Spiritual Gifts I [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. One of the joys I have in life is playing the piano. I have my own piano now.

I didn't back then. One of the few places I'd play the piano was at my in-laws over at Ann's parents. Bonnie, her mother, was a fantastic pianist. And almost every time we'd go over and we'd be visiting, we're over there a lot, I'd go sit down at that upright piano and I'd play some, maybe a praise song, maybe a hymn.

But during this time, 1999, I quit playing because it was the sadness. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Higher Power as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout our entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org.

That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You were disconnected from God and then you're reconnected with God, you're restored and so you're alive spiritually. So I like to think of this the way it's like, so there is, you could think of the body which could experience pleasure, maybe a warm sunshine day and you taste a delicious milkshake, you're riding along and you're convertible, the wind's blowing through your hair and it's like, that's pleasurable. That's what your body's experiencing. And maybe circumstances are really good in your life and you've got a whole lot of things going well and you're just happy. Your soul is happy. But don't you know that there is a thing that can happen that even if your body's not experiencing pleasure and your soul's not that happy, there is a thing called joy that you can have anyway. There's a thing likewise that's called peace that passes understanding.

What are we talking about? We're talking about spiritual things. When Jesus said that we're to worship in spirit and in truth, what's he talking about? Well, you are, as a born again Christian, you are a regenerated spirit and you're going to live with God forever. And so the part of you that was separated from God, that was like dead before, now you're alive to God. And here's the way, here's the way that, why this is important. When you're talking about spiritual gifts, you're talking about that, which is spiritual.

It is not natural. There are more ways to apprehend knowledge than just what the five senses physically can tell you or what the intellect can tell you. That's what we're going to be talking about is, is that there are ways to apprehend truth that bypass even what your mind could rationally think up. And this is where the spiritual gifts come into play.

So spiritual gifts are spiritual because the Holy Spirit communes with your spirit. We spend a lot of time in our culture training bodies, or at least some people do, and you can train your body. You can get faster. You can get stronger. You can train your mind. We spend tons of time on that. We educate kids starting early on. I love the intellect. Train your mind. You can get, you can get mentally more sharp. What I'm saying to you is that the spiritual development of, of, of walking in and becoming aware of the spirituals, as Paul calls them, that's less common in our society, right?

So that's what we're talking about. And so it's spiritual, but also notices in verse four varieties of gifts, but the same spirit that word gifts is the word in Greek Charismata, which is the plural form of a word you probably know that's brought over from the Greek Charis. I talk about it a lot because Charis means grace. So the gifts of the spirit are the Charismata, the graces of God. So in the same way that your salvation comes by grace through faith alone, the gifts of the Holy spirit are just that they are the Charismata. They are gifts that come like grace their grace. So they come not by your works, but, but received by faith alone.

So he's used the word spirituals and they use the words Charismata. And then at verse seven, he says to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. Well, the manifestation, this, this, this word just means the unveiling or the showing forth of the Holy spirit. And the reason that's important is that the gifts of the spirit are not like a separate thing.

That's, that's why my power washer illustration doesn't work because that's just a tool. Now the gifts of the Holy spirit are actually an expression of the Holy spirit himself at work in you. There's no such thing as the gifts of the spirit being separated from the presence of the Holy spirit. He is the one doing it. Okay.

At all times. Literally in that sense, Paul says, when you see a gift of the Holy spirit, it's not like something that, Oh, this is a thing that just resides in this person and they just turn it on. No, the Holy spirit is manifesting his loving presence. Let's talk about some of the gifts. I'm going to start with one that you don't, you don't hear much about the gift of giving Romans 12, eight to the one who contributes or gives to do so in generosity, all Christians are called to Excel and giving, but y'all, the spiritual gift of generosity brings a supernatural delight to a person's heart, to be able to give, and they have a capacity to release and to keep sowing in such a wonderful way. We had a guy in our church said, so some, some people here today, and some of you, uh, uh, at our campuses, you knew him, his name was King Brown and King Brown was, it was a marvelous, uh, little man that was powerful in the spirit. And, uh, first time I ever met him, uh, 25 years ago, we'd come near the church. He took my wife and I out to dinner at the nice steak restaurant here near, near the church. And, uh, and, and somewhere in the middle of the day, he said, brother, pastor, that's what he called me, brother, pastor.

