I’m sitting in Leisha’s Young kitchen from Paradise, TX. I drove to Dallas yesterday to check on a lady who had surgery from Seminole and then drove over to Paradise where I spent the night. Sitting around the table last night with Leisha, her husband Ren and Darrell Rutledge we laughed, reminisced, but most importantly we prayed together. In many ways it seems just like yesterday I was sitting in this same house after church on a Sunday night fellowshipping over great food with great friends but in reality it has been six months.
Leisha has the gift of hospitality and she uses it well and often. She and Ren have opened their home for youth events, to guest preachers, and of late to me when I needed a place to stay before heading back west. Leisha has the knack for making you feel special and for going out of her way to serve you. In that respect she is so much like Jesus. She is a giver and looks for opportunities to make people feel loved and appreciated. For example she knows I love salsa and especially hers. She had a bowl waiting with fresh chips when I arrived around 7:00 p.m. last night.
Last night we prayed together for the man who will become the next pastor of FBC Paradise around her kitchen table.. As I sit at her table this morning writing this I cannot help but smile thinking of that new pastor coming into this house and sitting at this table to share love, scrumptious food, and many memories.
Leisha is only one of hundreds of people who blessed our lives while we ministered in Paradise. She simply used her gifts and expressed the love of God in tangible ways. What if we could all learn to do those simple things? What if we could all learn to use our gifts often for the Lord? You may not have the gift of hospitality but God has given you a gift. Maybe your gift is to teach or your gift might be to encourage other people. You might have the gift of mercy to be used to help those people who need a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. Perhaps you have been blessed with the gift of evangelism or discernment or even giving. What your gift is not the point but finding ways to use that gift in service for Christ is keenly important. How might the Lord want to use you today to touch some other life?
I find many people who sit in the pews not only do not know what their spiritual gifts are, but they also seem disinterested in learning what they are or in putting them to use. Leisha uses her gift at church to cook on Wednesday nights and she went on three mission trips to cook meals for the mission teams that went to Canada. She cooked the church staff a special holiday appreciation meal I will never forget. If she can use her gift to the glory of God to impact people I would hope you and I would do the same right where we are.
I know my primary spiritual gift is the gift of faith. I hope to use it as I pray for people and lead the church forward. Leisha inspires me but more importantly Christ in Leisha inspires me. I want to honor the Lord with the gifts He has entrusted to me. I have no doubt that when Leisha stands before the Lord and gives an account of how she lived her life she will hear the words, “WELL DONE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT. I am not suggesting she is perfect. I am only saying that she uses her gift to touch people and for God.
The other thing we can learn from Leisha is how to express love in many tangible ways. She constantly sent Brenda and I cards, baked us pies (she even sent a jar of salsa and two coconut cream pies with someone else who was coming to visit, and of course made us jars of salsa. We always felt loved and appreciated by her as well as countless others in Paradise. What if we all went out of our way on a consistent basis to express love tangibly to those around us. You could send an email, write a card, bake some cookies, or all sorts of other things. Even as I write this, she just slid a plate of homemade breakfast tacos right in front of me and went through the extra effort to frost a mug in the freezer because she knows I love chocolate milk in a frosted glass. She does not think of herself first but thinks of others first. I am so blessed and honored to know her. That means it is time to wrap this up and use my gift of eating.
Here is the point. Use your gifts. Express love tangibly. Lord, thank you for another day in Leisha’s kitchen.
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