I was asked an amazingly deep question today.
I could only hear it at the surface level initially, but then it resounded and layers opened up.
It became a wave.
And here's how it started.
There's a phrase in the heart of it.
And then the question wraps around this phrase.
So we'll start there.
The venue of expression.
So when I hear the word venue, I think of a building that has a purpose and serves to facilitate an event.
Usually events are held at venues.
And then a venue of expression means …
the best place for something to transpire or to become known.
So those are the core words and then we're going to wrap the package around it.
The question was something like this and I heard it from several angles at once.
Maybe I should just ask it and then you'll understand where we're going.
So there's a question behind the question but here's the end of it.
And where do you believe would be the best venue for expressing those gifts from God?
Let's see where we're going.
Now that question has at least two layers of foundational question behind it because most people struggle with that question and they should.
Let's try to unpack it just a little bit.
All of us should have a venue or a platform or a [in today's vernacular] a channel to properly express something related to God, spirit, content.
If we don't have such a venue to optimally express the blessing and the gift and the knowledge that we have related to God and from God, that's an indicator of a few things.
One, maybe an immature or not properly motivated
So we'll come back to that question because it's really deep.
The presupposition is that each person should have a venue of expression.
The underlying question underneath that is, from external observation, the people around you …
“What do they see and what do you believe God has uniquely gifted you with for a spiritual skill set?”
What gifts do you have that are Divine to help you best be a blessing to others?
Notice there's two perspectives in that question.
The first is the outside.
What do other people say that you're good at?
The second is, what do you believe?
Because even if you're good at something, if you don't believe that God has gifted it to you, then you're probably not properly receiving that gift or exercising that gift.
Right?
So, just instead of asking,
A superficial question, which is what gifts do you have?
The question is instead made to look two sides on a mirror.
One is what gets reflected out to the world that other people can resonate and recognize and say, oh, that person must be gifted by God in this certain arena.
And then secondly, maybe from external feedback or affirmation or people constantly complimenting or saying, hey, you're really good at that.
Or thank you for blessing me in that manner.
What do you believe?
Either based on Scripture or other people's feedback that you you indeed do have a gift from God.
And if you believe it, you know, Moses didn't think he could speak.
God said, speak.
And he's like, “I'm not good at it.”
But in the New Testament, we learned Moses was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt.
He was plenty persuasive.
In fact, Moses was was an author.
Moses could put his words together, especially if God just promised that He would help him.
But he didn't believe that he had the gift, even though God was clearly saying, do the thing.
And obviously, God would help him, but he lacked confidence in God, that God would follow through and assist with the gift.
Pause this, this is pretty deep.
This is like spiritual surgery.
So let's continue with exploring a gift.
So a gift is from a Great Giver.
A gift has a function, a use case.
And then are we properly utilizing our gift set according to the
the best use case which has, now we're going to digress slightly to a vertical illustration, that all of us must be conduits.
We should be absorbing awesome content and delivering that content.
What does that make us?
It makes us a conduit.
It makes us a conductive element.
a filament.
Alright, I wrote it down and sometimes when we write it down it just sounds a little bit better.
So here's how it sounds written.
What have others confirmed and what do you personally believe is your unique gift set?
[That thing's bouncing around.]
The way you minister, your skills for service.
[Sorry for the loud noises.
It's just bouncing a bit.]
Am I wrong?
It was this thing.
Okay.
We should address this question because God is the Ultimate Giver.
He's the source of every …
Our life, our sustaining in life, He's the composition, He's the composer of our soul, He's the creator of our eyes, our mouth, our energy, our bones, our motion, our structure, our intellect, our capacity to process and do anything.
For in Him we live and move and have our being.
Right?
He's the in all, be all.
And when God in His wisdom chooses to give a gift,
We have to do more than say thank you or even recognize where it came from.
We need to elevate, we need to maximize the reception of that gift and we need to deliberately utilize the gift to its maximum capacity in the proper venue.
So there's four levels to this question.
First, what do you believe is the proper venue for maximal expression, maximum impact of expression
of your gift set, which implies that you have a unique and divine gift skill set, which implies that there is an all-wise, intentional, loving, caring giver who had the best motive in mind for the success of others, for the building up of the team, for the edification
What Is Your …
those who are hesitant.
Possibly it's to factually leverage those out of lethargy and up into action.
Maybe it's causing.
It's being that foment, that cause of action.
Maybe it's inviting others to participate,
on a new level that they feel uncomfortable but they could venture out with God's help.