I liked that brother, I'm his brother and I'm his pastor, brother, pastor. He said, what size suit coat do you wear? And I said, I told him, I said, well, why, why do you ask? He said, would you do a little, you like this one I've got on? I said, well, yeah, that is nice. He said, guess what?

I got it at Goodwill for $2, $2. He said, why would I spend $200 on a suit coat when I could spend $2 and send the other $198 to a missionary? And I said, well, that's fantastic. And I know my wife was sitting there next to him and said, you ain't going to get your suit coats at the Goodwill. There's no way that's, you know, and then he said, and he held up his foot and he said, do you like these shoes?

I said, yeah. He said, I got them for a dollar. He said, why would anybody spend $70 on a pair of shoes? I said, I was thinking I kicked my wife.

I said, $70, not that bad for you. You know, but yeah, you ain't no, no, I hope she didn't hear that. And, and, and he'd same story, got it at Goodwill. Why would it, you know, and, and so I, King was like this. And I remember one time he was an elder in church. I remember one time he told the session, the elders, he was like, we were, we were going to discontinue some giving to a particular international missionary agency. And he said, he said, he said, he's like, brother, if we stop giving, he said, I'm going to have to divert some of my mission given over to give to that.

Cause it's just too important. And we're like, well, King do, do what you gotta do. And I was talking to him later, you know, I said, King, you do all this missionary giving.

And I said, I just want to, I'm just curious. I asked you, I said, do you, do you, do you also give, you know, generously to the church general fund? I mean, do you give, do you give 10% there first and then give beyond, you know? And he paused, he said, well, brother pastor, he said, uh, uh, well this year I'm giving a little over 20% to the general fund before I do my missionary. And I got to talking to him and he finally admitted, he said that for a segment of his life, he gave 50% of everything he made away. And I came to realize that this retired mailman was one of the biggest givers in the church. And he just lived. He just lived to give like that. Now, some of you are going, I don't know if I want that gift, you know, because that might, God might make me start giving away. If you feel that way, you don't understand it at all. Because the Bible says that you reap in the measure in which you sow and God loves to provide seed to the sower. It's a giant secret.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

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Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. But you see how that's different. God calls us all to be generous, but that's a gift, right? That is a supernatural.

And he looked at you, King, is like, I can't understand why anybody would. Well, let's talk about it. Let's talk about another another gift serving or or sometimes it's called helps. Romans 12 7 if service and serving first 20 years, 12 28, God appointed in the church, first apostle, prophets, teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, helping. So sometimes it's called that.

So I wanted to highlight this because this is supernatural. Every single question is called to be part of serving in some way in their lives, like looking for that's what we are. We're servants, right? But boy, it's a beautiful thing when somebody has the gift of serving. I mean, it is a gift.

They just love it. I'll tell you, somebody in our church has got this. Some of you know Butch Moser. He helps me at the village. He's always just helping me, whatever. And, you know, he running around Sunday morning. Oh, you know, you get some water. We got to get this. Oh, you know, when you go run this, oh, we need a stool over here. Somebody needs it.

He's just running around. And I remember a few years ago, we are at the village campus and it was fall festival night. And the village campus, what we did before COVID, we would set up a hayride. We'd serve free hot dogs to the community. We'd have trunker treats there.

And I think we'd serve about 2000 hot dogs. It's wild. It's chaotic. It takes all hands on deck.

