“You need to apologize,” Mom said to me while I was still mad about how someone had treated me earlier that day. Out of town friends of the family were visiting and their son and I had gotten into a fairly heated discussion. I don’t remember how old we were but I’m pretty sure it was before the age of double digits. I don’t even remember what the fight was about. I just remember that it ended badly and my mom wanted me to learn what it meant to do the right thing.

Doing the right thing isn’t always easy. And in this particular case, when I felt I was the one who had been wronged, it felt especially hard. But…Mom was right. I had reacted badly and I owned it…and asked for forgiveness. The irony of it all was that as mad as I was with him, asking him to forgive me made ME feel better.

I do believe the saying ‘confession is good for the soul’. But it is not just the telling that sets us free. We must also open our heart to receive the forgiveness. The most important confession we will ever make is before our God. The good news is that He has promised to forgive when we do. 1 John 1:9 (NIV) is God’s precious promise to each of us. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God has given us the gift of Forgiveness.

Each of us has been given a measure of faith. Our faith can grow but it needs exercise. You might not have thought about it in that sense before but follow me for a minute. We start out with faith that when we flip a switch on the wall that the light will come on. We believe that when we turn the faucet on we will get clean water. And we trust that when we sit down either on the chair at our desk or dining room table, or our favorite comfy chair at the end of the day, that it will hold us up.

We probably don’t know all the things it took to make each of those things reliable for us. We just know that they work because we’ve come to them over and over and – they work. What if we flip the switch and the lightbulb goes poof and the light goes out? Do we stop coming to the switch for light assuming it will never give light again? No. We change the light bulb. Or call an electrician!

When we begin our journey with God that measure of faith, that little faith seed, that God gave us begins to grow as we experience His faithfulness to us over and over. Oh there will be times when we pray and ask God to do something and He doesn’t answer us the way we expected. We exercise our faith not in deciding that God doesn’t work. No, we exercise our faith at that point in trusting and believing that God is at work even when we can’t see the results. That’s how our faith grows!

God has given us the gift of Faith. Romans 12:3 (CEV) says, “I realize God has treated me with undeserved grace, and so I tell each of you not to think you are better than you really are. Use good sense and measure yourself by the amount of faith that God has given you.”

I remember when BOGO started becoming a thing. Stores would advertise “Buy One, Get One”. Sometimes it was – buy one, get one FREE. Sometimes – buy one, get one half-price. Either way it was always a good way to stock up. Or get one for a friend. Somewhere along the way “Buy One, Get One” became BOGO. And it’s still one of the best incentives for catching my attention!

We celebrate the birth of the Messiah and that Jesus came to save us. We would indeed be lost without Him. After His death and resurrection He told His disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them, and us, and would send the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38 (ESV) tells us, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Of course, we could never buy our salvation. Christ’s redemption of us to the Father is a priceless gift. He knew that we would also need His Holy Spirit to comfort us, guide and direct us. He helps us in so many ways as we live out our days on this mission field we call life. How wonderful that we are blessed to worship God the Father, Son & Holy Ghost!

We may have known we needed a Savior; today, I am grateful that when we chose to accept Jesus as our Savior, God also gave us His Holy Spirit to help us to keep living it out each day.

1 Corinthians 12:8 (CEV) tells us“Some of us can speak with wisdom, while others can speak with knowledge, but these gifts come from the same Spirit.”

But how does that work? What does the gift of knowledge actually look like? Have you ever known something that there was just no possible explanation of how you knew it? The world calls it “having a sixth sense”. You might call it intuition. But if you are a believer, a follower of God, that intuition is a gift that God calls knowledge.

A few weeks ago as I was walking into work in the early morning before the sun came up, I saw my shadow and instantly I heard God’s quiet whisper say, “you can’t see a shadow without the presence of light”. Immediately I was reminded of Psalm 23 that says ‘even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me.’ I knew that God was giving me reassurance that I need not fear what was before me because God was with me…lighting the darkness.

Later that same day, my husband, Ken, had a doctor’s appointment that would bring results we didn’t want to hear. And I knew that God had given me a gift earlier that morning. It was the knowledge that even when we find ourselves walking through the valley of the shadow of death….we needed to remember that we wouldn’t even be able to see that shadow…if it weren’t for the presence of God and His light surrounding us.

We can thank God today for His gift of knowledge.

One of my favorite movies to watch when I was growing up was “The Wizard of Oz”. And of the characters that Dorothy befriended on her journey to find a way home, the cowardly lion was my favorite. Lions are supposed to be brave and strong. The king of the jungle. Instead, the lion was afraid of everything…even himself!

Later we realize that although the lion thinks of himself as cowardly, he is actually more brave than he realized. He just needed someone to come alongside him and remind him of who he was really meant to be.

We were meant to live courageously. In fact, God gives us the power to be brave through His Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 1:6-7 (CEV) says, “So I ask you to make full use of the gift God gave you when I placed my hands on you. Use it well. God’s Spirit doesn’t make cowards out of us. The Spirit gives us power, love, and self-control.”

