Gifted, Part 3

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer unravels the mystery surrounding spiritual gifts. You say, well, how can I tell what my spiritual gifts are? How can I tell?

I know what some of you are thinking. You're like, the aptitude test, or like the Myers-Briggs spiritual version. How do I get that? Okay, well, spiritual gifts, I would say these three words, your affinity, what you're passionate about, your ability, what you're naturally good at, and the needs in the church and the world, that is where your spiritual gift really lies. That's where your calling is. Happy Monday and welcome to Summit Life with Pastor and Author J.D. Greer.

And as always, I'm your host, Molly Vitevich. You know, I think everyone wants to make their life count. They want to use their gifts and abilities to change things for the better. And thankfully, as Christians, we've each been given a spiritual gift that we're supposed to use to advance God's kingdom. But how do we figure out what that gift is and how to use it? And how is a spiritual gift any different than a natural talent? Well, that's our topic today as Pastor J.D. continues our study of the Holy Spirit titled Rushing Wind, and he called today's message Gifted.

We are going to look at spiritual gifts, okay? So here we go, First Corinthians 12. In the second week of the series, I explained to you that the power that Jesus drew upon to do all that he did in ministry did not come out of his own godness, but the power that Jesus accessed in ministry was the power of the Spirit. Luke, the writer of both Luke and Acts, goes out of his way to show you that. And the reason that he does that is because if Jesus did all that he did in ministry out of his own godness, then that leaves you and me at a significant disadvantage, right?

I mean, because I'm not the son of God, born of God like Jesus was born of God. With that in mind, First Corinthians 12.1. Now concerning spirituals, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. Verse four, now there are varieties of gifts, graces, you might say, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of service, but the same Lord. There are varieties of energema, energema where we get our word energy from.

It means energies, activities, right? But it is the same God who empowers them all for everyone. So you see what he's doing?

He's kind of stumbling through trying to describe what these are. He's like, well, they're like manifestations, they're spirituals, they're energies, they're serving, but it's the same God doing all of them too. Each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, okay?

That's our text. Now I've got, you know, pastors always seem to do things in threes. It's like, you know, the Trinity's threes, so therefore all of our sermons should have three points, right?

I got six for y'all this morning, so boom, all right? Number one. Number one, a spiritual gift very simply is Jesus pursuing his mission through the members of his church. Number two, every believer has one.

Number three, the gifts are given for the common good of the church. Number four, no believer has them all. No believer has them all. You see in verse seven, to each was given something that everybody else needed. God didn't give all the gifts to anybody. Jesus had all the gifts. Jesus had all the gifts. Jesus had them all.

He did, but nobody else after him got them all. Down in verse 12, Paul's going to use an analogy, a metaphor to press this home. Every member of the body, he says.

You can look down your Bible and see it. Every member is unique. Every member performs a different function. God designed the church like that so that each member is dependent on the others. When God wants to work in the world, he rarely does it directly. He does it through the members of his body.

That's what the whole analogy is for. When God wants to work in the church, he does it through the members of his church, which means that when you separate yourself all from intimate connection with your church, you separate yourself all from access to the power of God. That's what that means. And it means that you've got no right to sit around and ask for God's power if you have disconnected yourself from an intimate connection with the local church. There is no lone ranger spirituality, period. There is no I am complete in Christ, and therefore I don't need the church. You are complete in Christ, but the way God continues to work in your life is through intimate connection with his body, the local church. No believer has given them all.

He distributed them to make us dependent on one another. Number five, real church only happens when all are contributing. First Corinthians 14, 26. When you come together like this, church, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

Listen very closely. Paul's expectation of a worship service is that everybody come with something to give. According to Paul, a New Testament worship service is when three things are manifestly present, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God. The Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God. Churches like ours, mega churches, baptistic churches, we really get the Word of God thing. So you have a 50-minute sermon and the Word of God, and you sit and you take notes, and that's awesome.

