Knowing Your Skills Series

So what will you bring to the party? Could you build a hut? Spear a fish? Or start a fire? Each of the contestants on survivor brings their unique skill set to their tribe. Whether it be Cai Boi being able to light a fire with flint and tinder or Adam catching an octopus, or did the octopus catch Adam, the various players are quite confident that their particular skill will make them valuable enough that they won’t be voted off the island. These are called survivor skills and well they are indeed individual skills during the competition they are used for the benefit of the tribe.

If you are a Christians then you have been given a specific skill, and it is not called a survivor skill it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And it was given to you for a specific purpose and it helps you to fulfill the fourth purpose for your life which is “You Were Shaped for Serving God.”

Because while your spiritual gift was given to you specifically it was given to you for the benefit of the tribe.

We are told in 1 Peter 4:10 God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God’s generosity can flow through you. Those gifts are available for each of us and this morning we are going to look at what that means.

1) We All Get a Skill I’m sure there are contestants who arrive on survivor who got there because of their looks or they are simply annoying and the producers are looking for tension, but there are no believers who don’t have a gift from the spirit. There are believers who don’t use the gift or gifts they have been given, but they have all been given at least one. Remember the scripture that we just read from 1 Peter, God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 12:6 God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out when you have faith that God is speaking through you. And in 1 Corinthians 12:7 A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church.

Now let’s clarify that your spiritual gift isn’t necessarily your God given talent. Everybody has natural talents. Ashely MacIssac is an incredible fiddler, has buckets of talent and most people would say that he was gifted, others would say other things about Ashley but we’re not going down that road. But fiddling isn’t Ashley MacIssac’s spiritual gift it’s his talent. Talents are what you are born with, spiritual gifts are what you are born again with. Get it?

How do I know that because we are told in the scriptures that 1 Corinthians 12:7 A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church.

and in verse 11 of the same chapter 1 Corinthians 12:11 It is the one and only Holy Spirit who distributes these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.

Well sure you say, but couldn’t the spirit give his gifts to an unbeliever, well he could but he doesn’t. Listen to Galatians 5:16 So I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.

Now in math you may remember that the way we prove a mathematical equation is by reversing it 1+2=3, but only if 3-2=1. So we can do the same with scripture. Turn Galations 5:16 around and it says: If you are doing what your sinful nature craves then you aren’t living in the Holy Spirit. Listen to what James the brother of Christ wrote in the letter he wrote James 3:12 Can you pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a grapevine? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty pool.

So can a person whose life is not controlled by the Spirit of God exhibit gifts which the Bible plainly tells us are given by the Spirit of God for use in the body of believers, I don’t think so.

2) We Get Different Skills The scriptures that we read earlier all spoke of believers getting different gifts or special gifts. The problem is that when anyone talks about the gifts of the spirit most people automatically think that it’s the gift of tongues that’s being referred to. And that is limiting the power of the Holy Spirit, because in reality there are at least 20 different spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament. And Paul tells us over and over again that we don’t all get the same gift. He uses the analogy of a body to represent the Christian church and tells us that each part of the body performs a function that is essential for the body to properly function.