We Are the Body of Christ

Intro

Have you ever intentionally brought your rain coat with you on a day it is suppose to rain and then failed to put it on when it started raining?

We look pretty goofy standing, soaked in the rain holding our rain coat in our hand don’t we?

We could come up with excuses and rationale for why we don’t have our raincoat on, but ultimately we just aren’t using the tools that are available to us.

Knowing what we know about the Spirit’s work in us to believe, how are we using the tools He has given us?

Do we even know the tools we have been given?

There is no place for APATHY and IDLENESS in the Body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:27 CSB

27 Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it.

The word “now” is a connecting word, similar to “therefore”.

Paul is saying “The body of Christ is the diverse unity of many who are saved by Jesus and empowered to serve in a variety of ways. And NOW/THEREFORE you are a part of this BODY.”

Everyone of us that confess Jesus as Lord are a part of this BODY of CHRIST, individually members of it, and that means we are needed and essential.

There are a couple of attitudes that permeate our church culture.

APATHY- lacking passion and zeal for the ministry of the Church.

I mentioned this last week, but when we don’t see ourselves as necessary or even useful for the ministry of the church in our world we can become apathetic.

We show up, we serve in places at times, we do the things we think we should do, plug into the things that entertain or engage us, but we aren’t excited and passionate about ministry because we haven’t connected our service to the greater purpose of the Body of Christ.

Faith can be about doing things and not about BEING something.

We ARE the BODY of CHRIST,

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

There is no place for apathy in the Body of Christ.

Pursuing the empowerment of the Spirit, finding the unique ways God has gifted us allows us to connect to the mission of Christ for our world, our community, our neighborhoods, and even our family.

Idleness (or lack of motivation)

Maybe you know your giftedness and know the mission of Christ in the world, but you just aren’t doing anything about it.

Perhaps you are distracted, hindered by sin, or disconnected from the body (easy to do in this season of life.)

Idleness is the lack of motivation to “get to work”

It is often rooted in feeling unfit for ministry, or misunderstanding what it means to serve and minister in the body of Christ.

There is no place for idleness in the Body of Christ.

Pursuing the empowerment of the Spirit and engaging in the gifts God has empowered in us connects us to a life purpose beyond the mundane stuff of life and connects us to eternal purposes.

So how should we think about Spiritual gifts?

I want to look at three categories I find to be super helpful in thing about Spiritual Gifts.

Three categories of spiritual gifts:

from Dr. Larry Gilbert at Churchgrowth.com

Super helpful framework for thinking about spiritual gifts.

We often think about gifts as one big pool of gifts, but there seems to be different types of gifts and empowerings that are used in different ways for differing purposes.

1) MIRACULOUS gifts

These gifts get a lot of attention and are often the source of confusion and even conflict in the church.

The gifts of healing, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, words of prophesy, and general miracles are all lumped into this category.

In certain traditions of the faith these gifts play a more central role in the life of the church.

In other traditions, these gifts play a small role or even are considered gifts that no longer exist in the church today.

My goal today is not to break these down in an exhaustive way, but to just to make some general comments about the miraculous ways God empowers His people to serve the needs of others and proclaim His kingdom.

First, an observation: each one of the miraculous gifts are listed here in 1 Corinthians 12 and are seen in the life of the early church.

Paul is intentional about listing them and the early church fathers record their emergence.

Though the nature of the gifts as we see them used today and as we hear them being taught about today doesn’t seem to fully match what we read about in the Bible, it seems to be clear that they have a place in the life of the church even today.

The difference in the miraculous gifts from the other gifts mentioned is that these don’t seem to be given as specific gifts to individual people as THEIR gift.

Rather it seems that these empowerments of the Spirit are occasional, extraordinary, and come in times when God has purpose in using them for His kingdom purposes.

I have heard stories of healing that led to entire families or villages being saved.

I have heard of preachers preaching in a foreign country and suddenly being empowered to speak the Gospel in the language of the people listening.

Miracles are not outside of God’s power, nor do I believe they are outside of His plan.

