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Romans 9-16

Applying Righteousness: Towards Others/Church

Jayson Combs · Sunday, 26 October 2025 · Romans 12:3-8 · 41:39 · 6,330 words

Romans S27 · 12:3-8 Waterford

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

Romans 12:3‑8 challenges believers to assess the church rightly, replacing pride with humble, sober judgment. The message shows how God uses the picture of a body to teach unity, warning that isolation and busyness undermine the church’s mission. Listeners are invited to guard against self‑centeredness, to discover their spiritual gifts, and to use them in service to the body. The message asks that each person seek the Lord’s help to be a living sacrifice and to walk in the unity he has designed.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

gift 60 assessment 13 church 55 knee 11 gauge 6 prophecy 10 serve 20 sober 8 member 13 cousin 5 body 22 use 19

Topics

Spiritual Gifts 4 The Body of Christ 3 Atonement & Sacrifice 2 Prayer 1 Salvation 1 Faith 1 Unity 1

Scripture referenced 29

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 12 0:51 Romans 12:1-2 0:59 Romans 12:1-2 1:22 Romans 1 2:24 Romans 1:2 2:58 Romans 12 3:14 Romans 12:3-8 3:14 Romans 12:9 3:24 Romans 12:1-2 3:24 Romans 12:9 3:28 Romans 12:3 4:34 Romans 12:3 9:14 1 Corinthians 12 12:54 1 Corinthians 12:4 12:59 1 Corinthians 12:18 13:13 1 Thessalonians 2 16:09 Ephesians 5:16 17:07 1 Corinthians 15:58 18:48 1 Corinthians 12 19:26 Romans 12 22:50 1 Corinthians 12:22 25:50 Romans 12:5 29:41 Romans 12:6 29:56 1 Peter 4 30:50 1 Corinthians 12 32:54 Romans 12 37:02 Romans 12 37:38 Romans 12:1 39:51 Romans 12:1 39:51

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 7 lines, 0:35. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

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Thanks again for joining us, and we hope that you are blessed by today's message.

Morning everybody. Weird to do a video announcement, and I was the guy doing the video announcement.

That's being played at all of our locations, so it's a little different to walk up to.

But welcome to The River Church. My name is Jason Combs. I'm the location pastor here.

Glad you're with us. If you have your Bible, it will be in Romans chapter 12.

We'd love for you to turn there, Romans chapter number 12.

We, last week, studied Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2.

It really is a complete, it tells us what the Christian life really entails.

And last week, pointed out, wanted us to really see what changes when somebody becomes a Christian.

So in Romans 12, 1 and 2, Paul says,

And so in studying this and seeing the truth, the word of God to us, we see that a believer is one.

Who is first motivated by the mercy of God.

For us to live our Christian faith, to walk that out, our motivation always takes us back to Christ

and what he did for us on the cross, and the saving grace, and the forgiveness, and the eternal life that he gives.

That because of Christ, this is our motivation to live a life that is changed.

Our motivation isn't fear of God. Our motivation is not that God is our dad and he'll give us everything we ask for.

Our motivation is we look to Christ and we look to the cross.

And as a believer, this is why we are saved.

We're not saved because of good works.

We are saved because Jesus Christ came perfect, died on the cross, and rose again.

And as Romans 1 through 11 explains so clearly, but yet so deep, that because of Christ, his perfection,

he took our place on the cross, and if we will confess our sins and believe in him, we will be saved.

And so our motivation as a Christian is the mercy of God.

And that then leads us to a different aim, which is a living sacrifice.

To live our life in sacrifice to the Lord.

How? In a holy and pleasing way.

And then verse 2 is how our mind changes.

And this really is a constant changing, really a maintenance of our mind.

That we'll continue to have our mind transformed into the likeness of Christ,

so that we'll know what's good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Well, as you read chapter 12, we're going to study verses 3 through 8.

But for me, 3 through 8 has always been a little different.

I'll even use the word weird.

It's the 3 through 8.

I feel like verse 9 almost flows out of verse 1 and 2.

Because verse 9 then takes us to that how to love, and how to have peace,

and how to work through specific problems, how to rejoice, how to contribute, how to bless.

All of these things starting in verse number 9.

And so 3 through 8 has always been a little weird to me.

Now, when I say weird, here's what I want you to understand.

Paul is led by the Holy Spirit.

We believe God's word.

The Bible is God's word to us.

So when I say that, what I'm not saying is, maybe Paul didn't speak right here.