That needs to be there. But then the Spirit of God, you're like, where does that come in? I guess the Spirit's kind of working in the preacher a little bit and telling them what to say.

I hope that's happening. People of God, well, people of God just sit there. That's not a New Testament worship service. A New Testament worship service is when the whole place is contributing. They're all filled with the Spirit, and they are all contributing to what's happening there. The joy of the Christian life is not when you come like a reservoir and receive. The joy in the Christian life is when you are giving and operating in the Spirit so that you are contributing as well as receiving. Paul says this, verse 8, for to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom. Wisdom is insight into the will of God about things that are not necessarily clear.

I mean, there's a lot of things in the will of God that are very clear. Do not murder. You come to me like, I'm thinking about murdering this person. Should I do that or not? I'm going to be like, do not murder.

It's right there. So wisdom, though, is all those areas where there's not really a chapter and verse. Should I marry this person? Should I go to school here?

What's the best way to handle this situation? That is the spiritual gift of wisdom that God gives, not to everybody, but to some people in his church, to be able to ascertain his will and to be able to speak it in. That's the spiritual gift of wisdom. To some, he gives that.

To another, utterances of knowledge. Think of that with Jesus when he's talking to the woman at the well, and he's like, hey, go get your husband and bring him here. And the woman's like, I don't have no husband. And all of a sudden, boom, light goes off in Jesus' mind. That's the Holy Spirit. And he says, that's right, you don't have a husband.

You've had five husbands. That's the utterance of knowledge. To another, faith by the same Spirit. That's not like believe in Jesus for salvation kind of faith, because we all get that. That's faith to perceive what God wants to do in a situation and to ask him to do it. I've got the faith to believe that he wants to do this, and I'm going to ask. That's where you see miracles and healings.

I know that he wants to heal. I know he wants to do this miracle, and I'm going to believe God for it. To a certain extent, I'm going to believe God for it. To another prophecy. Prophecy is when you speak the Word of God or the will of God into somebody's life. Sometimes it's with the chapter and verse. Sometimes it's more like what I said a minute ago with wisdom where you're perceiving this and saying, I think God wants you to know this. To another, the ability to distinguish between spirits. That's the ability to know when somebody's speaking for God if they're telling the truth or not. To another, various kinds of tongues.

To another, the interpretation of those tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. Now, real quick, this is one of six different spiritual gift lists found in the New Testament.

None of them, none of them give the same list. There are some overlaps, but there are at least 22 different gifts noted, and no list exhaustively covers them all. There is the gift of, don't try to write this down, there is the gift of the apostle, the prophet, the teacher, miracles, healings, helps, administration, tongues, interpretation of tongues, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, distinguishing between spirits, gift of the evangelist, pastor, teacher, servant, encouraging, contributing, leadership, mercy, celibacy, mercy, marriage, and everyone's favorite, celibacy. Those are the 22 gifts. 22 gifts, six different lists, everyone giving different gifts, no list containing all of them. What does that mean? Why did I just point all that out to you?

There is no exhaustive list. And you think about it wrong, when you think about a chart, like an alphabet, where you've got these letters, and you've got only the set of letters, and you're giving them out, you've got a B, you've got a C, you've got D, you've got A, that's the wrong way to approach spiritual gifts. A spiritual gift is whatever God wants to do in the world through his church.

That's why Paul stumbled at the beginning to give them a name. He's like, there's spirituals, there are graces, there are manifestations of servant, there's spirit manifestations. Whatever the spirit wants to do at the moment for and through the church in pursuit of the mission of Jesus. That's why Peter would lump all the spiritual gifts into just two categories in 1 Peter 4-11, those who speak for God and those who serve for God. That's how he would describe spiritual gifts, whenever God wants to speak through you, whenever he wants to serve through you. Sometimes the gifts are more permanent, you get one for life. I would think it's that way with my exhortation and preaching and teaching gift that he's given me. I certainly hope he doesn't take it from me next week, because that would make an awkward relationship with the Summit Church here.