I love that God is specific in giving us those three together. Courage without love can make us cruel and courage without self-control can make us bullies. So we’ll gladly receive His trio of gifts in just the right amount to make full use of His gift of courage.

The dictionary defines the word beloved as a dearly loved person. There’s something different about a person who knows they are dearly loved. They carry themselves differently. There’s a confidence in them and a sense of peace.

When we know we are loved we are more likely to look outside of ourselves to love others. It’s why little ones respond so quickly to love and give love so easily to others. There’s something so precious to watch a child hug another child or share something with another. It’s God’s gift of love in action in such a pure setting.

We love because God first loved us. Even at our most unlovable…God never stops loving us. In fact, we are His beloved. Dearly loved. His love for us changes us. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to really love others, or ourselves.

Receiving God’s love enables us to walk confidently in His promises. God’s love in our heart helps us to love others more. 1 John 4:7 (ESV) says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

God has given us the gift of love.

After high school I moved to Charlotte, NC to intern at a very well known ministry. My roommate was an amazing young lady who was studying to be a counselor and soon after we became roommates I discovered that she was bilingual. She was born in Cuba and her parents had come to the United States when she was 2. The crazy thing was that when I met her I could not detect even a hint of her ability to speak Spanish. Until the first time she called home and I didn’t hear a single word of English! I couldn’t understand anything she was saying…until I heard my name mentioned…so then I wanted to know what she was telling them about me!

My roommates’ ability to be able to weave back and forth between two languages was a gift. Never was I more grateful for her gift than when I traveled home with her to stay with her family during spring break that year. While her parents understood a smattering of English, they spoke next to none. Without her we had very little chance of really communicating with each other.

There are so many things in this world that we just cannot understand on our own. God has given us the gift of understanding.  2 Timothy 2:7 (NASB) says, “Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” Without His understanding we might find ourselves in really difficult situations that we would have little hope of finding our way through. We can be thankful today to receive God’s gift of Understanding.

‘What were you thinking??!!’ Have you ever said that to someone or maybe someone said that to you after a less than favorable outcome? Whether we rushed into something or reacted without thinking things through, we have probably all found ourselves in this situation at least once.

The excuse could be that we just didn’t know. Maybe being young and inexperienced was part of it. Or maybe we just didn’t take the time to get advice and instead jumped head first into it. There is a way to steer clear of faulty decisions and maneuver our way through many difficult situations. PRAY! Ask God for wisdom to know how to make the right choices. Lean into Him and wait for His direction until you have peace in your decision.

One of the promises of God that I love and cherish most is that He promises to respond to our prayer for wisdom. In fact, He even said He would give us a generous portion of wisdom when we ask Him. How valuable is THAT in this crazy world??!!

James 1:5 (NLT) promises us, “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.” God has given us the gift of Wisdom.

My first job was during tax season at a tax preparation office as a receptionist. When I received my very first paycheck I asked my mom to help me open up a student checking account at the local bank. It wasn’t high finance but I learned some important things with that experience. You don’t write checks for money you don’t have in your account. And it is better to ‘reconcile’ your account each month when the statement arrives.

Reconciling my check register to the monthly bank statement was pretty easy until ATM’s came along. Forgetting to enter cash withdrawals caught up with me on more than one occasion. If my register was off by even a penny – it drove me crazy! Agreeing with what the bank said I really had in my account, or reconciling, became a dreaded activity pretty quickly. Making one equal the other?! Let’s just say there were a few times that I just skipped a few spaces, drew a line…and started over.

God threw out all the math, all the equations that never came up equal, every way that man tried to find his or her way back to right-standing with Him when He sent His Son, Jesus, to reconcile us back to the Father. Our life would never be reconciled to God without God’s willingness to draw a line and give us the opportunity to begin again.

2 Corinthians 5:18 (NLT) says “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.”

Not only did He reconcile us to Himself, but He gave us the task of helping others find reconciliation in Him as well. God has given us the beautiful gift of reconciliation.

When we were kids we learned to say ‘grace’. “God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for this food. By His hands we all are fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread.” We teach our kids to say grace and there is something so sweet that happens around the table when we hear our children thanking God for our food. We are helping them to be grateful for what is provided before them. They are learning to talk to our Father God….out loud.

And that simple prayer….grace….is also one of the first experiences we have with the grace of God. When God gives us what we do not deserve….that is His grace. We were born in sin. God has blessed us in so many ways that we could never have earned on our own. And there is something beautiful that happens when we realize our position in life and the abundance of blessings God has bestowed on us and continues to pour out on us each day.

Ephesians 2:8 (CEV) tells us “You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much better than we deserve. This is God’s gift to you, and not anything you have done on your own.”

God’s grace is giving us what we do not deserve. God has given us the gift of His Grace.