It was my mother’s birthday last Tuesday. She was fifty five years old, don’t try to do the math trust me, it’s scary. The only reason I mentioned her age is that it’s crucial to the story. We’re driving to Saint John on this Tuesday which happens to be my sisters birthday and we are having what they are referring to as a gala birthday celebration. For Mom, Dianne and Angela whose birthday is this Saturday. My sister asked Mom what she would like for her birthday and Mom’s response was "Seeing I’ll be fifty-five I should get fifty-five gifts" Sounds valid to me, everyone likes to get gifts. And so in deference to my mother’s age my sister and I have decided to give her fifty-five gifts.
How about you? Do you like getting gifts? Sure you do. We say it’s better to give then to receive but receiving has a lot to be said about it as well. And there are gifts and then there are gifts, a pair of socks is a gift, but a new BMW convertible, now that’s a gift.
If you are a Christian then you’ve received the mother of all gifts because the Bible tells us in the book of Romans 6:23 Sin pays off with death. But God’s gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ our Lord. Now that’s a gift. That’s not all because we are offered another gift as well after we get that first gift, listen to what Peter tells us in the book of Acts 2:38 Peter said, "Turn back to God! Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins will be forgiven. Then you will be given the Holy Spirit. But for the believer the gifts don’t stop there. Because when you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, not only do you become a child of God, but you become a gifted child. Maybe you’ve heard people talking about spiritual gifts or the gifts of the Spirit and wondered what they were and how you can get them.
The answer to both the questions are found in 1 Peter 4:10 Each of you has been blessed with one of God’s many wonderful gifts to be used in the service of others. So use your gift well.
1) There is a spiritual gift for every believer There is no believer who does not 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, Each of you has been blessed with one of God’s many wonderful gifts Listen to what Paul says in Romans 12:6 God has also given each of us different gifts to use. And in 1 Corinthians 12:7 The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others.
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 The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others. and in verse 11 of the same chapter 1 Corinthians 12:11 But it is the Spirit who does all this and decides which gifts to give to each of us.
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 If you are guided by the Spirit, you won’t obey your selfish desires. 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 obey your selfish desires then you aren’t guided by the spirit. Listen to what James the brother of Christ wrote in the letter he wrote chapter 3 verse 12 Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine produce figs? Does fresh water come from a well full of salt water? 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 don’t all get the same gift 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.
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 see, 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 always 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.
a) We shouldn’t want the same gift 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 common 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 Our bodies don’t have just one part. They have many parts. 15 Suppose a foot says, "I’m not a hand, and so I’m not part of the body." Wouldn’t the foot still belong to the body? 16 Or suppose an ear says, "I’m not an eye, and so I’m not part of the body." Wouldn’t the ear still belong to the body? 17 If our bodies were only an eye, we couldn’t hear a thing. And if they were only an ear, we couldn’t smell a thing. 18 But God has put all parts of our body together in the way that he decided is best. You were given the gifts that you have for a reason.
3) We have gifts of the spirit for a reason: Why are we given Spiritual gifts? Well 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 The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others. The gifts of the spirit are given to the believer for a very special purpose and that is to advance the kingdom of God.
4) How do we use those gifts Ok, let’s set up a scenario, you’re at a dinner party with five other people each of who have one of the spiritual gifts listed in the scripture that Mary read this morning. You’ve all had a wonderful dinner and you’re just settling back for dessert. Your hostess is bringing out the tray with all your desserts when she drops it, breaking dishes and scattering dessert all over the floor.
The response of each person there should be governed by their spiritual gift. The person with the gift of serving would jump up and say, "Let me help you clean that up" They give practical assistance to fulfil a need. These are great people to have around because they are always ready to serve.
The one with the gift of teaching would say "Now the reason that fell was because it was too heavy on one side and it was off balance" Their gift allows them to bring life lessons in such a way as to bring clarity to difficult situations.
