Our gifts are for others

1 Peter 4:11 NLT

Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening, luvs,

I hope everyone has had a very blessed and safe weekend. Firstly, My heart and prayers goes out to those effected by the tornados. May the Lord be with everyone and give them strength during this time. This is a very exciting blog post for me because although it's being posted here on my own personal blog, it's my first blog entry for The Reading Group Ministries. I was brought on board Saturday afternoon.

I'm so excited and sooo grateful to the Lord for this opportunity!!! God truly hears ALL of our prayers! Whether they're vocal, written down, or just our thoughts or what we're feeling in our heart. HE..IS..LISTENING!!! AND He truly cares!!! People can say what they want about social networks, but I have met many people from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter who have been such a GREAT inspiration to me, who have been AWESOME at encouraging me - half the time, not aware of it, and just a HUGE blessing in my life on a daily basis!! ♥♡

So...with that lovely introduction, I want to say that the way God blessed me Saturday, inspired the title of this blog and all that it regards. As always, I pray that you are blessed & encouraged in the Lord today! No matter what you're going through, try to stay encouraged! I know it's not always easy, but I'm often reminded, especially as of lately, that IF we take our eyes off our situations and storms and put our eyes on the ONE who can help us with our circumstances, then we will have peace and no more stressing and worrying. I honestly believe that's why this door of opportunity opened for me the way that it did because I just let go and realized that my circumstances are what they are and I will only make things worst trying to fix it myself doing something out of desperation. But that's another Blog.. 😉 ENJOY!

Our gifts are not for ourselves. The Lord has blessed all of us with many gifts and talents. Some of us have the gift of management, the gift of event planning, very good with numbers, good at encouraging, the gift of sewing & quilting, good at singing, dancing, acting, writing, very good at cooking, applying makeup, doing hair, or good with technology.. and thousands of other talents! A lot of the time the passion we have for our gifting, it started off as just a hobby and developed into something more. Also, we may find ourselves interested in things we didn't think we'd ever have an interest in. The Lord places those desires within us, and then it's up to us to go out and put them into use for His glory alone! A lot of us including myself need that reminder from time to time. It's Okay to love with you do! It's even OK to want to make a career out of it, but in all that we do, it should glorify the Lord and we should be helping others. Those two are the main things.

There are people who are struggling so bad financially it's like they're buried deep in their debt and don't know how to get out of it. Somebody somewhere has an awesome testimony about a financial hardship they've endured and the Lord gave them a vision on how to manage money better. That person or persons needs to let their story be heard! Forget about the shame and guilt you may have. The Lord brought you out of it and turned it all around for your good! The world is full of resources! WE ARE THE RESOURCES! WE all are a gifts to the world for the world! XoXoXo ~Raven J.