Spiritual Gifts I [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Paul says, I do not want you to be uninformed about the spiritual gifts, because otherwise you're like a Christian that's trying to do the stuff that Jesus said you're going to be doing and that you're called to do as part of the body of Christ, and trying to do it by your own power is not going to work. Thanks, 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. Are you ready for some good news? You are gifted. Just think of that. In Christ Jesus, as part of the definition of who you are, you've been given gifts in the Holy Spirit. And every single Christian can continue to receive gifts of the Holy Spirit and to grow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We're talking about the power of God in every aspect of the Christian life. And tonight I want to talk to you about the spiritual gifts. So let me read several passages, the two primary places where the gifts are listed in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, the first place, verse one. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. Verse four, there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, there are varieties of service, but the same Lord.

And there are varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom. To another, the utterance of knowledge, according to the same spirit. To another, faith by the same spirit. To another, gifts of healing by the one spirit.

To another, the working of miracles. To another, prophecy. To another, the ability to distinguish between spirits. To another, various kinds of tongues. To another, the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. And then in Romans 12, where there's some intersection of these gifts, but also some different that are mentioned. Verse six, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, in proportion to our faith.

If service in our serving. The one who teaches and his teaching. The one who exhorts and his exhortation. The one who contributes in generosity. The one who leads with zeal.

The one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. And then two other texts that I think they're very important when you're thinking about the spiritual gifts. And this is first Corinthians 14, one pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. Eagerly desire, eagerly pursue what it means. And then the words of Paul to Timothy first Timothy 4, 14, do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy.

When the council of elders laid their hands on you, practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. Well, believe it or not, I may have found one household chore that I sort of a little bit kind of, maybe a tad like, I'm not saying I would rather do it than play golf, but it's just something about it is kind of fun. And that's the pressure washing, you know, in my life and pastoral ministry, almost everything, you know, it's slow going addiction doesn't get cured in a minute and marriages don't get restored overnight. And saints don't mature in a day, but there's something about power washing that, that you just knock that grime and mildew off. And it's just gone just like that.

And it's like, that feels pretty good. Something that gets clean quick. That's the pastor's dream come true stuff getting clean quick. And so I have a little history with my power washers.

I do not want you to be uninformed of power washers. I lived in this house. My family raised our kids in this place. It had a beautiful slate sidewalk, old slate sidewalk and a slate patio in the back. And you could clean that thing and mildew grow back in about 10 minutes under those big shade trees. And when it got a little bit wet, that mildew was like ice. And I used to worry that somebody's going to fall on that sidewalk. And I was the one that fell, fell down, fell on my finger, still can't bend it all the way down. So anyway, I'm always battling that mildew. And I, so I got the cheapest, smallest little power washer that you could get electric one.

I got one and I would take it as long as you put it within about six inches of that slate and, uh, and you worked one foot area, you know, you could get some of it off. And I did this, I spent hours of my life, hours of my life wasting it on the, on the 1500 PSI that's pounds per square inch of pressure. And I was too cheap. I got the cheap one. And so eventually I said, I gotta, I gotta upgrade this. And so I bought another electric version that was 1900 PSI and it was better.

It was better. I actually had some wheels. You could pull it around this one. You could get about a foot or two away and clear away some mildew and stuff, but it's still kind of like, so we moved to another house and, and, and where we live now is brick. So it's got vinyl trim around it. And, uh, and I noticed that vinyl trim was, was getting mildew and I found out, I found out, uh, I found out my wife, she'd, she doesn't like mildew on vinyl trim.

She doesn't like it at all. And so, and so, uh, I, I, uh, recently she said, maybe you could hire somebody. I was like, hire somebody to do the pressure. I looked into it, got ready to hire somebody.

And then I just started surfing around. What would a better pressure washer cost? And a long story short, I went and bought a 3,300 PSI power washer. And this one, y'all, this baby will work. This baby, you, I mean, it's knocking that stuff off.

I mean, three times as fast as the other, and it gets up to the second story for the first time ever. I power wash the corner of the second story trim at my house is now clean. I that's, I did, I just wanted to say that cause I didn't want you to be uninformed as to power washers. Uh, and I also segue from there to say, Paul says, I do not want you to be uninformed about the spiritual gifts because otherwise you're like a Christian that's trying to do the stuff that Jesus said you're going to be doing and that you're called to do as part of the body of Christ and trying to do it by your own power is not going to work. And, and, and also use my silly illustration power washer because my experience and gifts of the Holy Spirit has been sort of like a progression where you can continue to experience greater power and greater effectiveness in the gift. So if gifts of the Holy Spirit are, this idea is new to you, I want to introduce you to the gifts of the Spirit. If you have walked in and flowed in gifts of the Holy Spirit for many, many years, I want you to hear what Paul is saying to Timothy, let it be fanned into flame.

