Your Gift Says Nothing About You

This week was the first week of classes here at Hillsong. The first two weeks of classes here are known as intensives, where they squeeze a semester’s worth of two subjects into two weeks. I know. Anyway, yesterday all of the first year students were in a lecture with Robert Ferguson and he gave an illustration of God and our gifting and character that left me in awe and the room stunned.

There are flashy gifts in the Kingdom of God. There are the more prominent gifts. There are gifts that are more noticeable because it involves being on a platform singing or speaking. But those gifts don’t say anything about the person who has received it. It’s a testimony of God’s goodness that he would gift us. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-5, There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. Ferguson then went on to say that it is our character in which we use the gifts that says something about us.

This was making sense to me, but my spirit hadn’t fully received what he was saying until he illustrated it out for the class. He opened his wallet and took out a fifty dollar bill. He asked who in the class room needed fifty dollars. A few people raised their hands and he walked over to a young woman from New York who raised her hand. He asked her if she needed the money. She said yes. He asked if she had prayed for God to provide. She said yes. He then gave her the fifty dollars from his wallet.

He asked the class, “What does this gift say about her?”

The room was amazed. I may have had to pick my jaw up off of the floor.

“Nothing.”

It spoke of his generosity, but it spoke nothing of the young woman from New York.

In the same way that Robert Ferguson’s gift of fifty dollars to the young woman said nothing about her. God’s giftings he’s given us say nothing about us. But it is a testimony to who He is. It’s what we do with the gifts that says something about us.