Your SHAPE will change over time.
I’m not talking about what will happen to some who spend time in the weight room or to others when middle age hits. I’m talking about what will happen to your personal SHAPE, what we’ve been addressing over the past few days. SHAPE is an acronym created by Pastor Rick Warren standing for spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences.
It’s likely that as you grow in your dependence on Jesus Christ and grow older, God will give you new passions (heart), new experiences, and new abilities. This in turn will likely cause you to change the ministries in which you become involved.
John and Mary (not their real names, in case you hadn’t guessed) were deeply involved in ministries of serving within their congregation from the day they were married. Both were committed Christians. For years, John took hot meals to elderly people in their small town and sang in the church choir. Mary was the volunteer janitor and played the piano for worship. But, after they retired, they began to look for new opportunities to serve. John said that at about that time, they noticed all the teenagers in their community who seemed listless, without direction. So, he and Mary asked their pastor if they could help with the congregation’s youth ministry, with the idea of reaching out to kids who weren’t part of the church. The pastor was enthusiastic in his affirmation of them.
It took awhile, but eventually, John and Mary had become the instruments by which about twenty kids who, along with their families, had been spiritually disconnected, got involved with the Church and came to know Jesus Christ.
John and Mary are now in their late-sixties, still active in youth ministry, something they hardly could have imagined ten years earlier.
Moses was eighty years old when God called him to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Everything up to that point had been preparation for the most important ministry of his life. As you maintain a lifelong commitment to serving God, you will change and so will your area of serving. There’s no such thing as retiring from the kingdom of God.
Bible Passage to Ponder: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight” (Philippians 1:9).
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