josh: 1:21

yeah,

Mark: 1:22

service. It means to serve. Now that's my understanding of what the word ministry is. Sometimes we get a little uncomfortable talking about ministry, but Paul encouraged Timothy to fulfill his ministry, so it's a biblical term clearly acceptable for us to use.

Josh: 1:44

So I want to go back to your initial question where you said why do people struggle with where they belong? Well, it could be because, going back to, you mentioned that ministry means service, but some just assume that ministry means being a preacher or a teacher or leading to some big initiative. But in reality ministry can be simple. It's about using the gifts God's given us in everyday life and sometimes people just don't recognize how their talents can be used for the kingdom of God.

Mark: 2:15

Well, exactly, I'll say that this is not really an optional thing. There's an evidence element to this that's conveyed in John 15, 58, an evidence of our faith. Let's take a look at that verse. This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. So the evidence of being a disciple is that you're bearing fruit. God is calling us to bear fruit and this ties our actions to God's glory. So if we want to glorify God, as we've said in almost every episode, the Bible calls us to do something, not just to know something or understand something, but to take action. So God is calling us to be fruitful. You have to take whatever talents, resources he's given us and use it to serve others. So today we're going to talk about how to discover where you best fit in in the role of service or ministry, over where you best fit in in the role of service or ministry, and how to step into that role with some confidence, to step out and let your light shine before others.

Josh: 3:35

Which we can transition right into our Bible basis today, where we're going to be focusing in 1 Peter 4.10, where it says each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others faithfully, administering God's grace in its various forms. That means ministry looks different for everyone, as we've talked about, and some people serve through hospitality, others through encouragement, teaching or acts of kindness. What I'm trying to get at is there's no one-size-fits-all approach

Mark: 4:05

So you're saying that we all need to work together.

Josh: 4:08

Yeah,

Mark: 4:09

that sounds similar to Ephesians 4. Let's take a look at there Verse 15 and 16. It says, rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him. Who's the into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. There's so many concepts in this verse, but this is about everyone fulfilling their role in the body of Christ. So you know, the arm doesn't fulfill the role of the ankle. We've got our roles. We've part of the body is working. So, in other words, the church, the body of Christ, really thrives when everybody is actively serving. They aren't all doing the same thing. They're stepping into multiple roles, and that enables the body to function as God intended.

Josh: 5:24

The Bible gives us some incredible examples of people who found their unique roles in ministry and between the two of us. We've thought about three and we're going to discuss those three together. Onesiphorus he wasn't a preacher or apostle, but his ministry of encouragement was essential. Paul wrote about him in 2 Timothy 1, verses 16 through 17, where the Bible says the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onnesius, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he was in wrong he sought me out very diligently and found me.

Mark: 5:58

You know, the Bible drops these names that we don't know very much about. They kind of come on the scene and they're gone. But these are what I would call ordinary Christians, but in a large way they are extraordinary because of what they did while they were on the scene, so to speak, in Scripture. When you look at this person, Onesiphorus, and the actions that he took, do you think that he cared about Paul? Was there compassion about Paul and where he was, he was not ashamed of his chains. He often so.

Mark: 6:38

This was not a one-time thing. He often refreshed him and that could be, hey, bringing some things that he needed. It could have been encouragement. I think it probably was encouragement. But when Paul was in Rome in prison, he traveled there and it's not like you just had an address, you had a GPS, you plugged it in. He had to go find where Paul was, and he did, and he met the needs of Paul. It's just it was an ordinary person doing an extraordinary thing and the Holy Spirit chose to reveal this little essential morsel of service in 2 Timothy, where Paul says the Lord, grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus. It's an example for us in that we can do these types of things, without a lot of fanfare, without a lot of credentials. He saw a need of credentials. He saw a need and he just went and fulfilled it.

Josh: 7:55

I love when you just said God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things and going further in these examples. This gives us confidence that God can use me and you. He can use all of us. Like Dorcas in Acts 9, we can read about her. She was known for acts of charity. In Acts 9. We can read about her. She was known for acts of charity using her skills to bless others. Verse 36 says now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which translated means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. And what I love about this and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it too when she passed the town just talked about what all she did and like how awesome is that, how effective she was in using well, she found her groove right and she was using that. But what people said about her after she was gone?

Mark: 8:38

So who decides what's put on your gravestone after you're gone? A lot of times it's your family, it's the people who know you, people who are close to you. How great would it be that if you lived a life where the best thing that they could put on your tombstone is he was full of good works and acts of charity, is that a life lived in the service of God or what? I think that another example that we could look at is Barnabas, the very definition of encouragement. In fact, his name means son of encouragement. Barnabas is not like Onesiphorus I've mentioned only a few times.

Mark: 9:24

This is a person who's mentioned many times for many different things in the Bible. He's mentioned early on in the Bible, in Acts 4, verse 36 and 37. It describes how he sold the field to help support the early church and then later, after Paul's conversion, he traveled to Tarsus, paul's hometown, and sought him out again, sought him out and found him and brought him into the work there in Antioch. And so Paul encouraged, encouraged the early church. In his generosity. He encouraged Paul. He was, he was a, maybe in a ways a peacemaker. We're going to have an episode about peacemaking because Paul was not at peace with the church early on, uh, before he his conversion, and it needed to be in a way vouched for and and Paul and Barnabas did that for Paul.