Perhaps our gift might be to deliberately distill determinism in others so that they can lock down on that which they need to do for God and for the good of others.
A little perspective.
A lot of us are busy, but …
If we pause to evaluate our busy work versus the enhanced impact work, which functional flow of the skill set resulted in what you perceive to be the most lasting good?
Enhanced impact.
You know, one thing that distorts our view is to stare at ourselves.
Yeah, you're going to get really contorted and foggy.
So let's remove the question from self, not what are my gifts, but instead let's direct our focus on the Giver, capital G, and let's just flow with the gifts as received.
So God gave me this responsibility.
I must fulfill it, right?
God intentionally gifted me with blank __________________________.
I can carry forth the commission.
as received specially delegated to me from the Great Gifter.
The Great Gifter had the wisdom.
I just need to partner with him and relax and allow the flow to happen.
Don't so focus on my participation, but instead yield to willingly invite the infusion and the filling of the gift to flow through you.
People don't do things best on their own.
We need to live a God-filled life such that the gift is glowing only when people are knowing that He is flowing through us, you know.
We need to just kind of step out of the way.
The best spiritual gifts are the ones where you can tell the Spirit is doing the work.
Now to the top, the cherry on top of the question, the venue.
The venue in today's short time that we have left on this level one version, we're actually in version 2.0 of the earth because version 1.0 got wiped away in the flood and then God restored the earth and that now we're living in version 2.0.
We're soon approaching version 3.0, right?
In the short time that we have until the commensation of
Version 3.0 of the world.
What should we do with the gifts and the knowledge that we have from God?
The venue that we select, which is a complex question because in today's world there's many venues, there's many platforms.
It should serve to scale, to multiply.
One area that every believer should be involved in, of course, is immersive discipleship.
Immersive discipleship.
Not just baptism, but like getting into it, diving in deep to help people.
I put these words together.
The venue should multiply the immersive discipleship experience on reachable platforms.
So we reach people where they are.
Where our people, they're all glued to their phone.
I know face-to-face is best.
You know, FaceTime is probably second best.
Screen time is probably not best.
However, that's the magnet of the soul.
That's where people live nowadays is stuck to their hand and stuck to a screen.
We should all, let's close off with this.
We should all be a conductor of electricity.
We'll use that as an illustration.
So think about the filament inside a light bulb back when they had filaments.
It conducted electrical current.
Copper wire in a house conducts electrical current.
The filament in a train light is exceedingly bright because it is a gold filament.
Silver is an excellent conductor of electricity.
What is the, what function does a conductor, an excellent conductor,
have.
Number one, it's connected.
It has to be, in order to be functional, a conductor must be connected to the source, right?
Number two, the flow should not be diminished or disturbed.
So that conductivity that is flowing through that conductor to the receiver of truth should not diminish the efficiency, the effectiveness, the purity, the power of the truth in the words in the original format.
Next, we already said it, but we have to be connected to the right truth, the right voltage, the right power source.
And then, this is where the illustration somewhat comes apart, but we should absorb the information so we have something to transmit.
Like you cannot carry that which you cannot receive yourself.
This is not necessarily true in electrical wiring, but I have to comprehend that which I pass along.
The truth must be owned before it can be distributed.
You know, you could say it 16 ways, but the teacher must know the subject in order to effectively deliver to the students.
There should be some animation, some excitement, but basically the facts have to be present
So what should I be absorbing?
I should be absorbing truth and then expressing faith and adding a little bit of feeling, personality.
You know, boring facts without any face, without any diction and tone and enunciation and vibrato and variance and trying to get the message across without any effort.
If you're zero entertaining, nobody wants cardboard truth.
They should.
They should love the truth so much that it doesn't matter the voice.
But all of us need to be mini-broadcasters because somebody can connect with your personality and listen to the truth.
So therefore, the question becomes, introspective, what is blocking my flow?
If I know the truth, if I know the one true God, if I truly believe there's a heaven and a hell, if I know the gospel, since I'm responsible to be a conductor of truth and light, what is blocking my flow?
Is it pride?
Is it a lack of correct self-perception?
Am I not seeing myself as God sees me?
God sees me as a willing, useful, ready vessel to do what He commissioned me to do.
God chose to give me a gift.
The gift and the calling of God are without repentance.
When God gifts somebody, He does not change his mind.
He wants to equip, empower, and infuse and do
through us to reach the world.
God chose to get the gospel through conduits in skin.
We are bags of skin delivering the best news ever.
What Is Your Most Effective Venue Of Expression?