Spiritual Gifts and Hard Work

When I began my daily outreach goal over 10 years ago, I soon became aware of just how many of the people around me in my part of Chicago spoke different languages and couldn’t understand me in English. I decided to learn Spanish, and one of the first things I did was to turn my car radio to a Spanish station to begin to get used to the language. I listened for 5 or 10 minutes and felt dumb that I didn’t recognize any of the words from the junior high Spanish class I had goofed off in over 30 years earlier. I felt even worse when I finally realized it wasn’t Spanish at all that I was listening to, but Polish!

Needless to say, I had much to learn, but was kept motivated by the people I constantly met whom I dreamed of sharing the Gospel with in their heart language one day. Language learning is especially difficult for someone who starts studying in their late 40’s and has a poor memory and is a slow learner to begin with, but for just that reason I’ve learned the value of persistence and daily disciplines, and I still study almost an hour every day, over ten years into it.

Even so, it’s still hard work to have Gospel conversations in Spanish. I do my best and have a long way to go, but the people I talk with are very understanding and patient with me. In fact, it seems that my struggle to speak in Spanish makes them take me more seriously and gives them more time to consider what I am talking about as I have to slow down to search my memory for the right words. They are often more engaged in the conversation as a result, such as in a recent conversation with a man at the park named Jose.

The point I would like to make with this is that just as some people might look at my sharing the Gospel in Spanish and conclude that I am “gifted” and that they could never do that, it has really only come with a lot of practice, hard work and persistence; and in the same way being able to freely share the Gospel with strangers I meet in either Spanish or English is also something that has only come with a lot of practice and persistence.

But is it a “gift”?

I think that many Christians dismiss the outreach efforts of other Christians as something they could never do themselves by simply saying “Well, that’s just not my gift”. They might think it’s something that just came naturally or spiritually and don’t realize all the effort that goes into it. It would be like seeing a marathon runner complete a race and writing off their efforts as something that just came naturally to them without realizing all the h

ours and days of running and training they had logged to be able to get that far.

Still, I would have to say being able to share my faith easily with strangers, and to do so in their heart language, truly IS a gift, just the same. It is a privilege and a blessing to be able to do so, and I have been gifted with the time it took to practice; with my good health and a supportive family and church; with the examples of people who have sacrificed to share the Gospel who have
come before me; and even with my high school teaching job which has given me practice as I have had to teach some of my history classes in Spanish as a certified bilingual teacher.

As Christians, we need to acknowledge we have been “gifted” with abilities and skills and talents the minute we realize we are blessed to be at all competent with something we can do that can be used to serve others and build up the Church. And sometimes, those gifts begin simply with the desire, time, and persistence to do the hard work and practice it takes to get there.