God Gives You Gifts

We are in a series of sermons entitled “God Loves You.” We are talking about ways that God shows us the love that he has for each of us. Last week we focused on God’s grace. You can find that sermon on our You Tube channel if you happened to miss it.

This week we will focus on that “God gives us Gifts.” Our scripture comes from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11.

12 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, rand to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

Please pray with me…

Did you know that you are gifted? If you are like me that may be the first time anyone has told you that. We have been given gifts from God because of the love that he has for each one of us.

For some of you these gifts have been lived out throughout your whole life. For others these gifts have helped you be successful in your chosen profession. Some of you may have just discovered the gifts God has given to you for the church.

There also may be a lot of you that wonder what gifts have God given me to use to serve him. No matter where you fall on this spectrum it is OK. It is OK because God loves you as you are desires for you to allow him to help you to discover the ways that he wants you to serve him.

For me I never saw myself as a leader or to have the ability to be a pastor but as I look back, I believe that I always have been given the abilities to lead. But I was a hurting leader, which often can be the worst kind. I got angry easily. I would beat myself up when things didn’t go my way. But over time God has healed me. I am by no means perfect, but I am much better than I was before God transformed me into a better image of myself. It is after this occurred that I felt called to not just know about God but to become a pastor for God.

(Transition)

Spiritual gifts can be a confusing part of our Christian journey. That seems to also be true for the people of Corinth. Paul begins this scripture by telling these believers in Corinth that he does not want them to be uninformed concerning spiritual gifts.

This meansthat in his time spent with them and through his dialogue among them he must have believed they were lacking in some understanding in this area. Paul will many times bring up a subject in one of his letters because it is a subject of dispute within the community.

They seemto be having disagreements about this issue. They are struggling to understand this part of their belief system. We are not only saved by God through grace, but we are also given spiritual gifts by God.

Some scholars believe because of the way that Paul words this letter it wasn’t that they didn’t believe they had gifts to use. It was because some people believed that their gifts were more important or showed greater faith because they had these gifts.

We have Paul bring up what would be some gifts that people would probably like to have: speaking in tongues, interpreting the speaking of tongues, healing, the ability to prophesy. He brings these up at the end of this portion of scripture.

He may be trying to show those that are reading that these gifts are no more important than any other gifts. These gifts don’t mean that you are better than someone else. After all, they are gifts God has blessed an individual to have.

(Transition)

Some look at our first reading as the Apostles stating that they were to good to serve food to the widows. The wording used can give us that interpretation when it says “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.”

It is the rest that shows how important they view this task; they want people performing this task that are “full of the Spirit and wisdom.” I read this to mean that they want people who would enjoy serving those around them and know how to do this task correctly.

Quickly back to our main scripture we have some gifts listed we haven’t mentioned: the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith. In other places in scripture, we find service, teaching, preaching, and helping.

Unless we see these as general titles for ways to serve communities of faith and the communities around us, we know that this is also not an exhaustive list. We know that we need gifts they didn’t need because our lives are way different than the lives of those living when this was written.

We have technology as a gift, music ministries, which they also would have had that is not mentioned. We could spend time coming up with many other ways not mentioned in these scriptures that are ways that we use the gifts given to us by the Spirit to serve God and our communities.

God wantsus to use the gifts that he has given us to serve him no matter what those gifts are. You would not want me to serve tables or cook the food. Trust me, these are not my gifts. But there are those in the church that would do great at that and would enjoy that.

The pointis that God has given each person in the church various ways for us to serve those around us in the church and outside of the church.

(Transition)

We also find that God will intensify our gifts or give us gifts we didn’t know we have through the Holy Spirit. An example of this could possibly be Bezalel, I know what you’re thinking, whose he?

He is theman that God put in charge of building the original tabernacle while the Israelites were in the wilderness. Exodus 31 begins with these words

“The Lordsaid to Moses, 2 “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship.”

We can assume that Bezalel didn’t go from not building things to all of a sudden being in charge of God’s house. He most likely was good at building before, but God filled him with the Spirit because he needed additional insight to allow for him to build the tabernacle as God desired. God intensified his gift by having him receive insight from the Holy Spirit.