No, what I'm saying is, Paul is right.

I'm not.

Paul is led by the Holy Spirit.

And so I don't want you to even have a little tent of, no.

This is the word of God.

As we read it, we can read it as God speaking.

This is the word of God.

And it's so important.

And so there's this talk out that maybe Paul messed up in a couple spots.

No, no.

We believe this is the scriptures through the Holy Spirit given to us.

And so when we get to verse 3, I want to read it to you.

It says this.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you,

not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,

but to think with sober judgment,

each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members,

and the members do not all have the same function.

So we, though many, are one body in Christ,

and individually members one of another,

having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Let us use them.

in proportion to our faith,

if service in our serving,

the one who teaches in his teaching,

the one who exhorts in his exhortation,

the one who contributes in generosity,

the one who leads with zeal,

the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

And so here, Paul, as I read this,

Paul speaks of what it looks like,

the change of being a Christian,

our motivation, our aim, our mind changes.

And then he addresses this problem,

inside the church. He says, those who are among you, he points to the church and it's like he

takes an assessment and he says, hey, believers, we aren't always good at gauging the problems

correctly. We're not always good at seeing things how we should to assess things. Paul points this

out. When I think about assessment, I think about things in our life that we have assessed. I am

45 years old. I just had my 45-year-old physical. Yay for me. And so like you go and you have your

physical and so they come and they bring that stack of paper and like this number's good,

this number's bad, this number's good. And they walk you through and they lead you to say, hey,

here's some things you need to start doing. Here's some things you need to stop doing. So this

assessment, some of you at your job, you have an assessment. Somebody in leadership above you,

they come and meet with you and they give you an assessment. They say, hey, here's how we think

you're doing things right. Here's what you're doing wrong. So Paul points out to believers

that we're not always good at taking an accurate assessment of this thing here specifically.

The right gauge, I would say. A couple of years ago, my truck, I was driving and it ran out of gas.

The gauge was completely a mess. The gauge, it said I had 17 more miles before it would run out of gas

and it ran out of gas. Engineers, what is happening? This is your fault. The gauge said,

now some of you out there are like, 17? I get to like negative three. Who are you like zero people?

You take it all the way to like two miles. You stress your spouse out. You take it all the way

to the bottom. How many are like half a tank, pastor? I get to half a tank. I got to get to

the gas station. I got to get that thing filled. But the gauge was off. Here, Paul says,

the church fails to take a correct assessment of something. And what is he taking? What does

he tell us? We take a poor assessment many times of what the church is, of who we are as a part of

the church. He says there, you need to look at this because he's explaining the church and the

unity of the church and the gifting of each and every one of us. Many times we get this wrong.

And he wants us to have, he wants us to gauge this correctly, to have,

the right assessment about what the church is and how each one of you knowing the Lord,

if you know the Lord, are called to be a part of the church. What is the correct assessment of that?

And that's what Paul goes into in this passage. So let's pray and we'll dive into these. Lord,

I pray for your help. Lord, I pray you lead my words. Lord God, as a church, we've watched you

grow us in your word and your truth. And we're so thankful for that. Again, I just pray this

speak to people's hearts, lead my words. May I have the right doctrine, the right heart,

the right words. Pray for your blessing in Jesus name. Amen. So verse three starts out for by

the grace given to me, I say to every one of you not to think of himself more highly than he ought

to think. He first says, first, what happens in the church instead of seeing what the church

should be and how we should serve, what creeps in so many times is pride that the Lord does something

amazing, the Lord. And then we like to flip it and put it on us. We as people, we, we can be easily

be self-centered. We bring it back to us. So he warns us. One said, despite all the warnings our

culture gives about the dangers of low self-esteem, the real danger is self-centeredness. And this

disguises itself really well that we can be in a place like, no, I'm really humble. I don't really

do much. And many times it's just a disguise of us. We're not really humble. We're not really

just being prideful. I read a story of years and years ago, a pastor, uh, that was an amazing

preacher, amazing pastor. And he was in the airport and a guy walked up to him and recognized him.

