Knowing Your Skills Series

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a body that was nothing but eyes would never get anywhere, and a body consisting solely of feet, would never see anything. We need our eyes to see, our arms to hold, our feet to walk, our ears to hear, etc. A body without all it’s parts wouldn’t be whole and it wouldn’t matter if you tried to substitute, “Well I might only have one leg but I have three eyes.” It still wouldn’t be whole. And so within the family of God, the church, we have people who each have a spiritual gift which is needed, and they aren’t all the same gift.

The gifts most clearly mentioned in the Bible are found in a several different verses and include wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, teaching, helps, administration, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy, evangelism, pastoring, hospitality. Now I’m not saying that this is an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts, I’m just saying that these are the most clearly defined Now we don’t have time to define and deal with each of those gifts this morning, if you want more information then you need to take in the next network seminar that is offered in order to get a better insight into what each spiritual gift entails and how it can be used for the kingdom of God.

3) We Don’t All Need The Same Skill Sometimes as children it is natural to compare ourselves with others, I wish I could run like Bob, or I wish I had hair like Suzy or I wish I could sing like Mary. Come to think of it we never really grow out of making those comparison do we? Within the Kingdom of God sometimes we put certain gifts on pedestals and people look at them and say wow I wish I had the gift of _____________.

Now this isn’t a unique problem, Paul had to deal with it in the church in Corinth and he used the analogy of the body that we spoke of earlier 1 Corinthians 12:14-18 Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am only an ear and not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? Suppose the whole body were an eye—then how would you hear? Or if your whole body were just one big ear, how could you smell anything?

But God made our bodies with many parts, and he has put each part just where he wants it.

4) We Have Our Skills For A Reason: The contestants on Survivor hope that their skills will make them valuable enough that they won’t get voted off the island and will ultimately win them a million bucks. As believers we are given our Spiritual gifts for a reason as well. Part of that is to help us finish, but there is a more important reason. The scriptures are very plain that we aren’t given them for selfish reasons, and we’re not given them so we can gloat about them, we given them so we can serve God’s people, the church. Listen again to the Bible A spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church. The gifts of the spirit are given to the believer for a very special purpose and that is to advance the kingdom of God. At this time I need a couple of helpers to hand out ministry involvement sheets. Plain and simple, each one of us is here for a reason, and each of you who call Cornerstone your home church is here for a reasons. Maybe you sitting there thinking “I’m not sure if Cornerstone is my home church or not.” Here’s a hint, if this is where you come to church most of the time it’s your home church.