The Spirit-filled Life (3)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 6/4/2017
A couple weeks ago we began a series all about who the Holy Spirit is and what he is anxious to do in our lives. I hope this series will help all of us reverse our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit and begin living the Spirit-filled life! Last Sunday I addressed one of the Holy Spirit’s primary roles—that of a guide—and I underscored three ways in which the Spirit speaks to and lead us today: his whispers, his witnesses, and his Word. Whenever we hear that still small voice, or listen to a poignant sermon that happens to speak to our current situation, or peruse the page of Scripture we ought to pause and ask, “Lord, are you speaking to me? I’m listening.” Remember, the true children of God are those who let the Holy Spirit lead them.
Today, I want to examine another role the Holy Spirit plays in our lives—the giver of gifts. Most of us enjoy receiving gifts.
I’m reminded of an old Peanuts comic strip. Schroder is hunched over his tiny piano, plunking away at the keys when Lucy leans in toward him and ask, “How come you never give me any presents?” Schroder looks up and says, “Because I think you’re loud, mean, rude, and overbearing!” There’s a long pause as Lucy soaks in what Schroder said. Finally, she replies, “Loud, mean, rude and overbearing people like presents too, you know!”
I hope you’re not loud, mean, rude and overbearing, but even if you are I have good news for you! When you receive Christ as our Savior, God gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit—He gives you Himself. But in addition to that wonderful gift, the Holy Spirit also gives believers all sorts of spiritual gifts. These are special Sprit-empowered abilities given only to believers. The Bible says, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all” (1 Corinthians 12:4 NLT). You can’t earn you spiritual gifts or deserve them—that’s why they’re called gifts! They’re an expression of God’s grace to you—because He really likes you.
If you have a Bible or an app on your phone, open it to 1 Corinthians 12. We’re going to be a looking at a few other passages as well, but in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul offers a framework for all these different gifts and how they fit together.
First, Paul describes the plethora of spiritual gifts.
• THE PLETHORA OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS
There are an abundance of spiritual gifts and Paul list several of them here in 1 Corinthians 12. He writes:
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He 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. (1 Corinthians 12:7-10 NLT)
As you can see, there is a wide variety of spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit may give you the gift of wisdom, or the gift of intelligence, or the gift of faith or discernment. But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. We find a similar list in Romans 12. There, Paul writes:
In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly. (Romans 12:6-8 NLT)
Even these two lists combined are not exhaustive. There are other gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 4. Because the Holy Spirit loves variety and He wants us to be special, no single gifts is given to everyone and no single person received all the gifts; rather every gift or set of gifts is unique. Our job is to discover and develop our gifts.
If I were to ask you what your spiritual gift is, some of you would know it instantly. But many don’t know what gift they’ve been given. I’ve even had people tell me, “I don’t think I have a spiritual gift.” Well, you do. You just may not realize it yet. So let me make a few suggestions for those of you still searching for your spiritual gift.
First, Pay attention. Notice the things that energize you and seem to come naturally. Every spiritual gift gives off clues. Your spiritual gift will cause you to react a certain way in a given situation. If there's a problem, people with the spiritual gift of shepherding will be immediately concerned that people’s needs are being met. Those with the gift of intercession (prayer) will immediately say, "We need to pray about this," while those with a leadership gift will begin looking at solutions for the problem. So look for those kind of clues.
Furthermore, Try. Once you've gathered enough information to create a list of some possible gifts, exercise your options. Volunteer for the worship team, or nursey duty, or children’s church. Help with VBS. Join the outreach team. Attend the prayer meeting before church. If it turns out not to be your thing, that’s okay. Part of learning how the Spirit has gifted you is learning what you're not gifted at. As you try different things, you'll eventually find yourself engaged in something during which time flies and you find a deep sense of connection to God. Pick that road to continue your adventure.
Finally, Develop. Later in life, the apostle Paul encourages Timothy, saying, “I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you” (2 Timothy 1:6 NLT). We're responsible to develop our gifts. It's remarkable how you can deepen your relationship with God as you uncover and live out the spiritual gifts he's bestowed on you. Just as parents enjoy watching their child unwrap a present and begin playing with it, the Holy Spirit takes joy in seeing us discover and develop the gifts He’s given us. Identifying and utilizing your spiritual gifts is one of the most exciting adventures a person can have with God.
But as we continue through 1 Corinthians 12, we not only discover a plethora of gifts; we also discover the purpose of these gifts.
• THE PURPOSE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS
The Holy Spirit doesn’t just give us these gifts for our own enjoyment; rather He gives to us so that we can give to others.
