Everyone Is Gifted Series

As you know our preaching theme this year is Discovering your Destiny, and recently we have been thinking about what it means to be Chosen by God, Loved by God and Gifted by God.

Dictionary.com defines a gift in three ways:

1. Something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favour toward someone, honour an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.

2. Something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned.

3. A special ability or capacity; natural endowment; talent.

All of these are relevant and true about the Spiritual gifts God gives to His people:

He chooses to give without payment, He shows Favour to His children, Our gifts are meant to honour God and bring glory to Him, Our gifts are not meant to be used selfishly but for the benefit of others. We do not earn our gifts, they are given to us because of God’s Mercy and Grace and Love. The Spiritual Gifts given by God are special, beyond our own natural gifts or talents.

Today I want us to consider a familiar passage from 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 where the Apostle Paul writes about the fact that each of us has been given a spiritual gift.

"There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. 5There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. 6God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. 7A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. 8To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. 9The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. 10He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. 11It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have." (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)

This part of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth is emphasising that many people with different gifts all working together as one church, one body. Serving God by using the gifting He has given, to speak, to heal, to teach, to build up, to glorify God together.

God is the one who is in control. We are His church, His people, His children, and He gifts each of us for His service. God does not give gifts as a reward for how well a Christian lives their life, God gives gifts as He chooses and A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. God has given you a Spiritual Gift, every born-again, Spirit-filled disciple of Jesus is gifted in some way.

Do you use the gift or gifts you have been given to glorify God? Or do you ignore or misuse the gift you have been given?

Let me illustrate it in this way, for Christmas I was given a gift of a box of Scottish shortbread biscuits. They are good quality, all-butter Marks and Spencer’s Shortbread biscuits.

But, I have not opened the box yet. I don’t know how good they taste and I have not shared them with anyone else either. Perhaps I’m not showing any appreciation for the gift or the giver by how I’m using it. You see, because the box is quite heavy, I’m using it as a paperweight to keep some of my special photo printing paper from getting creased or damaged. I’ve been given a gift, but I’m not using it in the way the person who gave me the gift intended. I am using it, but not in the way it was intended for me to use it.

The Bible clearly tells us that God has blessed each of us, His children, with a gift or gifts. To bring glory to God some of us are given a gift, some are given multiple gifts.

Some gifts are for use in a specific season of our lives, others are for continuous and constant use.

When we meet together as Church are you using the gifts you have been given?

A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.

Are you sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to use the gift or gifts you have been given?