Using My Spiritual Gifts Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

This morning we are going to deal with a topic about which there is a great deal of confusion and even different views within the body of Christ. And unfortunately over the years, I’ve probably contributed to some of that, not intentionally, but just because of my own lack of understanding. And even today, although I think God has given me a clearer understanding of this topic, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I do believe that the passage that we’ll look at this morning will help us clarify some of the most important aspects of this topic.

TENSION

This morning we’ll be talking about spiritual gifts. And I’d like to get all of us to begin thinking about this topic by answering a few questions about your understanding of spiritual gifts. I’m not really looking for right or wrong answers or some long theological treatise. Just think about the first thing that comes to mind.

1. What is a spiritual gift?

2. How many different spiritual gifts are listed in the Bible? Are there any other spiritual gifts?

3. What is the purpose of spiritual gifts?

4. What is the best way to discover your spiritual gift(s)?

There are a lot of other questions I could ask, but I think those four are sufficient to get us thinking about this topic. Go ahead and keep those questions in the back of your mind as we see how the Bible helps us to answer those questions today.

TRUTH

[Read Romans 12:3-8]

Once again this morning, we’ll begin with the big idea and then use the Scripture to help us develop that further and to develop some principles that we can use to apply this idea in our day to day lives.

It is more important to use my spiritual gifts

than to understand them

Based on my own personal experience and from talking to some of you, it seems like the most common way the church approaches spiritual gifts is something like this: We use some kind of questionnaire, survey or inventory where we ask people to answer a bunch of questions. We then assign numerical values to each answer and add up the points a lo and behold the spiritual gift that has the most points is now identified as that person’s spiritual gift. And then we supplement that information with some teaching about those gifts. We study the meaning of the underlying Greek words and look at Biblical examples of people who had those gifts and even talk about where that person might use their gift in their church. How many of you have been through something like that?

I’m not saying that such an approach doesn’t have some value. I’ve been a part of a process like that both as a participant and as a leader and I think that there was some benefit in both. But over time, I’ve discovered two major drawbacks to such an approach:

• First, it makes some assumptions about spiritual gifts that I have come to see as just not being true. We’ll talk about some of those this morning.

• Second, while it helps people discover their spiritual gifts, it often falls short in helping them to actually use them.

So I have two goals this morning:

• I want to help you better understand the nature of spiritual gifts, and

• Even more importantly, I want to help you to either begin using your spiritual gifts if you’re not already doing that, or if you are using them, I want to help you do that even more effectively.

So I’m going to begin by identifying five important truths about spiritual gifts that we find in this passage and then I’ll talk about 4 practical steps that we can all take to use those gifts in the way God intends.

FIVE IMPORTANT TRUTHS ABOUT SPIRITUAL GIFTS

1. God gives them as He determines

Paul expresses this idea in two different ways in this passage. First, at the end of verse 3, he writes that we are to think about ourselves “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned”. And then in verse 6 he writes about gifts that “differ according to the grace given to us”.

It is clear here that Paul is not referring to salvation here. There aren’t different levels of faith or grace when it comes to us being in right relationship with God through faith in Jesus. Given the context, Paul is making the point that we can’t boast about whatever gifts we have, because God has sovereignly assigned those gifts to us as He desires. Both the gifts we have and the faith to exercise those gifts have been given to us by God in varying measures.