He can, does, and desires to do amazing, unexplainable, extraordinary things in order to show us just how amazing He is.

We should pray for these gifts, seek them, and trust that He can and will empower us to experience them, but know also that God has a plan and purpose in the working of miracles and the not working of miracles.

2) ENABLING gifts

Gilbert’s second category of Spiritual Gifts is a category available and accessible to ALL who trust in Jesus.

Included in enabling gifts is Faith, discernment, wisdom, and knowledge.

“The enabling gifts provide a foundation for action. They do not describe what you do but rather what you are.” Gilbert

These gifts are not about what you DO, but about what you possess.

Faith is a great example:

Faith isn’t like teaching or administration. Faith isn’t an activity, it is rather something you can have in varying strengths.

Faith in Christ is essential for someone to be saved, but the gift of faith is something we are given by the Spirit to aide us in times of struggle, to strengthen us in times of weakness, and to enrich us in our service.

The gift of faith will see us through the pain of loss or the struggles of battling sin.

The gift of faith will further empower us to boldly speak about Jesus when we get the opportunity.

Faith isn’t a gift on the list of ways we can serve others, it is an available and accessible gifts for all of us to seek, pray for, and recognize when it is given.

The same goes for wisdom, understanding, and discernment.

We are in daily need of these ways the Spirit empowers us to serve and to be witnesses for Christ.

3) TEAM gifts

The final category is the one we often see show up in Spiritual gift surveys and take up much of the lists on ways we can serve the church.

Included in Gilbert’s lists are the gifts of evangelism, prophecy (different from the miraculous gifts above in the way he explains it. not telling the future, but speaking the truth of the gospel into a situation), teaching, exhortation, shepherding, serving, mercy-showing, giving, and administration.

These are fairly widely accepted gifts that make up most of the surveys you may take in discovering your specific spiritual gifts.

The nature of these gifts is active, meaning they describe specific, active ways we can serve others inside and outside the church.

Gilbert says “they are job,activity, ministry, task-oriented gifts. They are functional.”

They differ in relation to the other categories in that they are uniquely given to those in the church in a diverse way.

Some will be teachers, others evangelists, others leaders or administrators, while still others are given hearts bent toward shepherding.

There can, and often will be, a connection in your TEAM giftedness that will relate to your personality, your strengths, your experience, and your passions.

Rick Warren developed the S.H.A.P.E survey many years ago that take into consideration someones abilities, experience, passions, and personalities along with their Spiritual giftedness.

When we think about searching for the unique ways we have been empowered by God to serve His church and the world around us we are considering these gifts.

This is likely not an exhaustive list, meaning all the gifts or variations of gifts are listed here.

But these capture the biblical lists and are broad enough for application in most any person.

The question we are asking when we pursue our giftedness is “how can I better, more effectively, and more beneficially serve the body of Christ in how I am wired and empowered to serve?”

This leads us to vs 31 and the true attitude we must all have when we approach our understanding and application of Spiritual Gifts.

1 Corinthians 12:31 ESV

31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

the purpose of our gifts, finding and using them, is show love, both the love of Jesus and the love we have for one another and the “least of these”.

We must embrace the EXCELLENT way.

1 Corinthians 12:31–13:13 (ESV)

31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love is the motivation for why we pursue the Spirit’s empowering gifts.

Love is the reason we serve, give, heal, teach, lead, help, speak, minister, evangelize, and everything else.

Love is our motivation, Love is our mission, and Love is the movement that God desires EHBC to be.

Embrace the Excellent way.

Discover your gift

Pray for God to move

One Facebook and through text today you are going to be send a link to a Spiritual gift survey through Churchgrowth.com.

I want to challenge each of you to take 20 minutes to go through that survey.

You will have to register your email address, but it is a safe and reputable site.

Once you have taken it and received your results, I want to challenge you to send it to me at

[e-mail]

my prayer is that God will use these surveys to help each of us to find, embrace, and live out the way God has designed us and empowered us to serve.