And he's like, oh, pastor, you are so amazing. The gifts you have, it is just great. And he said,

I'm just the chimney sweeper in the church. And it was like, the man was expecting the pastor to turn

around and go, oh, you are so much more than that. But the pastor recognized and he spoke to him firmly

what you're doing is you're acting like you're trying to be humble, but you're begging, you're

begging for approval. You're begging to be put on a platform. So the scripture, the Lord says,

we need to guard our hearts against pride when it comes to what the church is and what we're

called to do. He then says, but to think with sober judgment, and it's exactly what you think

sober. So the, the, the opposite of being drunk, one who is drunk is not able to, uh,

assess the situation correctly. They're not able to make wise decisions to see things correctly,

to take the right steps, to be able to walk through things in a smart, uh, being really

good at evaluating the situation. They are not sober. And the Lord says to be sober. We're in a

way that rigor, that is rigorously accurate, that we are completely in touch with reality.

And again, reality about what? Well, he explained,

he says to have sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned

for as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

So though many, so though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another

here, the Bible uses the picture of the body to describe how the church, those who are believers,

like when we're, when we say the church, I feel like I need to say this often. We're not just

talking about this building and like, but the church are those who gather together, a local

church, believers in Christ. And so the Lord uses the picture of a body to give us an assessment

of what the church looks like and what the church is supposed to act like. He does this also in first

Corinthians 12, even first Corinthians 12, even goes into more in depth. I'll read you a couple

of verses. Verse four, it says, now there are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit. There are

a variety of services, but the same spirit. There are a variety of services, but the same spirit.

But the same Lord, there are a variety of activities, but it is the same God who empowers

them all in everything. Verse 18, for as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of

them as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many

parts, yet one body. So what does the Lord use? He uses his creation, the body. Now, when we think

about this unbelievably complex, crazy, I guess I would say system, right? God created us. God's

amazing creation of the human being. And those of us who are Christian, we step back and look at how

our hands work and how our feet work and how our eyes work and how our brain calculates and how we

move and how we talk and how we think. And as a believer, we step back and go, yeah, that's no

There's no chance something like that just kind of sort of accidentally came together. We look and

go, look what God did. Look at the complexity. Look what God has created. And so in scripture,

God uses the body to describe the church. And I would say even looking into some of that

complexity, looking at each of us, he says, has a different role, a different assignment,

a different part of the body that he uses. Yet we're all together.

And so what I'd like you to see here is that I think many times where our assessment goes wrong

as the church is we fail to see the importance of our unity together. We fail to see the importance

how God takes the picture of the body and says, we are linked together. I would tell you that

isolation is not a cultural thing. It's not a cultural battle. Isolation is a spiritual battle.

Today in our world, how isolation is

becoming more and more. We're withdrawing. A lot of our younger kids are withdrawing more to their

rooms, more to their screen, more. We're becoming more and more isolated. And people go, man, it's

something in our culture. No, it's a spiritual battle. Why? Because the Lord has called us to be

together, that we are to gather together. This is a unified front. I love in first Thessalonians,

Paul writes to this church in Thessalonica, whom he loves. And he says, as we pray most earnestly,

night and day, that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. He says

in chapter two, but since we were torn away from you brothers for a short time in person, not in

heart, we endeavor the more eagerly with great desire to see you face to face. Church is called

to be unified together. And as we have this battle of isolation, of separating, of going to video,

we see the importance of what it means to be together, what it means to care for each other

and love one another. I'll tell you, busyness is not a cultural problem. It's a spiritual problem.

Church gets put on the back burner, the gathering of the church, it gets pushed to the back because

all the other things that we have that are so important, really important, watching that football

game, all of these other things. Paul says in Ephesians 5.16, it says making the best use of the time. Why?

Because the days are evil. We need to be careful in the church to have a clear understanding,

the right assessment, that unity in the church, we, those who know the Lord, we are together,

one. Being isolated is dangerous. Busyness is dangerous. The third one, I just made up a word,

unmotivatedness. Just so maybe you'll remember it. Don't write it in your Bible because it's not a

real world. But it means, because it means whatever I want, I'm making it up, what I'm trying to get at.

Is we, me, can turn into a veg state in my life. Like we can just go and sit on our phone for hours

and waste just, just how long do we got to scroll? And so we don't think, we don't, we just kind of

nothing. We become, we don't, we don't do anything. We think, well, I'm resting. Except a half an hour

later, we're less rested and we've just wasted a half an hour. And that becomes with the lot,

right? We can put on the football games and watch for 12 hours and just sit there and watch and

just become unmotivated and, and what we're doing and missing out on, hey, there's a great calling

for us who know Christ. We have a great purpose. There's a great plan for our life. God has called

us to specific things. 1 Corinthians 15, 58. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast

and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not

in vain. When we read scripture about

the church, it's not this laziness. It's this purpose that he's called us to. It's not that

we're not to have rest, but our rest should help us rest so we can serve the Lord. So seeing the

importance of unity in 1 Corinthians 12, as you keep reading down, it says, if one member suffers,

all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. I was thinking about this and

