I Corinthians 12:4

“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.”

                A little farther down in this same chapter we see that Paul makes an analogy that goes along this verse. He says in verse 17-19, “If the whole body were an eye where would be the hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?”

                I often find myself longing to have the gifts of other people, and wishing that I were more in-tune with other gifts. I wish my leadership wasn’t quenched by my desire to hold back, and I long for the extraordinary faith some people exercise. It would be easy to get resentful, and ask the Lord why I didn’t receive the gifts I’ve deemed more important. Ask him why I received the spiritual gifts I did rather than the ones that I’ve decided are better.

                But the Lord tells me here in verse 4, and throughout chapter 12 that I shouldn’t feel this way. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, and He, the same God, knows every one of us the best and he distributed to each of us the gifts he knows each of us should receive.

                I again see the lesson of the providence of God being taught to me. The Lord is the one that gives and takes away, and today I will fight back the thoughts of doubt with the providence that God has shown me that he has.