Have you ever stopped to consider that you have been gifted by the Holy Spirit to serve the community of believers? It’s true. A “gift” is basically a bestowal of blessing for the purpose of sharing. “Ministry,” then, is the service that grows out of the gift. There’s a lot of encouragement in these two short verses. Every believer has received the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit has graciously given each believer a spiritual gift (more on those later this week). We are gifted so we can bless and serve the body of believers and the world in general. Sometimes we might think we aren’t very important in the grand scheme of life, but these verses assure us of the opposite: each of us have a unique role to play in the furtherance of the Kingdom. No Christian can claim he has nothing to contribute to the Body of Christ. God works in and through each of us—empowers us!—to bolster the community of believers and share the Gospel with the world.