Paul writes, “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other” (1 Corinthians 12:7 NLT). He later adds, “Since you are eager for gifts of the Spirit, try to excel in those that build up the church” (1 Corinthians 14:12 NIV). Peter puts it this way: “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another” (1 Peter 4:10 NLT).
The Holy Spirit intends for us to use the gifts He has given us for the common good, to help one another, and build up the entire church. Your spiritual gifts were not given for your own benefit but for the benefit of others, and other people were given gifts for your benefit. The Holy Spirit planned it that way so we would need each other and learn to work together as a team. When we use our gifts together, we all benefit. If others don’t use their gifts, you get cheated. If you don’t use your gifts, they get cheated.
No matter how gifted an individual is in a particular area, rarely, if ever, will one individual be exceptional in every area of life. No matter how good a surgeon may be, he still must depend on other people to fix his car or repair his plumbing. This is no less true within the church.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not highlights the story of an unusual creature, the Nanomia Cara. It is a type of jellyfish that lives in a huge cluster with other jellyfish. Even though they all look essentially the same, they each serve a different function. Some in the colony catch the food, others digest the food for the rest, others provide propulsion and still others lay eggs. They are individual organisms, but interdependent. So is the church.
Everyone has something they can do to help the church fulfill its mission. We are weaker when anyone in the church does not do his or her part. We are strongest when we all work together. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something. And, none of us can do alone what all of us can do together.
When properly utilized your spiritual gifts will contribute to the health and growth of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case; which leads me to the problem with spiritual gifts.
• THE PROBLEM WITH SPIRITUAL GIFTS
Sadly, these wonderful gifts that the Holy Spirit intended to be a blessing to the church became a source of confusion, controversy and contention to the Corinthians. Many of the Corinthian believers who had miraculous gifts such as healings, prophecy or speaking in tongues became arrogant and prideful about their gifts. Meanwhile, Christians with less impressive gifts began to feel inferior and unimportant. Here’s what Paul says to them:
The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ…we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit… 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 not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it…The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-21 NLT).
We know instinctively that every part of the body is important and it would be silly to expect each part to serve the same function. But in the body of Christ, we often make that mistake. We compare our gifts with others, feel dissatisfied with what God has given us, and become resentful or jealous of how God uses other people.
One Time Blind did a wonderful job demonstrating this with a can of Coke.
NEXT SLIDE: More Coke Video
Maybe you sometimes feel like your gift is small, but instead of focusing on the size of the gift, we ought to focus on the source of the gift—the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives gifts according to His will not ours. The Bible says, “It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have” (1 Corinthians 12:11 NLT).
Instead of comparing ourselves and our gifts to the others, we ought to be thankful for the gifts we’ve been given and use those gifts to bless the church and glorify God’s Spirit.
As a side note, let me say that there is still a lot of confusion and controversy over the miraculous gifts of the Spirit—healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. As I understand Scripture those particular gifts were given only during the church’s infancy in order to communicate and authenticate the Gospel message. Paul writes, “Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless… When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:8, 11 NLT). Paul predicted a time when the church would outgrow these particular gifts. That’s not to say the Spirit couldn’t still give these gifts today; they just aren’t necessary anymore for the building up of the church.
I love how Paul finishes out this chapter. He writes:
“Are we all apostles? Are we all prophets? Are we all teachers? Do we all have the power to do miracles? Do we all have the gift of healing? Do we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages? Do we all have the ability to interpret unknown languages? Of course not! So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.” (1 Corinthians 12:29-31 NLT)
From there, Paul launches into chapter 13, his famous chapter about the supremacy of love:
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NLT)
Regardless of what spiritual gift you have or what gifts other people have, we ought to use those gifts to communicate the love of God to those around us.
Conclusion:
So as we tie this all together, I’ve just got two questions for you to think about: (1) What are your spiritual gifts? (2) Are you using them to their full potential?
Imagine how a parent would feel if on Christmas day when the gifts for their children were handed out, the children just took them, said “Thank you,” and laid them aside with no attempt to open the gifts, not even to find out what they were!
Imagine how the Holy Spirit must feel when he has given gifts to us that He intends for us to use, and yet we never take the trouble to find out what they are or never put them to work. Let’s not leave the gifts of the Spirit unopened!
Next week we’ll continue to explore the Holy Spirit and what it means to live a Spirit-filled life.
Invitation:
In the meantime, I want to encourage you to unwrap the gifts of the Spirit and begin living the Spirit-filled life! If I can help you with that, you’re welcome to talk to me after church, call me at home or come forward now as we stand and sing. Let’s sing together church.
