Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
There's a time in, a moment in the Gospels, you might have noticed this, where the Apostles come to Jesus
and they say, "Lord, increase our faith," which is a pretty good prayer, right?
Like they're taking this whole thing seriously. They're taking the faith thing seriously.
They're taking the whole like "we need more than we have" thing seriously
They're taking their dependence on God thing seriously
They're taking it seriously. "Lord, increase our faith."
I imagine you've had that prayer before.
"Well, Lord if—just help me—like if I had stronger faith, I'd be able to face this.
Oh man, if I had stronger hope, I'd be able to face, if I had stronger love, I'd be able to face this moment,
so increase my faith."
It's funny, they say, increase our faith. Jesus looks at them and he says,
If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you'd be able to say to that mountain,
you know, be uprooted or to the mulberry tree, be uprooted,
the mountain, like, move from where you are and be planted in the sea and it would obey you.
Apparently, Jesus points out and says, Actually your problem is not that you need more faith,
the problem is you're not using the faith you actually have.
And I think this is the problem with a lot of us.
We can come before the Lord and we can say, "OK. God, if you just give me these spiritual gifts,
give me the gift of healing. Lord, please give me the gift of prophecy or give me the gift of mighty deeds
or give me the gift of being able to, um, to do miracles,
give me the gift of being able to speak into people's hearts and transform their lives,
give me the gift of knowledge.
Jesus looks at us and says essentially,
You know, if you just use the gifts you HAVE, the world would be changed.
A lot of times, we spend our lives asking God for more gifts
but we're not willing to use the gifts he's actually already given us.
Isn't this crazy?
If God gave you a healthy body, and someone says, "Hey, would you help me move,"
but you're not willing to help them move, even though you're free and available to help them move,
but then you say, "God, give me some other kind of miraculous gift,"
I would imagine that God could look at us and say, "Wait, so you're not willing to use the natural gifts
I've given you to help people. Why would I give you supernatural gifts that are meant to help people?"
If I'm not willing to use the natural strength he's given me, why would I ask him for supernatural strength?
If I'm not willing to, for example, if I say, "God, just give me the gift of healing,
to be able to lay hands on people and in your name,
to free them from whatever illness they may experience,
but I'm not actually willing to go to the hospital to visit a member of my family who's sick,"
this is kind of an a unique thing.
That's why I would say that the number one spiritual gift that all of us could ask God for
and actually the number one spiritual gift that any of us could pray for
is the gift of generosity.
I mean, in other words, Saint Paul says, you know, Here's faith, hope, and love.
The greatest of these is love.
I would just say generosity is basically "love with feet".
Generosity is love that's moving. Generosity is love that's put into action.
I know for myself, I spend a lot of time saying, "God, please give me the next spiritual gift and the next
spiritual gift and the next spiritual gift," and in God's goodness,
he's patient with me but I imagine he also looks at me and says, "Dude," because God calls me dude,
"Dude...
just use the gifts I've given you already."
"Lord, increase my faith!"
OK, but use the faith you already have.
"Lord, give me more power, more strength, more opportunity."
OK, OK, why don't you use the power, the strength, the opportunity you already have at your disposal.
I've given you so much, just use it.
Here's my invitation.
Don't stop asking God for those great gifts.
Saint Paul says desire and seek after those great spiritual gifts. This is good, but also
start using the gifts you already have.
The number one spiritual gift that all of us could possibly ever, ever possess
is the gift of generosity, aka "love in action."
If we were to actually just simply use the natural gifts God has already given us,
this world would be a far, far different place.
Let's do it, with God's grace and let him transform the world through the gifts he's already given us.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.
(click) Ha! Just kidding. It's dumb. OK.
Jesus looks at them and he said, he says, "If you had face ... " (laughs) ... faith ... face (laughs), sorry.
Sorry, it's not that funny but it just struck me as funny.
If you had a face, if you had a face like mine ...