There also may be times that God has the Holy Spirit create a gift within us that we didn’t know existed before. When we look at the disciples, they didn’t see themselves as preachers and evangelists. We know that they struggled with that identity. They saw themselves as fishermen or a tax collector. It was Jesus that brought out of them the gifts that God had given them.

It may be that the gift is there from birth, but it is through our understanding of Jesus as our Lord and Savior and us being filled with the Holy Spirit that our gift become intensified or created.

(Transition)

This could be because the Spirithelps us to have the faith to trust more in our gift given to us by God and to use it in its goodness for the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is our helper in this decision-making process. It is the Holy Spirit, God within us, that leads us to either receive a new gift or to have our previous gift or gifts intensified.

We become better than we were before at what God had called us to do. We have each been created by God with our own unique personalities. No two people are exactly the same in their physical and mental makeup. Each one of us has unique traits that lead to us having a unique set of gifts from the Spirit.

(Transition)

There is an assessment that is used in business and in the church that shows this I think better than any other. It is called Clifton’s Strengths, some of you may know it as Strength Finders. This assessment has 34 themes that are different strengths a person may have.

A person will usually receive a list of their top five. They list the odds of the same person having the same five strengths in the same order at 1 in 33 million. Meaning, the possibility of someone in the same church having the exact same strengths in the same order is virtually impossible.

This is whydiscovering what God desires from us can be difficult. We can’t just look at someone else and recognize that this is what we are supposed to do. It can often take time and discernment to discover what God wants us to do.

We have each been formed in a specific way by God. Each of us is unique. It is through spending time with God and listening to those around us that we can discover how God has formed us, to serve him and the community.

The more we spend time developing our faith the more we receive glimpses of others through scripture living out their gifts that the Spirit has given them. This will help us discover that even though our gifts may be different it takes faith and boldness to live out the gifts that we have been given.

(Transition)

When I look back, I can see how God laid out the path for me that led me here today. I was given opportunities to be a part of the church service from an early age through being an acolyte. The pastor during my teen years had me be the liturgist and read the scriptures in preparation for the sermon.

I had been serving God from the front of the church for most of my life. It just was in ways that I didn’t recognize were leading me to becoming the person that I am today. God is often using our past to form us into the person we are today.

(Transition)

It is important that we always keep in mind the reason we are given these gifts. Verse seventells us that these gifts have been given to us by God for a reason. They are given to us to serve “the common good.”

They are given to us, for us to serve God, those within the church, and those outside of the church. As our mission statement tells us, they are given to us to show love to all people.

We may benefit from our gifts, but they are not for our benefit. Meaning we are not given gifts to stroke our ego or to make us believe that we are superior to someone else. We are to use our gifts for the purpose of serving those around us.

The early followers of Jesus were called to make disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. This means we are to use our gifts to benefit those around us, those like us, those we don’t like, and those not like us.

We are calledto use our gifts for the benefit of God and everyone that walks our planet. There is no one that is left out. This also means that we are to use our gifts only for good. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism had three simple rules he has given us to follow.

They are do no harm, do good, stay in love with God. We are to use our gifts in such a way for us to live out these three simple rules. One question we should always ask is “am I hurting someone by doing this?”

If the answer is yes, then that should be a sign to you that you probably shouldn’t be doing it. That question alone should lead us to be staying in love with God and doing good. We are to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus.

I brought up earlier one of the reasons that some believe that Paul included this in his letter was because some people were acting as if their gift was greater than another person’s gift. They attempted to make themselves superior to someone else because of the gift or gifts they exhibited.

God does not rate our gifts. God does not place one gift above another. Each one of us matter to God and each one of us have a gift that is important to the kingdom of God.

(Transition)

Where doesthis leave us? We have looked at where our gifts come from. We haverecognized that the Spirit provides gifts to all people that believe. We have made the point that God doesn’t put any gifts above another.

It leaves us with why Paul wants the people of Corinth to not be uninformed about spiritual gifts. He wants them to not be uninformed because it is vital to the church that all attenders of a church use their gifts to serve God and the community.

We have all been given ways for us to serve God and to serve those around us. Let us in the days and weeks and months to come work towards discovering how we as individuals can work together to us our gifts to help the church become all that it can be within our community.

And if you need help with discovering your gifts or how the church can use your gifts to serve let’s set up a time where we can talk about how God wants to have you help him.

Let us pray…