This morning we are going to conclude our discussion of Spiritual Gifts by talking about how to turn control of our lives over to the Spirit. Thus far we’ve talked about the nature of spiritual gifts, that they are God given abilities that are to be used to build up the Church and help other people. We’ve pointed out from the Bible that every Christian has at least one spiritual gift, some have multiple gifts. And the truth of the matter that has to be continuously stressed is that these gifts are not for our benefit, but for others. You haven’t been given these abilities so that you can be a success or make a name for yourself or anything else. These abilities are given so that you can make a difference in the world for Christ.
We all want to do that, don’t we?
o Nobody gets picked to be on a team and then wants to sit on the bench.
o Nobody ever gives a gift to someone hoping it will never be opened.
o Nobody devotes years of service to a company and then plans that when they retire nobody will notice.
o Nobody anticipates that after they die their funeral will be unattended.
o Nobody hopes for a three line obituary.
We want to make a difference, leave the world a better place, make an impact on others so that they are able to say, “He changed my life.” “She made a difference.” “My life is better, my world is more complete, my faith is stronger, and my hope is more solid because that person was a part of my life.” (from "The Power of A Difference Maker" by John Ortberg [mppc.org, e-sermons])
Now I can see some of your juices start to flow. Some of the over achievers in our crowd are getting revved up, the adrenaline is starting to flow and you are already developing in your mind strategic plans about how to make your impact on the world. Now I’ve got nothing against strategic planning, but that’s not what I want to encourage you to do this morning. Since we’ve been talking about the Gifts that the Holy Spirit gives Christians to make an impact on the world, we are now going to talk about how to unleash those gifts in the way that God plans. It doesn’t involve you developing a strategic plan as much as it involves adopting God’s strategic plan for your life. It doesn’t involve you doing something as much as it involves you allowing God to do something inside you. It means you have to let go of control of your life so that God can take control.
Read Galatians 5:13-18 (Paul says there are two ways to live: guided by flesh “I do whatever I want to do,” or guided by Spirit, “I do whatever He wants me to do.” No middle ground. Now he contrasts what those two lifestyles look like. Notice how self-centered life in the flesh [other word for ‘sinful nature’] is, and how others-centered life in the spirit is.)
Read Galatians 5:19-25
Now, here’s the big point I want to get across this morning about our spiritual gifts. If the Holy Spirit is going to do the kind of work He wants to do through us, we have to allow Him to do some very important work inside us. He will never use us to do in the lives of others what we have refused to allow Him to do in us. Let me say it one more different way. Before we become useful to the Holy Spirit in changing other people’s lives, we have to allow Him to change our lives. Only when we bear the fruits of the spirit will we see the gifts of the spirit being used to their fullest potential. Now, lets talk about the relationship between the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit.
1. God Gives Each Christian Specific Spiritual Gifts, But Expects All Christians To Bear All The Fruit of the Spirit.
Now this is an important thing to understand. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you might remember that long list of Spiritual gifts that a person could have. There were gifts from administration to wisdom, shepherding to helps, teaching to hospitality. And the reality that I tried to get across is that no two people are alike in their giftedness. God uses us differently because He needs different tools to accomplish His work in the world. My dad was a toolmaker, and he hated it when my brother or I would get hold of his tools and use them wrong. (Don’t take a screwdriver and pry something open, hammer something with a wrench! Use the tool designed for the job!) In Romans 12:4-8 Paul wrote, “Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has different work to do. And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others. 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. If your gift is that of serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, do a good job of teaching. If your gift is to encourage others, do it! If you have money, share it 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.” (NLT) God designs us for different jobs that need to be done, so he gives us different gifts.
But the fruit of the Spirit are different. They are all for every Christian. God is working inside every believer to produce love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. You can get out of teaching by saying, “My giftedness doesn’t include standing up in front of people and imparting knowledge.” But you can’t get out of a job by saying, “I can’t do that because ‘love’ isn’t one of the fruit of the Spirit God gave me!” Wrong. God wants all of His children to be loving, joy-filled, at peace in their spirit, patient, good, kind, gentle, filled with faith, and self-controlled. That doesn’t mean that we won’t struggle. The process of bearing these fruit isn’t an overnight one. But it does mean that if you are allowing God to work on you, you will become more patient, more peace filled, and more joyful as time goes on.
2. The Fruit of the Spirit Is The Result of God Working In You, But The Gifts Of The Spirit Are The Result of God Working Through You.
Now understand something here. Sometimes the hardest work you will ever do in the Christian life will use the least amount of muscles in your body. Sometimes the toughest thing in the world to do is to just “Be Still and know that God is God.” We live in a society that values busy-ness, being able to scratch out items on a “To Do List” and say “I accomplished this task, completed this job, finished this duty, and now can move on to the next item on the agenda.” But the fruit of the Spirit isn’t like that. Spirit-work is the kind of internal work that allows God to walk into every area of your life and take control, clean it up, put it in order, and set it apart for His service.
