Why Wouldn't Everyone Want the Gifts of the Spirit? [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God so loves the church, and he so loves each individual, and he so wants the mission to be accomplished that he's given the body of Christ gifts to enable us, to empower us, to equip us to get the job done.

Why wouldn't everybody want the gifts of the Holy Spirit? 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 this series filled as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource today. 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.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. How can you just keep on encouraging people when there's so much bad news in them? Because it's a gift. It's a gift. You want to be an encourager? Ask God to supernaturally impart a gift of the Holy Spirit to you.

We need it, don't we? The gift of giving. This, every Christian is called to give. And every Christian is called to grow in giving because Paul said let's excel in giving. Let's not pick out prayer or Bible study or teaching or leadership and just pick out one of these and say let's really excel in that but not excel in giving. Let's look on giving as if, you know, come up with the bare minimum. A lot of Christians think that giving, they look on it like a slave looks at the law. And they say, well, I got to give this amount or else I'll probably be under a curse.

And then they start trying to figure out ways to give less. Well, you know, I think it's referring to, you know, post-tax. This is my adjusted gross income. And then after, you know, other deductions and so forth, my income's really here. I think that there are some people who tax shelter their stuff because they're trying to hide it from God so that they don't have to pay the tithe on that.

It's not like that. The New Testament teaches we should be growing in our giving. Everybody's called to give. Everybody's called to grow in their giving.

But there are some people that get a supernatural gift of generosity. It's a remarkable thing. Many of you know we had a man in this church who's with Jesus now.

And you're nodding your head. Those of you who know him, I'm going to mention King Brown. I remember the first time I met King Brown, we'd been here about two weeks. He decided to take us, my wife and I, some others out to a nice supper at the old steakhouse here near the church and a nice meal.

And we're meeting King. And somewhere towards the end of the meal, he said, Brother Pastor, that's what he called me, Brother Pastor. He said, what size suit coat do you wear? And I told him.

And I said, why? You mentioned, he said, well, Brother Pastor, he said, you see this jacket that guy, I don't have a fur into his nice tweed jacket or what he had on. I said, yeah, he said, I got this for $2 at a Goodwill. He said, this thing is $2.

I said, why would somebody need to spend $100 or $200 on a jacket like this when I get it for two and send the other $100 to the missionary? And then he held up his foot and he said, see these shoes? He said, aren't they nice? I said, yeah, they are nice. He said, I got them for $1. I said, why would somebody need to spend $50 on a pair of shoes when you get one for a good pair for $1 down at Goodwill and I can send $49 to the missionaries?

And I didn't have the heart to tell him that my granddaddy was a men's clothing store owner and my grandmother would roll over and degrade if I went and got me a $2 jacket. But what I came to find out was that this retired mailman was one of the biggest givers in the body of Christ that I'd ever seen and that his whole life he worked to try to give as much as he could and that's what a gift of generosity do. You know what's interesting to me is I've been praying for people to receive gifts of the Holy Spirit now for at least two decades. Nobody has ever come and asked for the gift of generosity. I've had people ask for houses and cars and more income and I've never had anybody ask for the grace to be able to give more of it away. Why not? Because we idolize money. Wouldn't it be one of the most freeing things in your life to instead of your things managing you, you to manage your things. It's all monopoly money.

You'll turn it in at the end. Might as well have a gift of generosity. The gift of governing or ruling or leadership.

This is a really important gift especially you want your leaders and you want to have a number of this gift in operation. These people have an incredible capacity to see how something should be let. It's not just to say that they've got a charisma that people want to follow although that may be part of it. I think it more by reflection of watching this gift operate in people, it more finds its root where these people often have a supernatural ability to see how something should fit together, the process should work, the program should be administered so that the whole thing can succeed. And people bear witness to that wisdom that comes from them and so this isn't kind of a natural charisma that people have. This is a supernatural unction that people have. I think one of the people on our staff that demonstrates this gift regularly and I'll look to is Pastor Chris. He just will be in context and if I'm trying to think about how something should fit together. Have you ever noticed how in life sometimes you're looking for a really big spiritual solution to something that just doesn't quite fit and then you'll later realize one adjustment in the logistics and it suddenly just opens up right?

You know? I mean like we're sitting here going our church is full, what do we do? And Pastor Chris says maybe we'll do a video venue and I think we could see this kind of thing. And then we've had just in four weeks our total attendance has gone up about 60 people just in the four weeks.

Just why did it open up some space? Well that's just, this is some of the insights from the Holy Spirit. We need this gift in the body so that we succeed in moving forward. The gift of mercy. This is one of the most precious gifts. Some of you have this gift. When this gift drops in on you, you can feel literally what others are feeling. You may have this gift and don't know it because sometimes you'll just be almost overwhelmed with a sense of compassion for somebody and you don't even know why. But this gift is of extreme value because the Holy Spirit knows what somebody else is feeling and so He's in you and He can give you a gift to know what someone else is feeling. And people are so lonely that if there were just one person in this great big world that at least partially understood what they were feeling and going through, it would be transforming to them. But also if you could have this deep kind of compassion, the compassion that made Jesus weep over Jerusalem or weep next to Lazarus' tomb.