I recently, uh,

really hurt my knee. Uh, in illustration, my meniscus left the church. No, I don't have a

meniscus in my knee. I haven't for a really long time. And so I really hurt it this week, but just

as an illustration, when something goes wrong in your body, it's not just my meniscus. Isn't the

only thing that's hurting right now. My knee does not like it at all. And so now taking steps and

it hurts, but what's crazy is my knees, not the only thing that's hurting. See my knee talk to my

hip and my hips hurt. I'm not going to hurt my knee. I'm not going to hurt my knee. I'm not going to hurt

my knee. I'm not going to hurt my knee. I'm not going to hurt my knee because it's not working

right. And what's really mad. My other knee is really mad, but it's like, Hey, listen, can you

start carrying your weight? Because I'm sick of stepping on every single step. Why do I have to

take every single step? Why can't you start working? And just as the illustration, what

happens in the body is that as the church, right? As we're called to be unified, as we're called to

have these amazing gifts, when people check out or go like, I'm not going to do that. What

happens is it affects the whole body. All of us feel that the Bible says we're to weep with those

who weep, to have joy with those who have joy. It's this picture of man, when something is hurting

you, we're all going to feel that. Why? Because we're going to love you and care for you. And

then when something amazing happens, this is what I think so many people miss in the church.

They miss the joy of rejoicing when incredible things happen in the church. When we just become

focus. I want to tell you, many of you are just, you're missing out on what it is to gather with

the church and our growth communities. Why? Because when you're gathering and you have this more

intimate relationship, these things are happening in each other's life. People are growing in the

Lord. People are coming to know the Lord. It is such an exciting thing. To illustrate this,

my son was at his high school football game and his cousin plays on the team.

And his cousin went up for a catch to catch this football in the corner of the end zone.

And my son was standing right next to his cousin. So you can see this picture, right? And so his

cousin there and my son there. And so my nephew sent me this picture. What's going on? Silas is

seeing his cousin and he's just like, it's this excitement. It's this, look what's happening.

This is so amazing. And I feel like what's happened in the church, we've got so separate and we get so

prideful that something good happens over here and we miss out on the joy of it. We can even turn to

God and go, why'd you bless them? Lord, not me. Well, did they do better than me? We can become

prideful. We can say like, man, I'm doing bad. Why do they get to be blessed? And we miss the joy

of what it is to be one body. And when the Lord is doing a work in our lives and each other's lives,

it is wonderful. And one of my growth communities this week, we were walking through Romans 12,

one and two, came to the question about what does it mean? What does mercy mean? What does it mean

to be motivated by mercy?

What does it mean to be saved? And a couple has been coming to our group for three weeks.

He speaks up and he said, I'll tell you what it, he goes, it means to have your sins forgiven.

He said that happened on Monday to me. He said to have all the anger, to have the Lord come into my

life and to save my life. And all of us in our growth community, we all just went to the edge

of our seat. We all have tears in our eyes, just looking and so celebrating what the Lord is doing.

We were like, my wife spoke up and

said, thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. We who have been in the church for you

to share the Lord and his salvation for you to know the mercy of God. We celebrate that as the

body. It is encouraging. It is wonderful being knit together in the church. When you have those

relationships, you experience that when someone is honored, when something happens, when you're

and let me shoot straight. I just don't want you to hear the stories from me on Sunday. I want you

to be a part of the stories. I want you to know. And many of you are to be a part of what the Lord

is doing. So Paul says, we must realize how important the unity together in the church is

versus four and five. He says, for as in one body, we have many members and the members

do not all have the same function. So we, though many are one body in Christ,

and individually members one another. What I believe the Bible to be teaching here is that

we cannot fail to see the importance of our individuality. We cannot fail to see the importance

of how God has made each and every one of us different, different gifts, the way you see

things, the way you're able to care for people. Pastor said to be sober and humble gives us the

ability to see what gifts we have, leads us to the ability to use our gifts, leads us to see that we

need one another and belong to one another. First Corinthians 12, 22, it says, on the contrary,

the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. So I think you could read this

passage and read about the, well, the measurement of God's grace, and you could get confused into

going, well, God just gave them more gifts. I'm not really that important. When the Bible clearly says

to all of us, the Bible here is saying, if you know the Lord, you are gifted. One said, we have each

been given distinct personalities, temperaments, abilities that equipped us for a particular set

of good works that God has created us to do. God has deliberately ordered his church as he ordered

the human body to be interdependent, and so the two belong to each other. To see the gift and to

understand each of us is different.

