Ephesians 4:11: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,”
There was this Saturday morning cartoon that was on television for only one season back in the mid-1980’s called Mighty Orbots. It was a futuristic anime-style cartoon about a team of robots and their human creator who battled the evil galactic criminal organization SHADOW on behalf of the Galactic Patrol. The inventor, Rob Simmons, was their leader. There was 6 robots, each with a special ability:
• Tor – the “strongman” of the team
• Bort – the shape-changing robot who could reconfigure himself into any type of machine
• Bo – could manifest air, fire, water, and earth (the classical elements)
• Boo – had powers of light and energy, usually used as invisibility, force-fields, levitation, holograms, etc.
• Crunch – the ever-hungry “comic relief” of the group, but who could consume any element and channel it as energy (a walking battery)
• Ohno – Rob’s right hand assistant and robot leader
When all the robots merged together they formed a super-robot named Mighty Orbots, who could utilize all their powers. Ohno, in this configuration, was the “ignition key”; without her, the super-robot form couldn’t come online and activate.
I thought of this old cartoon when I read the above passage. As Christians, some of us are given gifts to use as pastors and teachers, others evangelists, and so forth. Jesus gives us gifts that we need to use for the glory of His Kingdom. Each of us Christians, like one of those individual robots, have a gift that we use to further the Kingdom (the entire body…the Mighty Orbots union, in my above analogy). But without Christ as the “key” to using these gifts, we can’t use these gifts to their utmost. You see, the gift is to be used to glorify Christ, not for selfish reasons. It is a wonderful thing to receive a gift, but how much more wonderful when we “unwrap” it and use it for what it was intended?
Something to think about.
Combing The Word 