Skip to main content

Spiritual Gifts


What are spiritual gifts? We talk about them a lot in our churches. We ask people if they know what their spiritual gift is, and if so, are they using their gift. We pass out spiritual gift inventory assessments to help people discern their gift. Spiritual gifts are simply gifts—or skills—that the Holy Spirit gives believers to use for God’s glory. 

 

There are many spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament. In fact, there are lists in four different passages. But the lists are not identical in each passage (Ephesians 4, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and 1 Peter 4). There is some overlap, but there are unique gifts in each list as well. I believe this teaches us that there is not a rigid list of gifts. For example, in our modern society there are people who are gifted technologically, working in the AV ministry, the church website, social media, and graphic design. These are not gifts mentioned by the Apostle Paul, but they could very well be gifts given by the Holy Spirit for use in the church body and the advancement of God’s kingdom. 

 

It is important to recognize one’s spiritual gift so that it can be used for the benefit of others. If you do not know what your gift is, how will you use it? But our gifts are not some big secret. They are rarely things we didn’t know we could do or would enjoy doing. Spiritual gifts typically are things we have been wired for our entire lives because our sovereign God knew those gifts would be cultivated by the Spirit after our conversion. 

 

So we should not think of our spiritual gifts as something God gives us, as if God says, “Now that he has been saved, I will give him the gift of teaching.” Rather, we should think of the gift as the Spirit Himself. When we give our lives to God, God gives His Spirit to us. The gift is the Person, God’s own Spirit. 

 

What does that mean? It means that we have God Himself working through us. If you are a teacher, the gift is God teaching through you. If you are an administrator, the gift is God administrating through you. That is not to suggest that we will be as good as God because we are sinful and mortal, but God will do through us all that He wishes to accomplish. 

 

There is no excuse not to use your spiritual gift because the gifts of the Spirit are literally the gift of the Spirit. 

 

“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.”

Romans 12:6

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The “Christians Hate Gays” Myth

During these Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) hearings before the Supreme Court I keep hearing how much Christians hate gay people. This was news to me since I am a Christian and I don’t hate gay people. I also go to church with over 1000 other Christians, and if any of them hate gay people, they sure haven’t told me. Before moving to South Carolina I worked at or attended several churches in Texas; prior to that I spent a decade going to church in Florida. Guess what? No one hated gay people. In fact, I don’t know any Christians who hate anybody. The very uniform of a believer is his love, and if a person does not show consistent love, then he is not actually a believer. Are there non-believers who hate gay people and claim to be Christian? Of course. But that doesn’t represent Jesus or His church. Equating  hateful sign-wavers with Christianity is like equating a kindergarten baseball team to the New York Yankees. They may claim to be playing the same
4 comments
Read more

To Save a Life

(Like my blog about the peace symbol, this blog was written as a default response to all the parents, students, and other people who are asking my opinion of To Save a Life.) By now you have probably heard of the movie To Save a Life, which opened nation-wide in theaters on January 22nd. The movie deals with so many issues that teens face today, like suicide, cutting, drinking, drugs, premarital sex, teen pregnancy, and abortion. At first glance this movie looks like an awesome resource that we should recommend for our teens, parents, youth pastors, and youth workers. But a closer look at the movie reveals a few disturbing things. For starters, according to pluggedin.com, there are 2 uses of the “A” word, 5 uses of hell (used as a curse word), and once the “D” word is used. There are other crude terms used to describe a girl, and crude terms for referring to sexual activity. There is also a bedroom scene that shows a girl removing a boy’s shirt, then afterwards the girl putting he
38 comments
Read more

Famous Frauds in Homosexual Science Part 2: Twin Studies

A second piece of shoddy science has been heralded as proving people are born gay. This time, instead of cadavers, living twins were studied. This study compared male identical twins to male fraternal twins; in each set of twins, at least one man was homosexual. 22% of the fraternal twins showed both brothers to be gay, compared to 52% of the identical twins. Since identical twins are closer genetically than fraternal twins, this study claimed that genetics play in to homosexuality, or that people are born gay. But an obvious question that arose from this study is, why did 48% of the identical twins only have one gay brother? If they are so close genetically, then 100% of the identical twins should have two gay brothers. This study does more harm than good to the argument from genetics. There are other factors to be considered. One is that the men doing the study (Richard Pillard and Michael Bailey) could have intentionally picked fraternal twins that the
Post a Comment
Read more