One of my jobs at the River Church is I oversee the location pastors, just to be a part of mentoring

them and caring for them. And I was meeting with one of our location pastors this week, and he's

newer at one of our locations, and he just asked me, and we talked through how to lead his church

well, and them taking ownership of them being a part of what's happening, of them being invested.

And so we just talked through preaching through that and speaking through that, told me a story,

which I told him to tell his location.

And I'm telling our location. But he just told me there's a lady who's serving in the nursery,

and they're a smaller location, and she is taking care of the nursery. And so every week,

she's the only one that can do it. And he said, there was this lady that volunteered so that the

lady who'd been in there month after month was able to come and sit in the gathering. And he

said, I saw her sitting in the gathering. I was so blessed that somebody else went in there to serve.

And I said, hey, you need to tell them this is what we do. We take care of each other.

We serve each other. We love each other. This unity, but that we also have individual gifts.

Tell you the last couple months at our location, it's been amazing to watch this happening more

and more. It's something that just blows me away. But I've watched us as a church find the unity

of the Lord really important. I've watched us as a church, as many of you are developing your

gifts, that you are seeing how the Lord has gifted you, and you're using those gifts. And I, as the

pastor, just sit back, and I am blown away. Because we get to see the fruit of what God is doing.

We get to look, and many are using your gifts. And we step back and go, man, we have three more people

getting baptized this week. Why? Because there's a family who is loving for another family and caring

for them. And we got to pour into them. And week after week, this is happening. It's amazing. But we

have to be careful that we don't fall into, it's easy to fall back into, not soberly thinking about how we need to

be as the church. Not thinking right about what the church is called to be, and what each of us is

called to do. When you get to verse five, Paul names specific gifts. He says this, he says, actually

verse six, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy

in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching,

the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with

the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. So he gives us a list. Four times in scripture,

there's lists of gifts in the Bible. Now, what I think is, it's not an exhaustive list. You don't

need to go write down each of the gifts and each, all, you know, four of those passages and go, okay,

which one am I? I don't think the Lord's doing that. I think there are many more gifts than that, but

he is pointing us to, and in 1 Peter, I think Peter does a great job, or Peter shows us gifts in two groups.

Let's read it. 1 Peter 4 says, as each has received a gift, use it in service, use it to serve one

another as good servants of God's varied gifts or God's various grace. Whoever speaks as one who

speaks the oracles, God's or the word of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength

that God supplies here, Peter breaks down gifts into two groups. He said, there's the group of

speaking and there's the group of serving. He says, the ones who speak,

you should speak as the oracles, as the words of God, as God is using you. So my third point here

is first that we must understand the unity and how important it is. Understand how each one is an

individual, how God has created them to be gifted. But lastly, is that we must see the power of the

Lord in the gifts that he has given. So when we read about serving, when we read about teaching,

we understand this isn't just a natural

ability that happens. That's not what the Bible is telling us when it talks about gifts. One

pastor said, Paul is not referring to gifts in the natural realm, but to those functions made

possible by a specific enablement of the Holy Spirit granted to believers. This gift does not

contradict what God has bestowed in the natural order. And though it may even build up the natural

gift, it must not be confused with it either. Here we see

that God gives us a gift. In first Corinthians, when it talks about that gift, I love what it says.

It says first Corinthians 12, six, it says, but it is the same God who empowers them all and

everything. And I just want you to see this. When God talks about our gifts, the gifts that he gives

us, he is talking about us being empowered by him to do what he wants us to do. He talks about us

and when he talks about teaching, he's saying, there are some of you who have

the gift to teach. You have the gift to preach. What does this mean? When you do this, it's you

speaking as the oracles of God, you are being used by the Lord, empowered by him. And so some of you

who are teachers, you have the ability to reveal the truth. Somebody sits in your growth community

and they come to me and go, man, I've read that verse hundreds of times, but someone in the group,

he just explains it so well. What happens? The gifting, the power of the Lord,

reveals the truth. Now back in Romans, when it speaks of prophecy, it says those who have the

gift of prophecy. And many times when we hear prophecy, we instantly go to like, are these the

people that are foretelling? They're going to come to you and say, God told me to tell you this.

