I believe everybody has at least one gift but Pastor Lane says it’s several gifts from the Holy Spirit, and so now when we get those gifts, I don’t know if it’s when we get born again or maybe those gifts are in there and they are just dormant and over time we develop and activate those, but spiritual gifts are not natural gifts. Okay, you know you can have a natural ability to play sports or something like that, but the spiritual gifts, it takes the power of the Holy Ghost to work through you. They’re Supernatural and we’ll talk a little bit about that tonight. 1 Corinthians 12:4
Spiritual Gifts From God – 1 Corinthians 12:4
So, thank you all for coming here today, I appreciate your time being here and before I start I just I just want everybody to know that God loves each and every one of us in this room and I’m not trying to be political when I say this statement, but your life matters. Your life matters, and again, I know with political things, but I don’t want that and I’m telling you what, in our database we have our Kingdom Builders Group and as I was sending out the reminder messages to the group, I just started looking at everybody’s picture.
Man I just really felt, I just started praying for you all and I was like, “God bless Your people, these are Your people, these are Your sheep Lord and Father, just use me to help them, whoever comes up here, to feed Your flock Lord and I just felt the love of God for each and every one of you, and I know God loves you and we just sometimes don’t really understand the depth.
I don’t know if we ever will until we get to heaven how much God loves us and that your life really does matter. Sometimes we fight depression. Sometimes we go through difficult times and we don’t maybe necessarily feel that or think that but for Jesus, you know He loved us so much. He thought enough of us to die for us in our worst state while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us, and I just felt the compassion of the Lord and the love of the Lord for you all in our church family.
I pray for you all but I just really felt a special anointing to pray for you all today. When I was looking at that, there’s something about a picture, you know, when you look at a piece of paper and it’s just black and white that’s one thing, but, man, when you put a face and name together, I’m like, “Lord this is these people they’re souls.” You know, I mean we’re not just numbers, we matter, your life matters to God, just want you to know that, amen.
So, open up with a prayer here and then we’re going to get into our lesson tonight but I want to try to quit no matter where I’m at maybe about 8:15 or so because I want to pray. I want us to pray that God would stir the gifts up that’s in us because somebody needs your gift, Church! Whatever that gift is, somebody needs it, and we’ll talk a little bit about that tonight.
So, Father we thank You for everyone gathered. Lord, please anoint the word as it goes forth. Father God, thank You for the wonderful worship and how we’ve sensed Your presence tonight Father. You said where two or three are gathered in Your name that You’re in the midst, so Lord, we acknowledge Your presence here tonight.
Father, I bind every demonic force and power that would try to hinder the move and work of Your Spirit Lord. Let Your word go forth with demonstration and power of the Holy Ghost Lord. Father, we don’t lean to the arm of flesh Lord, but we trust fully and holy in You Lord, in Your Word and in Your Spirit moving in us and through us in Jesus name, amen.
All right, so,I’m going to cover just recap just a little bit here of what we covered last week and then what I’d like to do if we get this far is go over at least five of the ministry gifts tonight okay? This is not an expository teaching on these gifts. I just want to let you know about them and know where they’re at because I heard somebody say this one time, “Exposure creates appetite.” When you’re exposed to something, it will create an appetite, especially if you like it.
I was exposed to ice cream at a young age and as you can tell, I’ve created an appetite for it, amen, but so the more we’re exposed to something, the more that we can have a desire for it and create an appetite for that. So, the more that we are exposed to the Word of God, the more that we can desire those things because the Bible says for us that we are to desire spiritual gifts.
Once you taste of that good Holy Ghost like sister Vicky’s talked about, once you taste of these spiritual giftings that God has placed in us, and once the Lord uses folks… I’m telling you, if you’ve ever led anyone to the Lord, if God has ever used you in any way to pray for someone and they’ve been healed or to witness, there is no feeling like that in the world. it is the greatest fulfilling thing that you can ever experience in your life.
Sister Sarah back there, the Lord has used you two times majorly at your job. God has his people in the right place at the right time. The Lord two times literally raised people almost from the dead. I mean the one person was basically brain dead and they were ready to harvest his organs and the Lord moved on Sister Sarah back there to anoint him with some oil and pray. Now she didn’t have the olive oil. She used some machine grease or something on there, but praise God, you got to use what you got when it’s anointing.
That’s exactly right, it was anointed, whatever, I don’t care what it is and the Lord raised this man up. Wasn’t it like the next day or was it like within an hour or two after you prayed sister? 15 minutes! That’s what God can do. And then, the other person was the football player that literally everyone in America saw this man basically die on the field and how long was he in the hospital there a week or two? Five day, oh five days, and guess where he ended up at? Where she was at!
God used her. Isn’t that wonderful now and again? I know Sister Sarah is humble. It’s not to exalt her, but it’s to exalt the Lord and how He can use us no matter what situation that we’re in. Now thank God she had the boldness to let that spiritual gift of mercy and compassion, that gift of healing to flow through her. Wonderful!
This isn’t just for pastors and church leaders,this is for the body of Christ. Thank God He had placed those giftings in Sister Sarah and she was at that hospital and led by the spirit to pray for these young men and they lived. Praise God! Isn’t that good? That’s worth coming. We could quit now, Church.
Okay so spiritual gifts, let’s talk about those a little bit tonight. I’m gonna walk around amongst my peoples out here. I’m gonna bring my notes out here. Spiritual gifts does not mean that you are spiritually matured, okay? This is what we covered last week, right? Let me ask you theologians out here, What is a sign for our spiritual maturity, Pastor Lane?
So we don’t want you flaky. I’ve said this, we don’t want you nutty, but we want you fruity, okay? We don’t need any flakes in the church. We don’t need any nuts in the church. We need some fruit in the church, amen! So brother, if I say you’re looking awful fruity today, that’s a compliment, isn’t it? Just say thank you because there’s some love, joy, peace, goodness, meekness, kindness, gentleness, patience, self-control.
I don’t like the self-control one, amen. Okay, so bearing fruit is this really real spiritual sign of maturity? I’ve seen people get saved and they will they get, they’ll like prophesy or something right off the bat. I’m like, “how did that happen?” But the Bible says the Spirit gives the gifts as He wills, right? So, and again with fruit, it takes time to develop. You know a fruit tree doesn’t grow overnight, right? It takes time to grow and develop, so does our spiritual gifts.
When we get these giftings, we have to cultivate these gifts. We have to learn and grow in them. We have to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit. We have to learn how to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice right because sometimes we might miss it. Sometimes we might have a thought that comes into our mind to think, “Oh this is God,” but it it may not be, so it takes some time, doesn’t it?
We have to learn to develop it, and the more God uses it, the more you’ll learn, and the more you’ll learn how to operate in that. Sometimes God might give you something to say and you know you’re new in this, you might want to jump up and say something, but you know what you’ve got to learn to wait. Sometimes God will say, “Wait!” Right brother Joe Haire? He does that to you, don’t He? God will give you something, but you’ll say, “I couldn’t say anything at that time, He just told me about it.”
So we have to learn to develop that and mature in our lives. Spiritual gifts are designed primarily for the building up of the body of Christ.
