What’s in your hand?

When you think “mission worker”, you’d be forgiven for not immediately thinking about cake. Your mind probably turns to healthcare professionals in Chad, or agricultural workers in their native Uganda helping local farmers grow enough to feed their family. And yet where Sarah Brown is concerned, cake is just as important to God’s mission.

In fact, Sarah’s connection with cake is a perfect example of using your gifts for God’s mission. You might be familiar with the baking projects Sarah’s set up in Thailand over the last ten years of her service with BMS. Through them, she’s time and again used her gifts for creating delicious confectionary to help equip and empower vulnerable women to develop their skills and lift themselves out of poverty. And when she and her husband Paul began their new roles among BMS’ partner the Thai Karen Baptist Convention (TKBC), the TKBC’s women’s ministry knew that sharing her baking ministry was exactly where they wanted her to start.

But for Sarah, it’s not about teaching specific skills, it’s about equipping people to discover their own God-given gifts, to see how they can serve in their own unique way. And she’d love to encourage you to do the same! Sarah says:

Some people may not know what their gift or talent is, but we can see specifically from 1 Peter 4: 10-11, God has given each of us a gift, not to be used only for ourselves but to serve others.

Sometimes we may be scared to use the gift or talent that God has given us, but we’re reminded through Moses’ encounter with the Lord in Exodus 31 that Bezalel and Oholiab were used to rebuild the tabernacle and teach their skills to others – whatever the Lord has given us, he will then equip and guide us as to how we should use our gifts and talents.

The Bible also encourages us to be ‘faithful stewards’ of our God-given gifts and talents. We must surrender them to God, continually thinking “not my will, but yours be done.” The Lord will transform them for his glory and purpose, which enables us to glorify God and share God’s love with others. The power to use our gifts and abilities is not done in our own strength, but God’s power – and with God all things are possible.

So what’s in your hand? What has God placed with you in order to serve him? Maybe you could sign up to receive copies of our magazines and share about BMS’ work with others? Perhaps you have the capacity to give regularly as a BMS 24:7 Partner. Maybe you’re particularly athletic or artistic, and you could use those skills to do some fundraising for BMS. Perhaps you’ve felt a call to go out and serve yourself. Whatever resources you have available, whatever your skills and gifts are, there is some way that you can get involved, some way that God wants to use you to further his Kingdom.

You can find out more about the new baking project Sarah’s running with the TKBC in the next issue of Engage magazine. To go along with the story, we’re encouraging all BMS supporters to join us in a bake along to pray for Sarah’s work, and consider how your gifts can be used to support God’s Kingdom! Check out the video above to find Sarah’s own tiramisu recipe (much like one she’ll be teaching the women of the TKBC!) with some Bible verses you can use to reflect on your gifts. While you’re baking, why not pray for Sarah’s work, and spend some time considering how you can use your gifts as part of the BMS family?