Spiritual Gifts

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FINDING YOUR PLACE AT CANADIAN VALLEY BAPTIST CHURCH
"SERIES ON SPIRITUAL GIFTS"

Romans 12:4-5 "For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. "

Spiritual Gift defined: A spiritual gift is a unique attribute that every believer receives from the Holy Spirit at the time of salvation by grace for use in the body of Christ.

Acts 6:10 "And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake."

Luke 21:15 "For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist."

1 Corinthians 12:8 "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;"

1 Corinthians 12:10 "To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:"

In Romans 12:4-5, Paul writes, “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” Each part of our physical body has a specific place to serve and a particular role to play. The same is true in our spiritual life as well. Each believer, child of God, or member of God’s family has a specific role, place, and function in the body of Christ.

A spiritual gift is a unique attribute that every believer receives from the Holy Spirit at the time of salvation by grace for use in the body of Christ. These gifts are given as divine appointments for each believer to serve in some way in His Kingdom. It has been said that God may give one person only one gift while He may give another several gifts. However, most people have more than one gift[1] Therefore, when one follows the admonitions of Scripture he will find that there is no substitute for finding ones gift or gift mix and serving in the body of Christ so that, “…ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” ^{^[2]}

Since it is the will of God for us to discover our gifts and operate in their arena of service let us take a look at these gifts that have been given to the church. Paul begins to outline the diversity of these gifts in, 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, 28-30, Romans 12:3-8, and Ephesians 4:11. Peter wrote in, 1 Peter 4:11, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”

Three Classifications for Spiritual Gifts:
Supportive, Serving, and the Miraculous

Therefore spiritual gifts could be classified into three groups according to scripture: supportive gifts, serving gifts, and miraculous gifts.

The supportive gifts are as follows: faith from 1 Corinthians 12:9, discernment from 1 Corinthians 12:9, wisdom found in 1 Corinthians 12:8, and finally the gift of knowledge from 1 Corinthians 12:8.

The supportive gifts serve as a catalyst for one to be used in the Kingdom of God. They are gifts that every one is to desire and to use in Christendom. For instance take the gift of faith.

Notice verse 9 of 1 Corinthians chapter twelve where Paul mentions - faith. One might call this gift the gift of believing -- an extraordinary faith. There are some believers who have a definite spiritual gift to believe God in extraordinary ways. This is not saving faith. The Bible teaches that every person has saving faith or the ability to exercise saving faith.

Paul said in Romans 12:3 "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." Notice it says that God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. If you want to believe in Jesus and be saved, God has given you the faith to do that. Anybody who is lost can, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, be saved. That's not a spiritual gift, it is something that God gives to every human being -- the ability to trust Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

This gift is also not a reference to the kind of faith that every believer has. Jesus said in Mark 11:22 - "have faith in God." In Galatians 5 we are told that faith is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. He's not talking about that kind of faith either. Every saved person has saving faith, but he also has faith that can grow and mature. All of us can trust the Lord and can learn to trust the Lord greater and greater. Our faith in the Lord can grow. II Thess. 1:3 the apostle Paul said, "Your faith is growing exceedingly." We all ought to pray that our faith might grow and mature. Would you like to have more faith, learn to trust God better? In Romans 10;17 the Bible says, "Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." If you want your faith to grow then give yourself to a study of the Scriptures. Study the Word of God. As you study the Scriptures and see what God has done and as you see these wonderful promises that God makes to us in your Word, your faith will begin to expand and grow.

So, there is saving faith, the faith that all believers have that can grow. But here is a special gift of faith. A special gift to believe God. The gift of believing is the God-given ability to believe God for extraordinary things--extraordinary faith in God. It is mountain-moving faith. The people who have this kind of faith are the folks who can look at a situation and though it may look impossible they just believe God can do it. They just believe that the insurmountable can be done. They believe that though there's a river there and though there's a mountain there, there's no river too deep and no mountain too high for God to go through or to scale over. These are the dreamers, the visionaries, the people who are willing to attempt the impossible for God. You need a lot of those kinds of people around a church.

