“So now send to me a man skilled to work in gold, silver, bronze, and iron, and in purple, crimson and blue fabrics, trained also in engraving to be with the skilled workers who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom David, my father provided. Send me also cedar, cypress, and algum timber from Lebanon, for I know that your servants know how to cut timber in Lebanon.”
– 2 Chronicles 2:7–8
Aren’t these verses,2 Chronicles 2:7–8, interesting and encouraging when we think about the diversity of skills that God has entrusted to different people? I look around in the church and in the world, even at just God’s common grace, and I see so many different people with so many different gifts and skills that I don’t have. I have so many limitations and so many things that I can’t do, and I look around, and I see others who are really good at those things.
We praise God for His creativity in dispensing gifts and skills to different people in different ways.
And I praise God for His creativity in dispensing gifts and skills to different people in different ways all, ultimately for the good of others and for the glory of His name in His church, in the world. So I just want to lead us based on 2 Chronicles 2:7–8, to pause and to praise God specifically for gifts and skills that He has given to others that we don’t have.
We have this tendency to constantly compare ourselves with others and to think that we are less than because we don’t have this or that someone else has. We do this instead of pausing to thank God for the unique gifts and skills He’s given to others. For the way that He’s glorified in that and to not overlook the unique gifts and skills He’s given to us and to thank him for those. So, God, we praise you as we look at people around us who have skills and gifts that are different from ours and even as we look around us and see people who have skills and gifts that are in some senses better than ours and that are in many senses better than ours.
God Designed Us Differently
I think about my desire as a little kid to play professional baseball, God, and the gifts and skills you did not give me to be able to throw a hundred mile an hour fastball or to hit a hundred mile an hour fastball. But I watch people with that gift and that skill. That only comes from you, oh God. And I praise you for your grace and the display of your glory and that gift. And God, even as I pray that that sounds so small because there are so many other gifts and skills that you’ve given to people and different professions and different types of work. God, so many different people that are coming to my mind, I trust all of our minds now, people who have different gifts and skills than we have.
2 Chronicles 2:7–8 Reminds Us to Be Thankful for Our Gifts
All glory be to your name for the creativity of gifts and skills that you have given to people, including people in your church and all the different members with different spiritual gifts from you. So God, we pray, help each of us to use whatever gifts and skills you have given to us to the full to your glory. We pray that you would keep us from comparing ourselves with others, from thinking we are more than or less than because of this or that in our lives. God help us to be content with faithfulness to use whatever you have entrusted to us by your grace maximally for your glory, and to rejoice in others, using all that you’ve entrusted to them maximally for your glory and to pray for them toward that end.
God, thank you for this picture in 2 Chronicles 2:7–8, what it reminds us about you and what it reminds us about people around us. We pray for your glory to be made known in the fullness of your grace in the people you have given gifts, skills, and talents to. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