I think I have that one for life. Sometimes, however, the gifts are temporary. Sometimes the power of God comes upon you for a moment or a time or a season to do one thing, but then not again.

Sometimes it's a gift for life, sometimes it's a gift for a moment. Sometimes, in fact, often, I would say, gifts are in rhythm with your natural abilities. What I mean by that is the Spirit of God takes some natural talent that you have and supercharges it and anoints it for use in his kingdom. Other times, more rarely, I would say, but sometimes, these are completely foreign to your natural abilities. I've known more than one, in fact, several people who were not natural public speakers at all, who became great powerful preachers.

That's rare, but it happens. On the other hand, I've known people who insisted they had the ability to bless others in the Spirit and song, and then I heard them and thought, you should make a joyful noise to the Lord and yourself and no one else. At that point, I pulled my distinguishing of spirits card, and I'm like, God, give me the ability to distinguish spirits, and you're not singing that in front of the church.

I'm going to do that right now. Usually, they're in line with your natural abilities, but not always. You say, well, how can I tell what my spiritual gifts are? How can I tell? I know what some of you are thinking. You're like, the aptitude test, or the Myers-Briggs spiritual version.

How do I get that? There are those out there. You can go online. You can take them.

They're not altogether bad. Personally, I've told you I have a bias against them because my wife, in college, when we were dating, took a spiritual gift aptitude test of the 22, and the number one ranked gift she had was, wait for it, celibacy. That was her number one ranked gift, which means I'm in a lot of trouble if that gift is accurate. I don't know if the spiritual aptitude test is going to be your go-to. I would say that, really, what you find is you find it is the confluence of three different things in your life.

This is how you determine your spiritual gift. Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, talks about a great company being one that has discovered the confluence of the two. You know what a Venn diagram is?

A Venn diagram is three different circles, the point where they come together. He said, if a company can figure out what it's passionate about, what it's good at, and what there's a market for, that's the sweet spot. Spiritual gifts, I would say these three words, your affinity, what you're passionate about, your ability, what you're naturally good at, and the needs in the church and the world, that is where your spiritual gift really lies. That's where your calling is. That is the place where your natural, your spiritual gift lies. That's where your calling comes out of.

I would just start to ask yourself, what are you really passionate about? What are you passionate about beyond what everybody else seems to be passionate about? What vision do you have for ministry?

What natural, what opportunities has God given you? That is the source of understanding how you personally are called, because not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it, but there's a handful of things due, and God made you and the church to care about those and to give you opportunity for those, and we want you to lead us out in those, which leads me to number five. Is that where we are? Yeah, number five.

Yeah, number five. Spiritual gifts give a wonderful diversity to the church. Spiritual gifts give a wonderful diversity to the church. You see in verse four, there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. The analogy of the body there in verse 12, the body is one, different members.

Write this down. The spirit gives the unity to the church, his gifts give the diversity. His spirit, his love of the gospel, joint salvation, that's what gives the unity to the church. Not music style, not skin color, not educational background, it's the spirit gives the unity, his gifts give the diversity. You were given various passions, various interests, various insights, various burdens for ministry, and here is the thing I will tell you as a pastor, listen, hear me out on this, that creates tension in a church. You want to know why? Because some of you want to know why nobody else in the church seems to care about this thing, and I get your letter.

You're like, why don't we care about this? Let me be very clear, I want to hear those letters, because one of the things that we believe is that the best ministry ideas are in the congregation. We really do, because God didn't give me all the ideas he gave them to you, and so we want to hear those ideas, but you should understand that the reason you feel so passionately about that is because God gave you that gift, and we want you to lead us in it, but don't look at the church and say, well, what's wrong with all them, because they don't see this. It might be that God has given you that gift to lead in. One of our visions as a church, listen, is not for all of you getting involved in all the ministry ideas I come up with, because I've only got a limited number of gifts.

