October 22, 2017
Gifted 2 Serve – Week 8 – Gifts Review
Gifted 2 Serve – Week 8 – Gifts Review
Today I want to do a quick review of where we have come so far in our series Gifted 2 Serve. It has been 2 months since we where talking about this so I thought it might be a good reminder for usYou are a gift. God has given you to the church as a gift to accomplish what he desires. He has not just gifted you with stuff, He has made you the gift
The way this works is that whatever God calls you to do requires His power and work for you to do it. It requires dependency on the Holy Spirit.
There is a problem with service, if you have not been set free by Jesus, service will be a duty and a struggle not a gift. The motivation for service is not guilt or need, the motivation for service is because you have been set free! You are free! You are free to serve Him
He doesn’t just set you free, He sets you free to freely serve.
So Christ gave these gifts to the church, for a purpose.
What is that purpose? So that the body may be built up.
When is that accomplished? When we ALL reach unity, and become fully mature, to full measure of the fullness of Christ.
When will that be? When Christ comes back to take us home. Not until then.
3 kinds of gifts in the Scriptures there are
- people gifts – Ephesians 4 (Given by Jesus)
- Skill gifts – Romans 12 – abilities (given by God)
- manifestation gifts given for a particular time and purpose by the Holy Spirit to do His work in the moment. (1 Cor 12-14)
Important note about gifts: All people gifts and skill gifts are also commanded to every believer. Each gift has an underlying command to each and every believer.
3 purposes for each of these gifting.
- To do – We are not given gifts and then told to not use them.
- To be an example – When we serve by the power of the Holy Spirit it is exciting and people want to join in.
- To equip other to do – You can help equip others to all do all of the commands by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Each of us grow one another… each of us can learn and bring something to the body. This is the priesthood of all believers – 1 Peter 2:5,9
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5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ… 9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
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We need one another to balance each other out.
Each of us is different, If we were all the same then we would be redundant. But God makes us diverse to reflect His love. When we expect someone else to act the way we want them to we are making our opinion more important than the way God has made someone. This is a dangerous place to be. Let me give you an example. I am not an administrator. If you ask me to plan the details of a large project and organize everything, there will be some serious issues. That is not my gifting. But guess what, it is my wife’s. She is an amazing gifted organizer. Now on the other side, Do not ask my wife to sit down and talk for hours on end about life issues. That is not her gifting, She is not a shepherd, but I am. That is why we are a great team. While I will spend hours talking with people she is busy getting things done. The problem is when we expect people to be something they are not, and we get frustrated by that we can tend to forget
Ephesians 4:2-3 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Unity, faith, knowledge, maturity, mission. We need all of these things to grow into the fullness of what Christ desires for us to be. Look at what this will create.
14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
Maturity, Stability, Wisdom, Depth, Discernment: These are the traits of what God desires for His church to look like.
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
So how do the saints minister to the body?
Answer: by speaking truth about God and about Christ in love. Both are crucial. Knowledge and love.
If we speak anything else into one another’s lives but the Gospel we will not place Him at the head and ultimately we will not fulfill God’s calling in our lives.
Read Romans 12:1-13 – Pg
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Paul is in essence saying because of this Good News… This is how we live it out.
Paul says Therefore! I urge you… The word urge is PARAKALEO means to call to ones side. To strengthen to encourage to comfort. In Fact the Holy Spirit is called the PARAKLETE the encourager. So Paul is begging us to come along side Him as the Holy Spirit come along side us.
Holy and Pleasing – Not used for common work but made special for a special purpose.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We cannot serve rightly until we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. What is it that changes the way we think about ourselves and others? The Gospel.
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
As we do that we recognize that even our faith is given to us by God. When was the last time you prayed “God give me more faith?”
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Before we get into the details of this list there are a few things I believe about this passage.
1. Not an exhaustive list
2. Examples of how we are to use our gifts to glorify Him.
3. Anything God has made you good at is a gift from God to you to be used for His service.
If we treat this as an exhaustive list of God’s gifts we will miss the bigger picture of the context of what He is saying.
See what He says, if your gift is prophesying then prophesy “IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR FAITH”. What does that mean? In order to understand that we must define terms. What is faith? Let me give you a simple but powerful definition of Faith. “Believing in and Acting on what God has said.” Faith requires action! Faith is measured by faithfulness!
- If your gift is prophecy, then prophesy what you have put into action in your life. Don’t preach it unless you live it!
- If your gift is serving, then do it, SERVE don’t just talk about it. Look for opportunities.
- If your gift is teaching, don’t just sit there find a place and opportunity and begin teaching.
- If your gift is encouragement, when I bring someone to heart encourage them.
- If your gift is is giving, be generous find as many and as much opportunities to exercise your gift.
- If it is to lead, then be faithful in your leadership.
- If you are gifted to show mercy, be happy to show mercy.
The book of James is all about this concept. Faith without action is dead. Paul might have summarized it this way… Gift’s without service is worthless!
Paul calls us to faithful service with the things God has gifted us to do.
What are those things?
Maybe you can sing or play and instrument, Maybe you can lead worship, Maybe you can sew, Maybe you can play with kids, Maybe you can play a sport, Maybe you love to throw parties, Maybe you are a born salesman, Maybe you love to post stuff on facebook, maybe you can …. you fill in the black. How can you use that to bring Glory to God?
Communion: Today we get to take communion.
I want to ask 2 simple questions?
1. Have you been set free, have you accepted His forgiveness?
If Yes, then this is for you. Jesus came as a servant to rescue us from ourselves.
2. Do you know what God has set you free for? He calls us to ue the gifts and the talnets we have to honor Him. Sometimes it is hard, but it is always worth it.
Today let’s focus in on what God has done for us. He has called us, He has given us skills and abilities to be used in His service, to glorify Him.
For more from this series you can CLICK HERE.
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