Mark 10:45 – For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Your life is too small to be the purpose of your life. Last week we discussed about how incredibly blessed we are and we will emphasize the fact that all the endowment that God gave you are too much to be expended at only you. Will you spend your life or will you invest it? Your assignment on this planet is tied to your capacity to meet needs to other people’s lives. You were designed to add value to others, solve problems for others and meet needs in the lives of other people.
The starting point is to receive forgiveness through Jesus Christ and receive a change of nature.
When you ask God for forgiveness and He forgives you, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity comes to live in you and the Holy Spirit can never leave you the same. If the Holy Spirit lives inside you, He’s motivating, inspiring and directing you so your life can never remain the same again. He brings power into your life. He produces in your life the character of God. He produces the competence of God to make things happen. Both the character and competence of God enable you to add value to others.
In dealing with character, we look at your capacity to love people. The Holy Spirit gives us the capacity to love people. Remember, if God is love and you’re created in His image then you’re love personified. There’s a lack of love in our world today. The family is where the average person should experience love for the first time, get so much of it that they have enough to share with the community. Satan has attacked the family, the family is getting disfunctional and instead of love people are experiencing rejection from home, hatred, rivalry and bitterness. Some of the deepest hurt we’d experience in this life would come from the family. So, people need love. If you has developed the capacity to love, you’re going to be a blessing to other people.
When you love someone, you value them to the point of being willing to make sacrifices for them. In 1 John 3:16, we see that if you want to add value to people, you must be ready to sacrifice. The Holy Spirit gives us the capacity to make sacrifices on behalf of other people. Now, when we love people, we forgive them and give to them. The two dimensions to love are forgiving and giving.
There’s so much hatred in our world today because there’s no forgiveness. Forgiveness is writing off an emotional debt. When someone offends you, you write off that debt. Husbands do not forgive, wives do not forgive and marriage breaks apart. Child doesn’t forgive, parents and family is tearing apart, neighbors don’t forgive each other, colleagues in the office don’t forgive each other and people are hurting all over the place. So if you’re that person that can forgive and is willing to give sacrificially, you’re going to be adding massive value. You’re a world changer when you choose to walk in love. 1 John 3:17 gives us an interesting dimension to it. People have intangible needs including love, having a sense of belonging and self esteem and in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those come at the top. Meeting basic needs is where we start from.
The Holy Spirit gives us the character to add value to people. When you’re kind, generous, demonstrate capacity to bear with somebody’s weakness, accept someone without conditions, that’s character. Most of us realize that people impose conditions on us before they will love or accept us. When you are a loving person, you can tolerate people, you can bear with people’s weaknesses bearing in mind that even you are not perfect yourself.
There’s also the dimension of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The character dimension is the part that describes the quality the Holy Spirit produces in us as the fruit if the Spirit. This second dimension is described as the gift of the Spirit. You should remember that you’re God’s masterpiece and have been specially equipped to solve problems for people. The Holy Spirit equips you with a personality or temperament and gifts that enables you to solve problems in a unique way. So for a start, you need to know your temperament because it describes your unique wiring for solving people’s problems or meeting needs in people’s lives.
• The Choleric is the goal oriented one. Extraverted and build relationship with people quickly. They have the capacity to mobilize people to achieve a goal and do not take no for an answer. • The Sanguines are super extroverted; friendly, exciting, make friends easily and so on. God wants to use that• The Melancholic is super introvert. Gains energy by being alone and is very creative in areas like the arts, music and is usually an inventor• The Phlegmatic is the nicest and mildest of the temperament. Fantastic with details. They make good accountants and on any job that requires mastery of details. They are organized and don’t like stress.
Each of these temperaments is designed by God for a purpose to meet specific needs. You want to know how you’re equipped to solve problems for others and meet the needs in people’s lives, check your strengths and weaknesses of your temperament. You need to know yourself. To understand an equipment, you read the manual to understand the innovation and creativity that got into the creation of that equipment. So you need to study your temparament. This would help you leverage the grace of God to manage the weaknesses and develop the same to extraordinary levels because that’s what you’ve got to give your world. For instance, if as a Sanguine you like to do, you may study Communication because people would rather buy premium products that has been refined and top quality. Develop your strength and allow the Holy Spirit help you to manage your weaknesses.
The Holy Spirit gives us gifts. You have innate gifts and the ones that come after the Holy Spirit fills you up. Those gifts make you a genius. Find your genius. Talent makes you achieve extraordinary results when you put in the same amount of energy another person puts in, you just find out that you get extraordinary results. The innovator that’s a genius handles the complexity but delivers the product to the user in simplicity. You have your area of genius and the Holy Spirit empowers and equips you to serve people when you find your area of genius like that.
Discover, develop, release and maximize your gifts and talents. In Romans 12:4-10, we are encouraged to identify and develop the area of your genius. The world needs you there.
1st Cor 12:7-11 enumerates the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we can identify with at least one. We are all gifted and are talented. We have this tendency to thrivalize what we have and we feel the grass is greener on the other side. We are also special. You’re the one underestimating the value of the oil. There’s something in you that God put there to meet the emptiness in other people’s lives. You need to pour it out.
Pastor Samuel Adeyemi is the Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre, a fast growing, life changing church committed to “raising role models” based in Lagos. He is also the President of Success Power International.