One might note that the devil sees to it that there are enough people around the church who are the skeptics and the pessimists. There are always some folks who can figure out how it cannot be done. There is always that group of folks out there who are skeptical and fearful and think it cannot be done. Therefore, you need many people in your fellowship who have the ability to believe God for big things.

You read about some people in the Bible who had this kind of faith in God. There's a whole chapter about them in Hebrews 11. There you will find these people had an extraordinary faith in God. It says there, "Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." That right there is extraordinary faith in God. It is the kind of faith David had. David took a meal to his big brothers who were in the Israeli army and when he got there, the whole crowd was shaking in their boots, including King Saul himself. David said, "What's the matter with all you folks?" "Haven't you heard? There's a big giant out there and he's wanting to battle with us and we are all afraid of him." David said, "Who does he think he is?" All the other Israelis were looking at Goliath and saying that he was too big to hit. David looked at him and said he is too big to miss. So, David took off and got a slingshot and five smooth stones and he said in 1 Samuel 17:45-47 "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts,… for the battle is the LORD’S, and he will give you into our hands." David hit him right in the head, he fell to the ground, and he chopped his head off. That is extraordinary faith in God. I thank God for people like that.

We have Christians today who just believe God for miracles. People who have that kind of faith are the kind of people who can plan future programs. They can devise new methods of reaching people for the Lord. They are the kind of people who can just believe God to do big things. We have many people like that in our church here. I thank God for you. This gift is a gift that sets the atmosphere in a church for God's miracle-working power to be unleashed. Therefore, you may have that gift of believing God for big things. The gift of believing.

In 1 Corinthians verse 8 Paul says, "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom and to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit.” These two gifts - the word of wisdom and word of knowledge - are what you might call feeder gifts. They feed the preaching, the teaching, and the encouraging gifts.

A Word of knowledge. Knowledge is the acquisition of information. The Holy Spirit bestows the spirit-given ability upon certain people to acquire and arrange information. Knowledge is a spiritual endowment give by God to assimilate and communicate bible truths and spiritual knowledge for the benefit of the body of Christ. Phillip had this gift as he shared and enlightened bible truths about salvation with the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-38.

We see the gift of knowledge in the work of the apostles as the Spirit of God inspired them to write the Bible. Simon Peter was by trade a fisherman. He was considered by the educational establishment of that day as an unlettered and ignorant man. He was not, of course, but by trade, he was an angler. Yet, you will read in your New Testament that there are two letters that have the name of Simon Peter -- II Peter and I. In II Peter 3, you will find an unbelievable account about the future destruction of the world. It tells about the world being on fire and the elements melting. Scientists in our day have examined the words of the Apostle Peter and found that they are remarkably accurate based on what we know about modern nuclear fission today. Where did a fisherman get knowledge that could be read now in the 21st century and scientists say that it is accurate. It didn't come out of Simon Peter's head. The Spirit of God gave him a word of knowledge. The Holy Spirit does give people today a word of knowledge -- the ability to acquire and arrange Bible truth.

The first gift mentioned here is the word of wisdom. King Solomon definitely had the gift of wisdom. We know from scripture that God gave it to him after he asked for it. He had the God given ability to identify what God’s will was in a way that encouraged his followers to identify the necessary steps they could take in different situations. So what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? Knowledge is the acquisition of information. Wisdom is the application of information. You can know things. You can acquire information, but you may not know how to apply that with wisdom. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit gives people the ability to apply God's truth in a practical way to the circumstances and situations of life.

We see this in several ways in the New Testament. When Stephen, one of the first Baptist deacons, was giving his testimony for the Lord in Acts 6:10, the Bible says they were not able to resist the spirit and the wisdom by which he spake. God gave Stephen that kind of wisdom. The Lord Jesus promised that He would do that in Luke 21:15 - "I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." God has promised supernatural wisdom to His people. That is why in James 1 the Bible says if you lack wisdom, ask God and He will give it to you. You have access to the knowledge of God in the Scriptures and the wisdom of God to apply the truth of the Scriptures to the daily circumstances of your life.