Do not neglect that. And I want, I want you to consider maybe the Lord is urging you to seek out from him gifts that you maybe have just some tickle in your hearts. Like I would really like to be able to help people in that way. Well, I hope that today you'll ask the Lord for that as we have a shorter sermon, uh, theoretically, and we're having testimonies at all of our campuses, including, including here today. And so let, let me just dive into this. And first let's talk about what is a spiritual gift. Uh, first Corinthians 12, one again, now concerning spiritual gifts, that is literally translated. If you were just to bring it over literally from the Greek, it's translated now concerning the spirituals in verse one, right there doesn't even use the word gifts, just the spirituals. And it's very interesting that I could talk. I could spend the whole, the whole day just talking about the power of this one little, little verse that says primarily you need to first know this about the gifts of Holy spirit.

They are spiritual. 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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That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastoralan.org. This teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. They are not natural human talents that have just progressed in your life. This is a spiritual phenomenon. Some people that love God, know the Bible well, believe and teach that we are bipartite, that we're soul and body. I believe from my study of scripture that we're spirit soul and body.

It was called a tripartite view of humanity. Now we're one, we're one, but we're also, we're a physical being. So you've got flesh and bone and blood and you've got a brain that sends electrical impulses and you have endocrine hormones running through your body. All this is physical stuff that's part of the body. And then you also have a soul that I like to think of it as like the mind, the emotions, your personality. You are much more than what you are physically. You have the capacity to think, to reason, to imagine, to use your intellect, to be rational, to communicate, and you have a complex personality of who you are. So your mind, your will, your emotions, your intellect, all of that's part of what I think is the soul. But the Bible says that we once were dead and now we're alive again.

What does that mean? What was actually dead? I mean, before you were a Christian, were you physically dead? No. Was your mind completely dead?

No, no. So what is it that's been made alive? Well, I think what has been made alive is that we were dead spiritually. And when you accept Christ, you are born again, regenerated theologians call it, and you become alive spiritually. 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 you. So there is, there is, you could think of the body which could experience pleasure, maybe a warm sunshine day and, and, uh, and, and, and you're, you taste a delicious milkshake. You're you, you're riding along and you're convertible, the winds blowing through your hair and it's like, that's pleasurable. That's where 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 is 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 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 spent a lot of time in our culture training bodies, or at least some people do. And uh, 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, educate your fans. I love the intellect, sharing 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.

They're 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. So it's 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 theme 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. Uh, I'm going to start with one that you don't, you don't hear much about, uh, 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 that some, 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 a, was a marvelous, uh, little man that was powerful in the spirit. And the 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 dinner, 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, the pastor. He said, uh, 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 like this one I've got on? I said, well, yeah, that is nice.

King. 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, other $198 to a missionary? I said, well, that's fantastic. And I know my wife was sitting there next to me 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, anyway, no, no, I hope she didn't hear that. And, uh, and, and he'd same story.

Got it. The 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 met 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 because it's just too important. And we're like, well King, do, do what you got to 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 ask you, I asked you, I said, 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, uh, he policy said, well, brother, pastor, he said, uh, uh, well this year I'm given 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. I don't know, 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. 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.

It's about the beauty of balance. Embrace the fullness of God's word and his spirit and grow like never before with word and spirit, you'll grow up and you'll be helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries, you'll be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries.

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I think they're probably these two areas primarily come to my mind. One is to say, well, I'm reluctant to ask for the Lord's will to be done totally because he might send me to Africa. And the other is I'm reluctant to want to receive the Holy Spirit because, well, that's total control that I'm giving over. What's going to happen then? But really, I like what you say, Pastor Alan, and this is a way to close here today is with that comes the understanding and the desire.

It does. And you know, Paul is essentially saying to us in 1 Corinthians, at least these two things, I really don't want you to be ignorant. I don't want you to be uninformed about spiritual gifts. So one of the things I think that for a lot of people, and this was the way it was for me, for much of my Christian life before I'd had much teaching about spiritual gifts.

I just, I mean, I knew it was in the Bible and it was mentioned, but I just didn't have much teaching. So that's part of what I'm wanting to do here is make sure that we understand the spiritual gifts so that maybe you're going to recognize that you have some spiritual gifts that you hadn't really named before, or maybe it makes you hungry for more. And that's the other thing, as Paul says, to eagerly desire spiritual gifts. It's not something that we just wait on and just say, well, maybe God will just drop this in. No, I think you, you most certainly, you can ask God, you can learn, you can grow. So we're going today and in coming days through all these gifts of spirit, and I hope that you'll find yourself continually encouraged by some of the stories and maybe find yourself in there and maybe become more hungry and ask the Lord, Hey, Lord, really like to have a gift, maybe of encouragement or ministry.

We always want to keep saying this. The point that Paul's making is we all have different gifts. You don't have to have a particular gift to show or manifest that you've been filled with the spirit. You receive differently and you manifest gifts differently and God uses you differently and hallelujah for that. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.