Reaching and Developing People for Jesus
Spiritual Gifts - Part II
|
Spiritual Gifts - Part II
|
|
|
Last week, we began a discussion on Spiritual Gifts. First, we learned the importance of knowing what our Spiritual Gift is. It is important because it answers the big questions in life – why are we here, what is God’s plan for my life, what am I supposed to be doing to impact the world. We recognized that a spiritual gift is not necessarily something that God gives us, but it is actually the Holy Spirit working within us. The gift is simply a manifestation of the Spirit that lives within us. We found out that knowing how the Holy Spirit is working in us and what gifts we are receiving allows us to understand what God has planned for us since the beginning of time. This understanding allows us to prioritize what’s important in our lives, allows us to say “no” to different situations that come up, relieves us of burnout and allows us to feel good about who we are and what we are doing. Finally, we learned what the Bible says about the spiritual gifts and God’s plans for them. This week, we continue our conversation about spiritual gifts. We will begin by looking at the biblical guidelines for using our Spiritual Gifts. First, we should start with the understanding that the Bible tells us of the Spiritual Gifts, so it is not something that was made up by man throughout history. Last week, we read those scripture passages that were pertinent to this: Romans 12: 3-8, 1 Corinthians 12: 4-12, 18, 27-31, Ephesians 4:7-16 (11-16 specifically), 1 Peter 4: 10,11. You will see in your bulletin that there is a list of those gifts that we read about and a quick definition of what they are. Some people add the Gifts of Craftsmanship and Music because of the skills that God gave to people to help with the Old Testament Tabernacle. There are also four other gifts that people may or may not agree with: Celibacy, martyrdom, missionary and voluntary poverty. These are found in other scripture passages but are not together with those gifts that are listed in the four general passages that we’ve been discussing. For this reason, there is debate whether these are really gifts and whether they fit the description of the gifts. I will let you decide for yourself what your thoughts are on this, since it is not a topic to debate and divide and we can easily agree to disagree here. Here is the list and we’ll briefly go over each one: ADMINISTRATION: 1 Cor. 12:28 Next, we learn that the purpose of the gifts is to build up the church. We read about this in 1 Corinthians 12:7 and Ephesians 4:16. If we read deeper into these passages, we find that there is a little more there than the simple statement that our gifts are for the building up of the church. We read about “the common good” and that the church “builds itself up in love as each part does its work.” God is telling us here that the gifts are a two way street. On the one hand, the gifts build up the church as those who have the gifts use them. On the other hand, we can understand that the church responds to the gifts. This is what “common good” and “in love” mean. It is good for the church and the church receives it in love, but you cannot have common good or love if it is one way. This means the church responds to the gift as well. It is important that we remember that the gifts themselves are nothing. But they are evidence of the Holy Spirit working within us. As He lives in us, so we are able to perform these tasks that we never would have been able to do without Him. John 15:26 and Romans 8:16 remind us that, not only is the Spirit living in us, but that He testifies, or confirms, who God is and that He loves us. The Spirit living within us, reminding us of His love, gives us a peace that surpasses all understanding. So by the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we are able to do these things like teach, prophesy, heal and all the other gifts that are mentioned above. John 15:8 and Matthew 7:16-20 tell us about our fruitfulness. As we walk in the Spirit, allowing Him to work through us, using our Spiritual Gifts, we produce fruit. This fruit is evidence of God to us and to those who might not know Him. How many times does someone come to know Jesus because someone else they know had their lives turned around by God and we hear things like, “Something’s changed” or “something’s different about him” or “he’s not the same person anymore”? Finally, to reiterate a lesson from last week, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 teaches us that without love, all our gifts are worthless. So as we use our gifts in love, as we allow the Spirit of God to work through us, we find that we are loving our church and our spirits are at peace knowing that a loving God is in charge and we become great witnesses to the world. With this understanding, we can now address some thoughts on the Spiritual Gifts that are not biblical. Those who would say that the Gifts don’t exist or that not everyone has a gift or that they themselves don’t have a gift are incorrect. We know that the gifts are Biblical and are mentioned several times in the Bible. We can also see that the Gifts are not for our own edification. We are not given gifts to build up ourselves or even our community or the world. We are given spiritual gifts to edify the Church. People who try to use their Spiritual Gifts in any other way will find their abilities to perform will decrease dramatically. Spiritual Gifts are NOT our personal talents. There is a difference between a talent and a Spiritual Gift. A talent is something we are born with or something we have developed. A Spiritual Gift is something we are given by the Holy Spirit and is actually a manifestation of the Spirit working through us. You cannot have a Spiritual Gift and not use it. Those who think they can are mistaken. The Bible clearly tells us that we will be known by our fruit. If we do not produce fruit, we must be doing something terribly wrong. I’m not going to beat you over the head, but I’ll simply repeat what we’ve learned and let you read between the lines – if we are Christians, then we have the Spirit living within us; the Spirit within us gives us the ability to do things that we could not do ourselves; we will be known by our fruit (what we do). The corollary is that you cannot use your Spiritual Gift however you want. Once you do this, you are acting selfishly. The definition of agape love, the love mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13, is selfless love. And if you have a Spiritual Gift and use it without love, then you are a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal, you are nothing and you gain nothing. Spiritual Gifts must be used with love and that means in a sacrificial, unselfish – agape love – way. So in summary, the biblical guidelines for the usage of Spiritual Gifts are:
|
|
Send mail to
david@TheArkNY.org
with
questions about the church or comments about this site.
|