Our vision for this church is that we would catalyze you to be engaged in ministry everywhere, outside of this church, within this church, according to the gifts that God has given you. We don't want to be the ministry doers, we want to be the ministry catalyzers. In fact, you ever heard the old thing where pastors complain that 20% of the people do 80% of the work in the church? That's always true. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

Here's another angle on that, though. What if 20% of the people are supposed to do 80% of the work in the church? What if 20% of us are gifted to do that, and the other 80% are to be gifted to take the kingdom of God into the community, into places where there is depth, and there is need, and there is healing, and to see the power of God go there?

39 of 40 miracles and acts happen outside the church. That's what we want to see you empowered to do. So yeah, we have to do nursery, we need parkers, greeders. Those are chores that we do here at the church. But see, we want you to discover that gift and to lead us out in it, because there are places of injustice all throughout our city.

There are 250 children that need to be fostered in Durham alone. There is problems in the business community that need godly examples of people who will take the gospel there, in law schools, in any number of places. There is a place that God has equipped you and gifted you and wants to send you out there. See, and we want to be a part of helping send you.

There are 6,600 unreached people groups with no gospel witness at all. And see, my prayer is that God would raise up a ton of you to that be the passion of your heart, and to say, I'm going to leverage my gifts and my talents to be out there, and I'm going to bring part of my church with me. Does that make sense?

It creates a little tension, but it's the right kind of tension. All right, number six, last one. Here we go.

This is a really important one. Spiritual gifts do not equal spiritual fruits. Spiritual gifts do not equal spiritual fruit. You want to point that out?

I point out two reasons. Number one, I have met so many people who are so unbelievably effective in ministry. Man, they could, I mean, they could share Christ with a golf ball and cause regeneration to happen in that golf ball. I mean, they could preach the lights out of a place.

They can bless others through psalm. They have wisdom about theology and insight, but you get close to them, and they are discontent. They are idolatrous. They are hard to get along with. They are jealous.

They've got just, they're impatient. I mean, it's, what I've learned is that spiritual gifts are not the same thing as spiritual fruit. Here's the other reason I know that. There's, watch this, there's two great chapters on spiritual gifts in the Bible. First Corinthians 12, First Corinthians 14. Those are your two big chapters. In between those is what?

Not a trick question. First Corinthians 13. That's right.

All right. First Corinthians 13. And what's First Corinthians 13 about? The love chapter.

That's right. Now, why did Paul put that love poem in the middle of First Corinthians 12 and 14? Is it because he wanted like a musical interlude in between the two?

You know, it's, it's, is that it? Was he wanting to give you like something to do at your, your sing at your weddings? He's like, hey, you know, they're gonna need something to read at their wedding, so I'm gonna throw away First Corinthians 13.

I'm just in here. They have, no, that's not why he did it. He did it because spiritual gifts are useless unless they come from a heart of spiritual love, and love cannot be, listen, love cannot be produced by spiritual gifts. Love is produced by the gift of God in Christ.

Some of you are seeking to mature spiritually by gaining greater spiritual gifts, and the way that you mature spiritually is by plunging more deeply into the gift that God has given you in Christ. When you begin to unpack spiritual gifts, you're going to be able to begin to understand, see, where does love come from, Summit? Where does love come from in your heart for God?

Where does it come from? This ought to be core Summit gospel stuff. We love him. We love others because he first loved us. It is as you plunge more deeply into the love that God has given for you that you will begin to use all your gifts, spiritual and natural gifts, the right way.

When you begin to understand that God, Jesus, who had all the gifts, natural, all the gifts, natural, all the privilege, all the position, all the talent, and what did he do? Did he hold on to them? Did he use them to elevate himself? Did he create nice houses for him to live in and create all great opportunities for him? Is that what he did?

No. Though he was rich in all gifts, for your sake, he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich, and when that begins to captivate you, what you'll begin to do is start to look at your gifts, your talents, and you'll begin to say, how can I pour out my gifts for others, natural and supernatural, the way that Jesus poured his out for me? There are 100,000 children right now this week around the world who died of starvation last week, 100,000. 22.2 billion people that have little to no access to the name of Jesus.