What it does, it puts you in such a love connection with people that trust can be born in their hearts. And what it also fuels is the deepest intercession. The very best intercessors are one who have a gift of mercy that will drop into their spirit and they will not be able to do anything other than pray until finally there's a release, the gift of mercy.

It is the deepest, truest compassion. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. In a special bundle alongside the audio teaching, Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire, and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in His love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. 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. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. First Corinthians lists some additional ones. The word of wisdom, sometimes where there's a problem, we need to pray for all those that minister to people, all the counselors, all the therapists, all the even physicians. This is a supernatural gift that helps you see a solution to something that you wouldn't be able to just figure it out in your head. And bring a word to a dilemma that not only can soothe the situation, but can help bring understanding and resolution to it.

And see, God knows the solutions. The word of knowledge, this is not talking about knowledge like education or academic knowledge or accumulation of known things. What this is referring to is that God who knows what problems and needs exist in people's lives, and God who also in his own sovereign freedom chooses to minister directly in different situations and contexts according to his own good pleasure, God knows what he wants to minister to and how and when. And words of knowledge are often given in which the Lord will show that there is a particular area that he wants to minister in. Often this is associated with healing.

And so sometimes you'll hear me say, because people will bring me, they'll say we were praying before the service or get a sense, and maybe hand me a note and say I think God wants to deal with this or answer this or heal this. Three weeks ago I was in a meeting and a word of knowledge was called out for a thyroid condition. A man came up and God touched him and two hours later he came up and testified that he literally felt his thyroid growing back. It had been radiated. I wanted to talk to him afterwards but two days later he came up and he said that his own natural endocrine system was working and that he was feeling the best he had. And well, why would God want to point out?

I don't know. But it makes faith erupt in the heart of the one who's listening. I spoke to a woman at Verge last night and she had surgery on her jaw, she's 17, and had her jaws wired shut for six weeks and had to drink from a straw to stay alive for six weeks. And she said on the day that she got the wires were taken out so that she could open but she could barely open her jaws and she sat down and watched a TV show in which someone had a word of knowledge and said it's the strangest thing but somebody's jaws are like their clothes and they were barely open and God's going to heal it.

And she sat there and she said that's me. And she just received it right into her heart and she began to have it healed and now I saw her last night and she's just sitting there just as happy and healed as can be. I don't know why God does it but that's a beautiful little gift, isn't it? Faith. I love this gift. Faith, when you get a gift of faith dropped in on you, you can not only believe for crazy big things but it's like the assurance of knowing and you're not panicked when other people are panicked about how the things are going wrong on the way to the thing happening. It's just, it's a gift.

Everybody has a measure of faith and everybody who ever becomes a Christian has saving faith but this is a gift that some saints get and they can just, they can just see it. I like getting people with this gift around me. I just, it's marvelous. That's, Marianne, that's your biggest gift.

Marianne by the way, gift of faith. You just come and just see this and we're going to move towards it. And the time when this gift gets dropped into me, it's like I know that this is going to, you know there are times in your life where you're just, well I don't know if we're going to be able to pull that off or not. But it's like in the building addition that we had. We started that process so long ago I can't even remember and it was one of those where how many times we talked about we're going to get something built and then on top of it we got sued and everything. But I just had like this kind of, no we're going to get that built. I never had any, that's what a gift of faith will do.

I'm running out of time. Miracles. This is not just referring to the healing gifts, oh I skipped healing. Healing.

Notice that it's mentioned in the plural. Gifts of healing. Every Christian should pray for the sick and every Christian can be used to minister healing to others but God imparts to some gifts of healing.

And I think why is it in the plural? Why are gifts of healing? Because I think that God actually will impart gifts in particular areas. Maybe some of you understand what I'm talking about where it may be that God uses this person to heal this kind of sickness. He uses me to heal souls.

And there's some other areas that I just would want to get somebody else to help join. It doesn't mean that we don't all pray for the sick, we do, but there's a gift of healing. We need the gifts of healing in the body of Christ, don't we?

Wow. When people get healed and people realize that God is good and that God is at work, it draws people to the Lord. Miracles related to this, there are some people that God uses not just for something like healing but signs or wonders or things that just let people know that God is at work. And discernment. This is tricky because we're expressly forbidden to ever judge people. So you need to really don't become a judge and a critic of people and say you got the gift of discernment. That can just be judgmentalism. But discernment is essential in the body of Christ. What it enables the empowered person to do is see into the Spirit. Because there are people that look like they're being motivated by God that aren't being motivated by God.

And there are people that you might not recognize have a lot of good and yet you don't recognize it yet and God wants us to see that. I think that this has been one of the most important gifts to get around me because in leadership I'm always making decisions about people and who are you going to relate to? Who are you going to put in this position?

How are you going to? And my wife has a gift of discernment. As long as I know she's had a gift of discernment.