Now is prophecy speaking forth the truth? Yes. And really the base of the word prophecy,

it means to reveal the truth. But when we say prophecy, we look throughout the Bible. It doesn't

predict a thing. What has happened in our culture today, the word prophecy has been abused. And so

people take the Lord's name in vain because they say, the Lord told me to do this or tell you this,

this is going to happen in three days. And then that doesn't happen. And so now they're a false

prophet and a liar, right? And so they stand and go, I'm the one who predicts the future. Here's

the word of the Lord. And that's dangerous. But when we study prophecy, it is the revealing

of the truth. As you read through the New Testament, I believe at

point so much more to, there are those who reveal the word of God as a pastor. How do I reveal the

word of God? I preach the Bible. I preach God's word. And so this is the revealing of the truth.

Now I want to tell you, that's not just a light thing or a little thing. The Lord uses that in a

powerful way. And I'm a nobody, but I've watched what the Lord does that there'll be times people

come in and go, who told you my story before I came in?

And you preach to me. Who let you know that that's what was happening? And you go, well, it's not me.

The Lord is good and powerful. And so when we look at this and we go, man, I would tell you,

some of you have the gift of teaching. Can I tell you, we need you to use that gift. We need you to

grow in that gift. That is important. The second group of gifts is serving. Many of you have the

gift of serving. Here, Paul lists them and not all of them, but he lists a bunch of them. First,

he says serving, which we get the word of God. And then he lists all of them. And then he lists

the word deacon. This is administration. Then there's exhortation, which really is

encouragement. This means there are those who come alongside. There are those who counsel.

There are those who support. There are those who doesn't even mean many of, doesn't mean you have

to be trained up. It's just, you are good at supporting and caring. For many of you who are

encouragers, you are great greeters. It's important to see those gifts. Can I tell you, has anybody

experienced that gift when you walk into the church by one of the greeters? That they have this great

gift of encouragement. You walk in the door and they say hello. And it's like, why do I feel happier

now that they say, you know, like they just have this amazing gift of encouragement. It's, it's to

use that. Or you have somebody in your life out of nowhere at the perfect time, they send you a text

saying, Hey, I'm praying for you. This is someone using this gift of encouragement. Romans 12 goes

on to say, there's the service encouragement. There's giving. This is a person who is generous.

This is a person who has the gifting of being generous.

And it's not about giving to get, they have this gift serving of being a leader. There's a serving

of mercy. And this word specifically speaking about those who are poor or sick or weak or

addicted or in prison. Here in Romans 12, three through eight, I believe Paul is saying church,

we need to assess what the church is correctly. Too many times we miss it. We miss how important

the unity of the church is. We miss how important the gifting and how God has gifted each one of us

that it is the power of the Lord and how he will use us. We miss those things. And you may be sitting

there going, pastor, how do I figure out my, I don't, I don't, how do I figure out my gifting?

I don't know what to do. One pastor said it this way. I think it's very helpful to discern your

gifts. One, take a look at your heart. What do you enjoy doing? What kind of ministry is satisfying

and attractive to you? When we have service days, we have those things. What things kind of excite

you? Two, what problems do you notice? What brings you joy? What brings you joy? What brings you joy?

What burden do you see? Right? So maybe the problem you see in the church, the Lord has gifted you to

be a part of helping and fix it, right? To see that what is the burden, something you see and

you go, man, that, that really, that over there needs help. And we get so confused and we think

the pastor and the staff, they're supposed to do the ministry. That's not what the church is

to notice a problem. Number three is that you learn your gifts as you minister. One pastor just

said it this way and it was helpful. He said,

we learn our gifts by pouring over a gifts list and just looking at them. We learn our gifts

by serving, by ministering, and then we watch and see what God uses, what God sparks in our soul.

This all takes us back to verse one. See, verse one says, our aim is to be a living sacrifice,

holy and pleasing to the Lord. See, in serving the Lord and being the church,

the ultimate goal of all of this is we get to, God allows us to be pleasing to him. Those of us who

know the Lord, we get to look to our heavenly father and we don't, you have to guess, do you

love me? We know he loves us. And we look to our heavenly father and when we serve him and we're

obedient to him and we seek him and we labor for him, we look at that and we go, that is pleasing

to the Lord. And as a Christian, it is such a joyful thing to think of. We be pleasing to the

Lord who loves us. This is the church. May we continue to be sober-minded, to seek him in

and being the church he's called us to be. Let's stand together and pray. Well, God, thank you for

this morning. So thankful that you are good and faithful. May you use this morning for your glory.

Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name.