‘WHAT IS A SPIRITUAL GIFT."
part seven

• Now these things or enablements are given to the individual believer as capacities through which the Spirit of God can minister to His Church.

Now we teach that God has built in unity in the church. So how does he build in unity in the body? By giving to each member of the body an enablement to minister to other people in the body. And if there’s going to be that unity maintained, there is going to be that ministry of gifts that’s absolutely necessary.

And that is why Paul had to write 1 Corinthians, because they had corrupted the whole system. They were not content with the gifts that God had given them. They wanted different ones. Not only that, they were perverting the ones they had. It became a point of pride. "Well what gift to do have?" "I want to be the eye?" And in fact this was becoming problematic.

They were rating their gifts from one to ten. And that created disunity.

They didn’t want the ones that were known as "Dirty Jobs." (tv SHOW) In Ohio there are 400,000 deer killed annually. If those people did not pick up those road kills, we couldn’t drive on our road ways because of the stink. The road kills are turned into mulch, and are in your flower bed.

THE SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS: vs 4-7

As I have already read these verses. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There is one God, one Christ, one Spirit, which means He has how many wills? One will. He had build into His Church unity. But that unity will only happen, it’s only be maintained, when there is diversity of ministry. Right.

What if everyone wanted to be the 1st grade teacher in Sunday School?

So we want unity and all 100 of us will become 1st grade SS teachers. Unity, no. The only way unity can function in teamwork is diversity, and that’s why the unity of the church is based on the fact that we minister to each other with our strengths, to make them strong.

One Spirit, same Spirit, same Lord, same God, working in all of us. You wouldn’t believe that in many churches today would you?

There are diversities of ways. Meaning distribution. God has distributed varieties of operations within His church. Varieties of gifts. Some teaching, giving, helps, administration, government, etc.

HOW MANY GIFTS ARE THERE?

I think you could make a case for seven. Maybe 18. Maybe 30. The point there is that there are so many varieties of ways in which they function. Some of the gifts overlap so much that you may be a mixture. There could be 15 of us in this class that have the gift of teaching. All 15 of us may manifest that gift in an entirely different way, through an entirely different style, to an entirely different group of people, with entirely different objectives. But that’s the beauty of the diversity.

There are varieties of power within the gifts. Some gifts manifested in certain ways demand a different degree of power than others.

In Romans 12:4, 8 there is a measure of faith. God gives you gifts, and measures out the exact amount of faith to make that gift operate.

God then gives each of us with our gifts the spiritual ability and spiritual capacity to minister to His church.

There are different manifestations of divine power. Some gifts manifested in certain ways demand a different degree of power than others.

It takes a certain kind of Holy Spirit energizing to put somebody into a situation that each of us are in. (Pastoring a church, being an elder, etc.)

Here is what I have said a number of times. God had called me to peach, to pastor, to lead, to teach a group of people for a number of years. What if God had not given me the faith to believe Him that it’s possible? I am going to be a basket case. I say that now, if I have been called to be the Christian Education and Spiritual Gift development director, if I don’t have the faith to believe God can do this using me, I would be a basket case.

What if God gives me the faith I could do this, and you keep telling me, you can’t do this, we need to get someone else to do this. I would be very discouraged.