It means intentionally letting down your guard, dropping the defenses so that God can make some changes. Spirit-work involves letting God speak to you through His Word and through other people. It means conversing with God in prayer, both talking and listening. Christians for centuries have valued the spiritual disciplines, things such as fasting and being silent for a period of time, developing a life of simplicity and being disciplined in regularly giving generously even if it didn’t appear that the checkbook would allow it on a given week. Those sorts of disciplined actions help us recognize that the Spirit is in control, not the flesh. They are a statement to ourselves and to Satan that God is in control of what we do, not our stomach, and not our calendar, not our culture, and not our immediate circumstances. And to be honest, we don’t practice those disciplines much any more, and often our culture and our circumstances and our stomachs and our calendars determine what we do more than God does.
But when we give God control, Paul says the Spirit bears these fruit in our life. Every Christian can be these things, if we will do the work to let down our defenses and let God do His thing in our life. And the great thing is, that the more control we give over to God, the more He uses us to bring Him glory. In Philippians 1:6 Paul said confidently “…I am sure that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again.” (Philippians 1:6, NLT) The big Church word for the process of letting God do His work in your life to mold you into a Christ-like person is “Sanctification.” We could all wear a shirt that says “Be patient, God’s not done with me yet!” but that’s not an excuse to not let God be at work to develop this fruit.
Review: First, God Gives Each Christian Specific Spiritual Gifts, But Expects All Christians To Bear All The Fruits of the Spirit. Second, The Fruits of the Spirit are The Result of God Working In You, But The Gifts Of The Spirit Are The Result of God Working Through You.
3. The Spiritual Gifts Are The Tools To Serve Others, But the Fruit of the Spirit Is The Motivation To Serve Others.
As I said at the beginning, everybody wants to leave the world a better place, to effect change in the people and circumstances that surround them, but you will never do that if you only live for yourself. If you maintain control of your life, the power of the flesh is to satisfy self. Even if you do some good things for others, it will be with mixed motives, as pride and self-satisfaction guide you to give so that you can get something. But that king of life is not a God-driven life.
If you bear the Fruit of the Spirit, you will develop your Spiritual Gifts, but not as a means of self-improvement. Instead, you will develop your gifts as a means of glorifying God and helping others. Once you have love for people, joy to express, and peace with your circumstances, you won’t be able to help yourself. When you are patient enough to not let difficult circumstances deter you and kind enough to go out of your way to serve, your Spiritual Gifts will naturally develop. Once you are good and faithful enough not to give up on impossible people, and gentle enough to encourage them without raising your voice, then you will find yourself motivated to serve. And once you allow the Holy Spirit to take over, you will have the self-control to manage your schedule so that your time is not wasted on things that are insignificant, but you will learn to invest your time in things that have eternal consequences.
And do you know what will happen? Your eyes will be opened, and you will feel the passion of God’s Holy Spirit welling up within you as you see all sorts of ways you want to serve. And as that God-given passion begins to express itself, your Spiritual Gifts will rise to the top as a natural expression of your worship of God and your love for other people. Now I’m all for doing the Network classes, helping people to discover the gifts God has given, but it is a sort of unnatural way of going about it. The church has existed for 19 centuries before that sort of technique was developed. Don’t think that if you discover what your gift is that you will suddenly be out there doing something with it. There is a difference in knowing what you should be doing and doing it. But if you have given control of your life over the Holy Spirit so that you are bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and you know what your Spiritual Gifts are, that is a powerful combination. If we could get our church to that point where we are bearing the fruit of the Spirit through our Spiritual Gifts, then we would be the church God wants us to be.
Now it’s wonderful to have such grand visions of what we could be, but in the end, it comes down to the reality that if we would walk in Jesus’ footsteps, be His disciples, then we will make an impact on our friends and family, on our culture, and on our world. We won’t change everybody and everything. Not even Jesus did that. But we will leave our mark and some people will say as a result of the way God worked in us “My life is better, my world is more complete, my faith is stronger, and my hope is more solid because that person was a part of my life.”
Often at the end of sermons I talk about the fact that if we follow Jesus, we begin to look more and more like Him. Not physically, but in actions, attitudes, lifestyle. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you are like now. Max Lucado said, “God wants you just as you are, but He loves you too much to leave you that way.” When you give your life to Christ, God starts right where you are and begins the process of making you like Jesus. He will produce in you (fruit of Spirit). Don’t try to grow it on your own, you’ll wind up with weeds. Let God produce His fruit, and you will wind up living an abundant life and helping a lot of other people do that too.