It's so labor intensive. And I'm there, you know, kind of visiting with people. And I'm just thinking, I'm thinking about all the potential problems. You know, the police cars are out there, escorting, you know, directing traffic. Everybody's coming in and butches over there. And he's running around, he's carrying hot dogs. He's getting this, he's getting tables set up. He's going, and he comes over to me and he says, Patrick, I said, look at all these people. I said, yeah, I see him, but he said, isn't this incredible? I said, yeah, this is a special. And he looked at me and he said, this is my favorite day of the year.

And I sitting there going, I can think of some things that might be a little bit better than this. That's a gift. That's a gift. That's a gift. I wish I had time to talk about all these gifts, but let's talk a little bit about the, the, the prophetic gifts or what I might would call them revelatory gifts.

And they sort of a whole package of these that I think fit together. First Corinthians 12, eight to one is given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom to another utterance of knowledge, according to the same spirit, 12, 10 to another prophecy, to another ability to distinguish between spirits to another various kinds of tongues to another, the interpretation of tongues. So prophecy is more the fourth telling than it is the, the, the future telling of the word of God. It is, it is, it is in the new covenant, in the new Testament, the, the, the way prophecy works in the body of Christ is not like it was in the old Testament where the prophets were expected to be infallible. Because if they, if they missed it at all, then they were to be condemned as a false prophet. That's not the way that the new Testament speaks about the functioning of prophecy prophecy and the new Testament is for encouragement and it's for edification. And every single one of us, Paul says, we should be eagerly designed to learn to prophesy. This isn't about some thunderous Jeremiah or Isaiah, like you said, this is like ordinary stuff in the, in the Christian life.

And some people think, well, you know, we need to, we need to be perfect in this. That's not the way new Testament reads. First Thessalonians 5, 20, Paul said, do not despise prophecy, but test everything. Well, why is he saying test everything? Because he's saying you need to weigh words.

They're not, they're not necessarily going to be perfect. We're going to prophesy him perfectly. First Corinthians 14, 29.

Similarly, that didn't come out similarly. Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. So someone says, I think maybe the Lord is saying such and such. And then you let others who have prophetic inclinations go, yeah, that seems like that really is from God. You see, and, and, and of course, this is what Paul means in first Corinthians 13, eight, where he says, love never ends. As for prophecies, they'll pass away as tongues they'll seize for knowledge will pass away for we know in part we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial pass away.

Prophecy is this profound encouragement that comes when someone gets a word to share that expresses the love and purposes, the good purposes of God, and that you're encouraged because you know it is God. I was thinking back in 1999, one of the hardest years of our lives and younger sister Mary who never smoked a cigarette, didn't get the diagnosis of lung cancer until it already spread to her bones. We prayed for her for every day and our hearts at four little children, our hearts were wracked with the pain of it all.

It's a difficult time in life, difficult time in ministry. One of the joys I have in life is playing the piano. I have my own piano now.

I didn't back then. One of the few places I'd play the piano was at my in-laws over at Anne's parents, Bonnie. Her, her mother was a fantastic pianist and almost every time we'd go over and we'd be visiting, we're over there a lot. I'd go sit down at that upright piano and I'd play some, maybe a praise song, maybe a hymn, but during this time, 1999, I, I quit playing because it was the great sadness and I don't know, didn't seem, I didn't feel like it.

Feel like it. So I had a friend and a mentor named Gordon Dalby. And, um, he was in California. He's written a bestselling book, healing the masculine soul.

I consider a classic for transformation for men. And he and I would talk on the phone and pray. And we were talking and I was sharing with him about our sadnesses and what we're facing. And he said, can I pray for you? I said, Oh, I'd love for you to pray for me, Gordon.

And Gordon just talks to the Lord. Like you'd talk to your father. If you were sitting in the room with your father, father, he said, I know you, I know, I know father, he's on the other end of the phone. I know you have some things you want to show Alan. I know, I know Lord, you want to help him.

That's what, what, what is it that you'd like to show him? What would you like to say to him, father? And I just, all of a sudden he said, I just got this image came to my mind.