The guy with the gift of prophecy doesn’t say anything because he had already said "Don’t bring them all out at once, the tray will be too heavy" Often when we think of someone with the gift of prophecy we think of someone who can tell the future, when in reality it is usually someone who can tell us the consequences of our actions especially in our spiritual life.
The person with the gift of encouragement would say "Hey that’s ok, we didn’t need dessert anyway." Don’t you love having someone around who always says the right thing to lift our spirit, the person with the gift of encouragement is there to give positive attitude for the future.
The person with the gift of giving has already excused them self to run over to Hortons and buy a cake to serve as dessert. These people don’t ask "how much should I give" but "How little do I need to get by on."
The one with the gift of leadership is saying "Fred go get a mop, Mary could you and Tom make sure that all the glass is picked up" His or her gift is to cast the vision and get people moving together toward a common goal.
And the person with the gift of mercy would have their arm around the hostess saying "Don’t feel bad it could happen to anyone." The gift of mercy is not the gift of pity, it is the gift of empathy, it is a sensitivity to the feelings of others. Even though it’s not mentioned in Romans, it is obvious that the hostess had the gift of hospitality Now I know that really oversimplifies things, but hey I’m a simple kind of guy right.
Now there are a couple of warnings that need to be issued here. Don’t use your gift blend to excuse you from doing other things. Well I haven’t got the gift of hospitality so I don’t invite people over, that may be but don’t forget we have scriptures like Romans 12:13 Take care of God’s needy people and welcome strangers into your home. Others say I don’t have the gift of giving so I don’t give. Uh-huh, we are commanded to give the tithe or 10% if we are a believer, the person with the gift of giving gives over and above that. C. Peter Wagner attends a well to do church in Southern California and he commented once that if everyone in that church was collecting welfare and tithed what they got that the income of the church would rise by 40%.
God does not give us gifts to excuse us from doing other things, instead it’s to allow us to do over and above in our areas of giftedness. Sometimes we need to step outside of our comfort zone in order to remain in obedience to God. So sometimes even though we may not feel that we have the gift of teaching we may have to teach, or that we don’t have the gift of leadership we may have to lead. Get it? If you were out for your evening walk and saw a house on fire you wouldn’t say, "well there’s a house on fire, I can’t do anything to help because I’m not a fireman" no you’d do your very best to help the people inside and put out the fire until the professional arrived. If you happened on the scene of an accident and there were those who needed first aid you wouldn’t ignore them because you weren’t a paramedic, you’d do what had to be done until the right person arrived. Once the experts arrived, you step aside because they were better equipped to deal with the situation.
And so in the work of the Kingdom of God there may be times that you need to step outside of your giftedness in order to meet a need until the right person comes along to meet that need.
The other danger is the danger of transference, or expecting that others should do what you are gifted to do. They know that what they have to do to be obedient to God and they presume that all believers have to do the same. So the person with the gift of mercy can’t figure out why others are so callous, well they may not be callous they just might not have the gift of mercy. Personally whenever I’ve done a spiritual gift test, mercy has been way down on the list, and if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one of my hospital calls that shouldn’t surprise you. So those who have the gift of mercy shouldn’t expect me to be like them. Those with the gift of giving shouldn’t expect everyone to feel compelled to give like they do. Those with the gift of leadership shouldn’t expect everyone to lead.
Bottom line is that you are responsible for your gift and nobody else’s and you’re responsible for being obedient to God in using that gift. When you get to heaven, God will ask you what you did with the gift that he gave you. He’s not going to ask what your spouse did with their gift or what the pastor did with his gift, but you will be held responsible for your faithfulness with your gift.
Can people have more then one spiritual gift? Sure but there is usually one or two prominent ones. How do you find out what your gift mix is, there are several test out there and if you talk to Greg or I we can arrange for you to take one. The next time we offer the network course you should sign up because not only does it test for your giftedness it also helps show where and how you can best use those gifts in the kingdom.
There is nothing magical about a spiritual gift inventory it doesn’t reveal deep hidden secrets, it’s an experience bases instrument. It’s not an aptitude test instead it is designed to measure your degree of satisfaction in what you do for God.
