You Were Shaped for Serving God

The Scriptures say in Ephesians 2:10, “10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” It says in Psalm 119:72-73 72 The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. 73 Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.” And it says in Genesis 2:7 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
To form us, to shape us . . . this is God’s fourth purpose for us. He shapes us for a ministry. You were shaped for serving God.
What’s your shape? J Now of course we each have different physical shapes, and I’m thankful for that! I’m a big fan of diversity, I’m glad we each have different shapes. If my wife had the exact same shape as I do . . . well that’d be just weird. As it is, I think she has a very pleasing shape, one that I enjoy. I’m glad God has given us different shapes.
But—at least for right now, today—when I ask you about your shape it’s not your physical shape that I’m concerned about. Today, as we talk about how God has shaped you to serve Him, we’re talking about your God-given spiritual shape. We’re talking about how God has formed you as a whole person—your mind, body, and spirit—to mold you into a one-of-a-kind individual, one that’s uniquely qualified to do the ministry that God has prepared for you to do. Your total being, from emotions to experiences, is what we are calling your SHAPE.
Now whenever God gives you an assignment to do something, He doesn’t just hand you the assignment and then say, “Go to it!” God doesn’t leave us high and dry, He gives us the ability to do what He has asked. As a matter of fact, a very Godly man once told me just that. When I was debating whether or not to enter seminary and wondering whether I could really become a pastor or not, this man told me, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” And I’ve found that to be true! God calls us into His service and then equips us to do the work for which He has called us.
How does God equip you? By giving you your SHAPE. SHAPE is an acrostic, and the five letters stand for the five things that God uses to give us our shape for service. They are: Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences. Don’t worry if you didn’t get those, we’ll come back to each of them in just a minute.
Your God-given shape is what God has chosen to equip you for His service. They are gifts to you, not to use for your own gain, for your own benefit, but for the benefit of others. As a matter of fact, that’s in the memory verse for this week. Let’s read that together: 1 Peter 4:10, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others.”
Let’s get into how God has shaped us to serve others. First, God has given each believer a spiritual gift. The Apostle Paul, speaking to the church in Corinth, runs down a list of a number of different spiritual gifts, and at the end of that list he says, 1 Corinthians 12:11 “11 All these [gifts] are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.” So if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have a spiritual gift! Did you know that? Do you know what yours is?
A few things are important to remember regarding spiritual gifts. One, every believer receives at least one. Some receive more. Two, not everyone is given the same gift. There is no one gift that God gives to everyone. Ephesians 4:11-12 says, “11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” Not everyone gets the same gift, which leads us to number three: no one gift is superior to all the others. They’re all important! In Kingdom matters, it doesn’t matter if your gift is serving up in front or quietly behind the scenes, what matters is that we all work together in the way God has gifted us. See, God’s gift to you is just that; your gift, and He intends for you to use it.
Which brings up another point: you need to know what your gift is to use it! That’s why, following the 40 Days of Purpose, we’re going to devote the Sunday Bible class to a study on determining our God-given SHAPE. That begins next month, 9:00 a.m., Sunday mornings. Come and discover your SHAPE. The next thing God gives us is a heart. This is pretty straightforward. God has given us each something that we get passionate about, something that, when we think about it, it just breaks our heart, or it gets us pumped up to do something, to change something, to reach out to someone. You may have a heart for kids, for the homeless, for people who’ve suffered a serious loss. You may have a heart for hunter safety, even, or something like that. I’m always on the prowl for someone who has a heart to see preachers drive really cool cars . . . but that’s the point: if you have a heart for something, it motivates you to do something about it. It’s your passion, it’s your drive. You gotta have a heart.
The third thing is our God-given abilities. These are different from, but related to, spiritual gifts. Whereas spiritual gifts are something we’re given when we are born again, abilities are those things that God gifts us with when we’re born. It’s those things that you just seem to have a natural knack for, that you could do in your sleep or falling off a log. Every one of us gets different abilities, none of us are alike. If you’ve ever taught in a classroom or had more than one kid you’ve already noticed that.
Now maybe you’ve never thought about that, but do it now. What’s your natural ability? Cooking? Talking? Cleaning? Do you have mechanical skills or a certain knack for computers? Maybe you’re an artiste or just an ordinary house painter. Whatever abilities you possess, God wants you to use them to serve others. By serving others in the way God has made you, you also serve Him.
Next item: Personality. This one’s interesting. Historically, we’ve divided up people into four basic personality types, called the sanguine, the choleric, the melancholy, and the phlegmatic. If you’ve never heard of these personality types, the basic breakdown is this: The sanguine is the happy-go-lucky type. Very outgoing and friendly. Good salesman. The Choleric is the practical one, making quick decisions. He’s the guy who’s got all the answers. Loves to start new projects. The Melancholy is the analyst—a bit reserved but thorough. Likes to think things through and come up with solutions. The Phlegmatic is the easy-going one. Nothing rattles a phlegmatic. Solid and dependable.
These are the four basic personality traits that God gives to us. Now the question is, which do you think is the best one for ministry? Right! All of them! Each of them has their place in God’s plan, and the dominant personality trait that He’s given you is the best for your ministry. Your personality is uniquely fitted for the ministry for which God has shaped you.
The last item on the list is Experiences. Not just experience, but experiences. And really, we talked a bit about this last week as we talked about how God uses the circumstances in our lives to make us more like Christ. Those circumstances we’ve lived through, the good times and the bad times we’ve been through, those are the experiences which God has used to shape our outlook, the ones He’s used to mold our hearts.
Rick Warren is careful to point out in The Purpose Driven Life that it’s the experiences we would most like to forget—the painful ones—that God uses most. The reason for this is simple: those painful experiences that you lived through in the past let you minister in a deep, deep way to someone who’s experiencing the same thing now. Through your shared pain, you have an immediate bond, and you are uniquely positioned to let them know that God is there for them, that God does hear their cries. God uses your pain to minister to them. That’s what we call “purpose.”
It’s your SHAPE that God uses to serve others. He’s molded you into a unique, one-of-a-kind SHAPE, given you talents and abilities and background and experiences and all these things for the benefit of other people. This is why you are alive. This is your purpose.
John Boehk has some words about ministry that I’d like him to share with you. Please give him your full attention.