In the book of Acts as the early church was making decisions. All kinds of problems arose in the early church. In Acts 15, they had a major problem in the church. There was disagreement about how it could be worked out. Finally, James stood up and said, folks, I believe this is what we ought to do. The Bible says in Acts 15 that it pleased all the people. He spoke a word of wisdom. Then it says in verse 28, that they concluded, "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." When God gives a word of wisdom, people know that is it. That is how it works. That is how it fits.

Therefore, God has given to His church a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge. These two gifts are foundational and under gird other spiritual gifts so that people who are given the spiritual gifts to operate in or speak a word for the Lord with knowledge and with wisdom.

Discernment is a God given gift that enables it’s holder to discern between truth and error. Furthermore, it enables one to know whether something is of the Lord or not. A wonderful example of this is found in Simon Peter when he questioned Ananias and Sapphira as to the motivation behind their gift in Acts 5:3. Paul had the gift of discernment, which is shown very well, in his confrontation with Elymas the sorcerer in Acts 13:10.

So what is the gift of discerning? The word, "discerning," means to be able to make a distinction between things. It means to be able to discriminate, to know the difference between things. The spiritual gift of discernment is the God-given ability to distinguish between truth and error - the divine and the demonic. That is a very important gift. The reason we need discernment is that the Bible tells us that the devil is a trickster. The Bible tells us that the devil is a deceiver. The devil wants to mess you up. He wants to counterfeit the things of God and confuse you. He would like to take you off after something that is a counterfeit instead of the real thing. It happens all the time.

In II Cor. 11, the Bible says that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light and that his ministers transform themselves into ministers of righteousness. That is saying that there are many faults out there. Many things simply do not come from God. You have to be very careful. Just because somebody walks into a pulpit with a Bible in their hand does not mean they are of God. Just because they are a pastor of a church in the city of Yukon or Mustang, doesn't mean they are of God. Just because they are getting a crowd of people doesn't mean that God's blessings are upon them. Do not ever get the idea that the size of the crowd necessarily means that it is of God. I will tell you who is getting the biggest crowds in America today it is the Muslims. That's the fastest growing religious movement in this country today. That is just an ism that is not of God that is of Satan. You do not say just because it's big or because somebody is quoting some scripture that it's of God. We need discernment. We need to be able to distinguish.

Some people in the church have that ability to discern and tell the difference between truth and error. It is kind of like spiritual radar. They are just able to pick it up. They can sense when something is not of God.

There is a natural discernment that everybody has and you call that horse sense. Even lost people have some discernment about them. They can tell the difference between things. There is a sense in which every believer is to learn to discern. The Holy Spirit within us, the Bible says, is an anointing and the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God helps believers to be sensitive to things that are not of God.

In I John 2:20 - "But you have an unction from the holy one and you know all things." He is saying that you have the Holy Spirit. Have you ever listened to something and it did not sound just right to you? Have you ever heard somebody preaching on television or radio and it was kind of, as a spiritual alarm clock went off in your heart. That is the discernment of the Holy Spirit that he has been given to you. You had better listen to the discerning voice of the Holy Spirit. There is an amount of discernment that all believers have.

Then there are some believers in the body of Christ who have a special spiritual gift of discernment to distinguish between that which is true and that which is false.

People who have this gift of discernment have to be very careful. If you are not careful when you have this gift, you can become prideful. If you are not careful, you can be harsh in your criticism. You had better watch it, you may get into character assassination and you may find some things you think are wrong sometimes when they really are not. You can make mountains out of molehills sometimes and go off on tangents. You have to be careful if you have this gift of discernment. However, thank the Lord for those in the body of Christ who can distinguish truth and error.

Therefore, the supportive gifts are just that they are gifts given for the support of other gift and used to complement ones service for God’s Kingdom. This study will not look at these supportive gifts in an in-depth manner because they are not gifts that were given denoting one specific role in the local church.

[1] Peter Wagner, Discover Your Spiritual Gifts (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2002) 14.

^{^[2]} Romans 12:2