Josh: 10:23

Our reality check for finding our groove to me is just this where do I start? And a lot of us, it's just not known where to start, right, and so I think it's because people wait for big opportunities instead of just open their eyes to see where they're at. And then the other part of this is just feeling unqualified. We talked about not understanding what ministry means. We could think that our minister or anyone else is highly gifted. That falls on them and not on us, because we're unqualified.

Mark: 10:59

Well, here's the truth. God has qualified all of us, he's equipped us. Let's take a look over in Ephesians 4. We're going to look at verse 11 and 12. Now you talked about, you know, those who are, you know, in the ministry, putting quotes around that you want to talk about ministry. You've got the apostles in verse 11 of Ephesians 4, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds or elders or bishops they're the leaders of the church and teachers. He gave all of them. Why? Why? For the grand titles that they had. No, their mission was to equip the saints that's you and me, that's everyone for the work of ministry this does. This is not describing the ministry of the apostles or the ministry of the prophets, or the ministry of the evangelists or preachers, or even the teachers. It's talking about the work of ministry for the saints, ie everyone, and the goal there is building up the body of Christ, as we've already talked about in Ephesians 4, 15 to 16.

Josh: 12:20

I love that, because it just means that we don't have to figure it all out. We just need to be willing to step forward and try.

Mark: 12:26

So your mission this week is to find your groove. So the first step in that is, as it always should be in every new venture we undertake, is to pray for guidance. Ask God to reveal where he wants to use you in the kingdom. To reveal where he wants to use you in the kingdom, you know. Take a moment, Think about what you naturally enjoy doing. What are you good at? I don't know, Josh. Nobody's really going to ask me to lead singing because maybe they understand that wouldn't be the best use of my talent, or lack thereof. So it takes a little bit of effort to look at yourself objectively and try to identify your gifts. But I think it's also what do you enjoy doing? You're not. You maybe could at something, but if it's really not fulfilling or it's really not something that you enjoy doing, you're not going to be as likely to do it.

Josh: 13:25

You know, what's interesting is when people around you see it. They know what your groove is and you don't even see it. If I'm being honest, I was in my mid-20s I'm kind of embarrassed to say it where I sat across from someone and they told me what my thing was, and that was empowering because then you could just go and do it. So a part of this is to go talk to someone. If you're listening, you're thinking I hear you guys, I want to go do more. I want to know what my groove is, but I don't know what it is.

Mark: 13:56

And we're saying is maybe go ask someone that you respect and love and ask them what do you think? My groove is yeah, and if you're really young, maybe talk to your parents or talk to someone at church. For the rest of us, we could talk to maybe an elder or a preacher or one of our mentors, somebody who knows you well. It is also good to just to try some things. We had a situation in one of our classes where we will talk about it in a future episode, but we kind of focused on little things, just little things that you can do. One of those was one of the challenges was just write a card to somebody at church. You know, we make the announcement so-and-so is sick, so-and-so is going to have a surgery, it's going through, you know, chemo treatment for cancer. There's a lot of need out there, and so we asked our class to write a note and a person came up to us almost with tears in his eyes and said I've never written a note to anybody. And it was not a confession. It was like I'm glad that you challenged me to do this because they benefited from doing it, and so you may find, I think, if that person did not feel good or enjoy doing it, they wouldn't have come and told us about it. I bet that person's written more notes. So just trying something again that maybe you haven't done before.

Mark: 15:25

It doesn't have to be big, start small, but be intentional and and look at it from a perspective of can I do this on a regular basis? You know, look for things that are a part of my service. Look for things that are going to show I'm bearing fruit, I'm doing good, I'm at work in the kingdom. God is using me to encourage others. When you look at you know, Josh, what are the qualifications for being an encourager? That's not really a position like an elder or deacon, defined, you know, in scripture, with very detailed qualifications. What are the qualifications for being an encourager?

Josh: 16:06

I think back to one of the first episodes we have. We talked about Jesus. He felt compassion and he acted on it Okay.

Mark: 16:12

So you're saying that you need to Feel it and act. Feel it and act, got it. So these steps of prayer, reflection, trying some things, and then even talking to others who know you well and say ask them, what do you think I should do Right, what are the things, the strengths that you see in me that maybe I don't see myself? And these are the first steps of kind of finding your groove in the kingdom. This could be something like.

Mark: 16:49

I'll just give a couple of quick examples you know the ladies at church who come and surround a new mom-to-be. You know to give advice to, you know to equip them with the things that they need to be a parent, organizing showers, celebrating the life that is inside that young mom, that's a groove. I mean, if your thing is that we have a lady at our church, her groove is making sure that those who have suffered some loss in their family get flowers, and so we as individuals make sure that that person has the funds on a regular basis and she takes it. That's her groove. We know that she's got it, she's embraced it, she enjoys it

Josh: 17:45

and it's powerful.

Mark: 17:47

It is very powerful, exactly.

Josh: 17:49

Well, as always, we assume that a lot of you are driving and some of you may be on a walk, and so you didn't write these things down. So just know that your mission this week will be posted on social media.

Mark: 18:01

That's it for today's episode of Made for Good. If this conversation encouraged you or challenged you on how you fit in and what your role in the body of Christ is, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

Josh: 18:13

And we hope you found this helpful and if you did consider sharing it with a friend. Until next time, go out, find your groove and remember you were made for this.