When we serve others with our God-given SHAPE, the Biblical word we use to describe this action is “ministry.” And just like the last three purposes we’ve studied—worship, fellowship, and discipleship—this one is often misunderstood.
Here’s a good Lutheran question for you: What does this mean? What does the word “ministry” mean? I’m the guy who preaches and teaches here, I’m the guy who administers the Sacraments . . . am I the only minister here today?
To get to the answer for that question, let’s talk about what the Bible means when it says, “ministry.” We understand there are two kinds of ministry that God has established. One is pretty obvious—the guy who stands up in front of the church on Sunday wearing the funny collar and the robe is a “minister.” That’s what we call the Office of the Public Ministry. A church calls a pastor to publicly preach, teach, and administer the Sacraments, and they place him into the Public Ministry. It’s “public” because it is done on the church’s behalf—the pastor is doing the ministry of the church for the church.
But there’s another type of ministry that we need to talk about. The Scriptures say that every believer is a minister. It’s there in your outline in I Peter 2:9. Let’s read that together. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
This simply means that not every believer is a pastor, but every believer is a minister. Ministry simply means using my shape to help somebody else in the name of God. God has uniquely shaped me for my ministry of preaching, teaching, and administering the Sacraments publicly on behalf of the church. That’s my SHAPE, my purpose, my ministry. But any time you use your talents, your abilities, your background, your experiences to help somebody else, you know what that’s called? Ministering. And you know what you are? You’re a minister.
You see the difference there? You see how the two are related, but different? Which one do you think is more important? It’s neither. That’s right—neither. My ministry is no less nor more important than yours. The reason is this: The church that gathers is also the church that scatters. When you come here on Sunday morning you are gathering together as a church to receive the unique ministry for which God has shaped me. But when the end of the worship service comes, you don’t just leave. No, you do not leave, but you are you are sent out to do the unique ministry for which God has shaped you. My ministry is really for the benefit of the church, but your ministry is for the benefit of the world.

As we finish up today, there are three final things we need to talk about in order to learn how to use our SHAPE to minister to others. One, a minister is available. Your week cannot be so choked up with events, meetings, plans, and the like that you can’t stop and take the time to minister to someone who needs it. John Wesley had a motto:
Do all the good you can by all the means you can by all the ways you
can in all the places you can and at all the times you can to all the people
you can as long as you ever can.
Now that, my friends, is an available minister! You must be available! You must be willing to step out and say “OK, I’m out of my comfort zone, God. What do You want me to do?” There are hurting people all around us, and the wounded will not wait. We’ve got to help them now. If you refuse to make yourself available for the wounded, how will they ever learn what healing is like?
The second crucial item for ministers is that you must be grateful. In the English Standard Version, Psalm 100:2 reads, “2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” A minister has a glad heart, a heart that is grateful for the opportunity to minister. Now what would happen if I got up here with a grumpy, pouting look one Sunday and said, “Well, I’ll preach today . . . but I’m not gonna like it.”? You’d get turned off pretty quick, wouldn’t you? In the same way, as you go out to minister, approach it with an attitude of gratitude, a heart that says you are grateful for the opportunity to minister to those whom God has placed you in contact with.
The third and final item of importance for ministers is that you must be faithful. You must be faithful. Ministry is not something you do only when you want to. It’s something you do when God brings you the opportunity. You need to discipline yourself to do it regardless of whether or not you feel like it today. You know, even if I didn’t feel like preaching today, it’s still my ministry to do it, right? And why? Because God’s people need it. People need my ministry . . . and they need yours. Don’t give up. Keep on going. Don’t quit in the middle of your assignment. Be faithful, because God doesn’t want us giving up on ministry, He wants us to keep on giving out in ministry.
These are the things ministers should be. You are a minister; we’ve already decided that. Look at someone next to you and say, “You are a minister.” Now, take those three things and think about them in your life. Are you faithful? Are you grateful? Are you even available? Can you still look at that person in the mirror and say, “You are a minister”?
Well, stop looking in the mirror for a second . . . and instead look up here. Look at the cross. Are you always faithful? No. Are you always grateful? No. Are you always available? No.
But Jesus was. Come on now . . . doesn’t that list sound just like Jesus? Yeah, of course it does. Because He knew we couldn’t get all that stuff down on our own. He knew that we’d try and try but we’d fail and fail. But that doesn’t mean He gave up. For (Colossians 2:13-14 ) when you were dead in your sins and in your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code of the Law with its regulations that stood against us and He took it away, nailing it to the cross.
Let’s admit it now: We’re not very good ministers. We’re selfish, we sin. But Christ both did and does His perfect ministry on our behalf, forgiving us for our sins when we fall short. But when Christ first does His ministry for us, He then gives us the will and the ability to go out and do our ministry for others.