And I'm humble about this to go back and say most every major mistake I made she told me it was going to be a mistake. And I've learned to listen to people that really have discernment. Is this of God?

Is this good? Some years ago a leader in our church came to me and said he had a dream that God had appeared to me and offered me the gift of discernment and I had turned it down. He said did God come to you and offer you the gift of discernment and you turned it down? Those are the kinds of things the elders do for me.

They bring stuff like that to me. I said of course not. God's never offered me something I'd turn it down. Who would I be to turn down a gift of the Holy Spirit?

Of course not. And over the next few days I thought about it and I thought about my heart on this matter and I thought well yeah I don't remember God coming to me specifically but I don't really want the gift. I mean the last thing I want is to see another demon. I mean I just don't need to detect another problem. And I realized later that the reason I might have said no was because I tend to think that if I see a problem I've got to fix it. And that's my own dysfunction because just because you see a problem doesn't mean you're supposed to fix it. It might be you're supposed to see the problem because you're supposed to turn and go this way away from the problem or don't appoint the problem to a place of leadership.

You know what I'm saying. The last one to mention here and surely I'll come back in some future messages to talk a little bit more about. It's so controversial back in the 70s the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues. It became controversial primarily because there was so much attention given to tongues as if it were the primary gift or the evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And that's not I don't think the way the scripture reads especially when Paul says well to all to all speak in tongues. You don't have to have tongues in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

But it's a wonderful little gift. It comes in three different manifestations. One is the most rare that I've only I've never actually to my knowledge been in a room where it happened but I do know two or three people who have experienced this personally that God used them this way and that is to speak a known language that you do not know. That's what happened at Pentecost. They were speaking languages they didn't know and people from different parts were hearing the gospel in their own language.

Well that's an extremely powerful thing and I know two people personally that God used in this way. The second way is what we often call a message of tongues which is like a prophecy and that someone gives speaks an utterance and an unknown language. It would just it would just sound like gibberish to somebody who wasn't initiated in these things but but if it's spoken in a group it is designed by God to be of encouragement either to an individual or to the group prophetically. And so what happens is it someone either the person who spoke it or someone who is the one who's speaking it they they begin to get a sense of this is what this message was all about.

It's not like translating something from English to French or something like that. It's like getting a sense in your spirit about this is what God is saying and so that's what comes out as the interpretation. And the third way that tongues is given to us is as an unknown language that is for personal prayer and this is a precious little gift that enables us when we don't know how to pray to let the Holy Spirit pray through us. So maybe some more about that in some future but but it's it's if it's a gift that you thought well that's kind of weird or I don't you know blah blah blah.

I really encourage you to put that aside and ask God for it. Now all these things said it's interesting that there's sort of these two things happening at the same time with regard to spiritual gifts. We are clearly told that the gifts come as the spirit wills so you don't get to decide that you're going to have a certain gift. Now that said he also Paul also says plainly eagerly desires spiritual gifts which is to say that at the same time we have to be quite satisfied in whatever God gives us and do not be obsessed over the gifts you do not have. Do not be obsessed over the gifts you do not have. It will rob you of your joy. It will make you feel substandard and don't let anybody else tell you that you're substandard because you do not have a particular gift. The whole point of first Corinthians 12 13 and 14 is that we need all the gifts.

I don't know if they'll get that on the radio if that emphasis there but like what happened to his voice. But I really it's really really important a lot of people end up just rejecting the things of the spirit because they're so concerned why don't I don't I don't have that gift. That's just not even a thought to God.

But at the same time ask him. And when you get a seed of a gift use it just by my observation but also seeing scriptures that tell us to fan into flame the gifts of God. You might just have only the smallest little bit of a desire. I should pray for this sick person that might be a gift that's getting ready to operate. Use it. Use your gifts. Ask him for gifts.

Ask him today. Why wouldn't everyone want the gifts of the spirit. We read about in scripture it's from the teaching in the series and filled and encourage you to stay with us. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word.

Thankfully God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit in a special bundle alongside the audio teaching Pastor Alan has also written a booklet both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit but will nourish inspire and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in his love and power discover how to be filled with the spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love joy and power. The Bible 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 call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website Pastor Alan.org. So Alan if maybe I've been resisting this thought or maybe didn't totally understand it and I do I want to maybe pray a simple prayer. How would that prayer go?

What would my next steps be? Well I think the first thing to do is just to let God help you be rid of any misconceptions or fears about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and let your soul that like ask the question why wouldn't everybody want the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Let your soul just be aware of how much you do need the equipment that God gives you. So see your life as one that you are to be armed for battle you're to be ready for life and you're given supernatural equipment with which to carry out the Christian calling to live this life. So hunger for that right and then be aware that God gives gifts as God wills. It's not us that makes the gift happen but then you're a child and he's your father and you ask him Lord would you would you help me with this? I'd really like if you've got a burden you want to teach people don't give me the gift of teaching right and all of the gifts what we've been saying is all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are good and all are available so there's no magic formula and there's no religious prayer needed. You are a child you ask your father Lord I really would like this and you lift it to the Lord and open up your heart. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.