He said, I don't know if you play the piano or not, or any musical instrument, but I see you sitting at an upright piano and you're not playing. And he said, I feel like the Lord is saying that he wants you to play. I don't know if that means literally play or if it just means keep praising the Lord, even in this sad time.

And I just wept and I told him, I said, Oh, Gordon, I said, I just, I hadn't been playing. And I started praising the Lord, even though we were in a great sadness and it carried me through isn't the Lord kind, but utterance of wisdom is to get a supernatural revelation from God that helps bring the right wise word or solution that helps someone along a word of knowledge, maybe, um, a image, a word, a revelation that will help direct ministry. I was thinking about one of our elders that was praying after one of our services and a woman was praying about some of her anxiety, wanted to prayer about her anxiety. They were praying and nothing seemed to be happening until the elder said, I see a picture in my mind's eye of a little girl in a tree and she looks helpless. And the woman burst into tears and they prayed for her and she began to experience healing for the first time. And afterwards she said it was an apple tree.

I was six years old and I was stuck there and I kept calling out for a long time and nobody came. That's a word of knowledge. It's like, Lord wants to heal and want to do this. He reveals that, um, discernment distinguishing between spirits is a revelatory gift when you can tell what's good and what's evil and whether something is God or if it's of the devil. And, um, and really when we talk about tongues, we're talking about three different expressions of this. There is one form of the gift of tongues in which someone is praying in a known language that they do not know.

And I know people that's happened to them before. That's what happened at Pentecost. There are other times where there is a message prophetically that God wants to share with a group of people. And it is first expressed in an unknown language in a, in a, in the language that no one knows, but someone else there, either the one who speaks it or someone else receives in the same way you would receive a prophetic of this is what the Lord seems to be saying. And then the third expression of tongues is what you think of as just a private prayer language where God prays through you. And, um, so all, all of that's part of revelatory gifts. I wish I had time to talk about all of the gifts of the spirit, but, uh, we've made available a handout.

It gives us a summary of all of the gifts and, um, and we'll make it available online as well. Uh, the spiritual gifts have this incredible, uh, gracious power to change, not just the church, but the world. And so the message of the, of the new Testament about spiritual gifts is that they are for every Christian and every Christian can continue to grow. And so don't try and don't think you have to try to do the ministry by your own power.

When God has given so richly, my new pressure washer is doing the trick, but I'll come back to you later. If I decide to buy the 4,000 PCI, because after all more power is better and I'm praying for more and more power of the Holy spirit in your life, every Christian is gifted. Every Christian can increase in the gifts of the Holy spirit.

And that's the gospel. Alan Wright, our good news message spiritual gifts from the series, higher power. I encourage you to stay with us because Pastor Alan is back here in the studio, sharing a parting good news thought for today.

You're in just a moment. If you've ever thought that being filled with the Holy spirit meant shutting off your mind, you're in for a wonderful surprise. God's word and God's spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and spirit always belong together. The key to abundant life in Christ.

Isn't knowing your Bible. The secret isn't being filled with the spirit. The answer is both word and spirit. Though some traditions emphasize studying scripture and some traditions emphasize the spirit, the path to real Christian growth is the fullness of both word and spirit. As someone once said, all word, no spirit, you dry up all spirit, no word, you blow up both word and spirit. You grow up. When you make a gift of support this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's newest audio album on CD or digital download titled word and spirit.

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It's free and just a click away at pastor Alan.org. Back here in the studio sharing pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day as we continue our teaching on spiritual gifts. Every single Christian has gifts from the Holy Spirit. Now those gifts might at first, you may not even be aware of it. It might be that there's just a gift, one gift of the spirit and it's not operating in some big manifest way, but God's already gifted you. Those gifts can be learned and identified and you don't cause them, but you can thirst for those gifts and you can't ask God and you can grow in your gifts. And so I really want every listener to know this, be encouraged that God wants to use you and you are invaluable in the building of the kingdom of God. So I pray that you will more and more discover your gifts and more and more may the Holy Spirit empower you. Free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.