Ungifted Hands - A.W.Tozer

For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. –Philippians 2:13

The important thing is that the Holy Spirit desires to take us and control us and use us as instruments and organs through whom He can express Himself in the body of Christ. Perhaps I can use my hands as a further illustration of this truth.

My hands are about average, I suppose–perhaps a little large for the size of my body, probably because I had to do a lot of farm work when I was a boy. But there is something I must tell you about these hands. They cannot play a violin. They cannot play the organ or the piano. They cannot paint a picture. They can barely hold a screwdriver to do a small repair job to keep things from falling apart at home. I have ungifted hands….

You will agree that it would be foolish for me to try to bring forth any delightful organ music using such ungifted hands. Is it not appalling, then, to think that we allow this very thing to happen in the body of Christ? We enlist people and tell them to get busy doing God’s work, failing to realize the necessity of the Spirit’s control and functioning if there is to be a spiritual result. Tragedy in the Church: The Missing Gifts, 30-31.

“Lord, maybe the reason we enlist ungifted people is that the gifted people aren’t functioning properly, aren’t using the gifts you gifted them with. Move in our midst, Holy Spirit, that everyone in the Body might actively serve, each one using the gift He’s been given for Your service. Amen.”

A.W.Tozer