I was fortunate one summer during college to get a job working in the field of residential construction despite not having any experience. It was interesting work and taught me stuff I still use years later.
When you’re an entry-level guy on a construction crew, it’s no surprise that you get a lot of the jobs nobody else wants. Grunt work: carrying heavy stuff, doing the sweaty work out in the sun while everyone else is in the shade or air conditioning, etc. You get the idea.
One of the not-so-bad new guy chores was going on coffee runs. The first construction crew I worked on had a coffee break every morning, so whoever went on a coffee run would take coffee orders and pick up a box of donuts or something at a gas station in town.
There was only one problem. I didn’t (and still don’t) drink coffee, and it’s not a good idea to send a non-coffee drinker on coffee runs unless they know what they’re doing. And man, I did NOT know what I was doing.
The size of our crew varied, but in general there were anywhere from three to eight workers giving orders to the coffee runner. The only thing I could reliably deliver was the box of donuts.
“Yeah, get me a large coffee, light and sweet.” Okay, so that means cream and sugar. But how much cream and how much sugar? Is that like, half coffee and half milk? (That’s what “half and half” means, right?) I can get you a black coffee and grab the number of sugar packets you tell me to, but if I have to just dump in sugar, you might not like what I bring you. Powdered creamer…what the heck is that? Does that take the place of cream and sugar?
It wasn’t long before someone else started doing the coffee runs.
Admittedly, I could have done better with this task. “Hospitality” is not one of my gifts, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have tried harder. I think one thing that makes God smile is when you’re willing to take on a kingdom role totally outside your normal skillset. While it’s important to use the gifts God’s given you, it’s also important to be humble and reliant on Him. After all, successful use of your spiritual gifts could bring a degree of success that makes it easy for you to get a little too big for your britches. Floundering in something you’re a little less cut out for every now and then helps you keep some of that humility.
So use your spiritual gifts, and use them as best you can for God’s glory; just don’t limit yourself to the things you’re good at. Sometimes all God wants from you is a willing heart, regardless of how good (or bad) you might be at what He’s giving you to do.