The country of Yemen, I heard about that one this week, eight million people in Yemen, eight million people. You know how many believers there are? 20.

20 believers in eight million. That's those two rows right there. That's all. That's all. What would Jesus do if he had your gifts? What would Jesus do if he had your money, your opportunity, your talents? You can't do it all, I know that, but what gift has he given you?

What passion has he given you? How are you to leverage your gifts in love for the world the way that Jesus leveraged his gifts for you? That's why 1 Corinthians 13 is in there.

That's why it's in there. Don't think about the spectacular Spidey power. Think about God's gift and then become a follower of Jesus to live for others the way that he lived for you. God's going to lead some of you into racial reconciliation. He's going to lead you into workplace ministry. He's going to lead you overseas. He's going to lead you to church plant. He's going to lead you to work with children here and teenagers. He's just going to lead you to pour yourself out, all of you, to each is given the gift for the manifestation.

Why don't you bow your heads with me if you would at all of our campuses and let's pray together. Lord God let us be overwhelmed with the unspeakable gift that you gave us in Christ. Summit as I do every single week, listen, ultimately our message is not about things you need to do for God.

It's a story of what he's done for you. We don't want you to come because God needs something from you. God has something to give to you. The forgiveness of all your sins, a new life in Christ, eternity in heaven. You have to choose to receive it and when you choose to receive it, it's going to begin a life where you respond to him giving yourself away the way that God gave himself for you. If you have never received Jesus, if you've never received that gift, do so right now. Have you accepted that free gift and surrendered your life to Jesus?

If you haven't, don't wait another day. Visit us online at jdgreer.com to learn more about what it means to be a follower of Christ. You're listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of J.D.

Greer. We're here on your radio station every weekday and on the web 24-7 to help you dive deeper into the message of the gospel and to live a life of joyous, reckless, audacious faith in Jesus. And we try to make these resources as available as we can to reach as many people as possible.

J.D., something a lot of our listeners may not know is that there's always a free download on the home page of jdgreer.com. And in addition to this freebie, we also have a set of devotionals to go along with our current teaching here, right? Yeah, it's something we are proud to provide.

It's a lot of times people's first connection point with Summit Life. It's something that your generosity actually makes possible. Typically, it's a free resource that's related to our teaching or a resource we're featuring that month. This month, we're focusing on understanding the Holy Spirit, so we have a download with 10 brief devotionals. Like we've said a lot of times around here, we love devotional resources because they offer a quick way to set the tone for your day.

And these 10 are completely free. Each one is going to have a scripture passage, a devotional thought, it's going to ask some reflective questions that'll help you think about application in your life, and then most importantly, it'll prompt you to pray. This is a free companion piece that goes along with the longer form study we're offering this month, and that's called Rushing Wind. That's going to walk through various Bible passages that go along with the messages you're hearing, and that comes with reflection questions, and scripture passages, and devotional thoughts that'll take you a little bit deeper, and some prayer prompts that'll help you pray these things into reality, into your life. That's a 20-day interactive devotional, and you can get it now with a donation at jdgrayer.com. A copy of this new devotional comes with our thanks when you give a gift at the suggested level of $25 or more to support this ministry.

The book is titled Rushing Wind, just like our current teaching series. Your donation is so essential because you're actually the ones who make these daily broadcasts possible. When someone is scanning channels and they discover Pastor JD's teaching, they have you to thank for that. So help us bring this gospel-centered teaching to the radio and web, and give today by calling 866-335-5220. And if you'd like a copy of the 20-day devotional, remember to mention the title Rushing Wind, Understanding the Holy Spirit. That number again is 866-335-5220, or you can give and request the devotional book online at jdgrayer.com.

I'm Molly Vitovich. Listen again Tuesday as Pastor JD tackles one of the most debated topics in Christian circles, the role tongues and prophecy play in the modern church. Join us Tuesday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.