I’m so thankful for the mercy of God, the grace of God and tonight, like I said, I’m just going to do an introduction to spiritual gifts. It’s not going to be anything in depth. but we’re just going to mention these giftings, and, at a later time, maybe myself or other ministers can do a little bit more in depth teaching on the gifts.
Powerful Spiritual Gifts – Romans 12:3
I don’t want us to be ignorant, as the Apostle Paul said, of the spiritual gifts. We need to know about them, unfortunately many denominations do not believe in the gifts of the Spirit.
Some people believe that spiritual gifts and tongues and prophecy and things like that died when the last Apostle died, but Pastor Lane, I don’t know, was it a couple months ago in here, went through the church history and told how the the Holy Spirit was present in the gift of tongues speaking in tongues was all throughout church history.
I mean, you just went through from the early church all the way up to present day, and so we just want to cover some of these topics, these spiritual gifts tonight. I’m by no means any expert on this, but we’re going to just at least bring them to your attention, and I pray that it would cause a thirst in your life to study to seek these out and to desire.
The Bible tells us to desire spiritual gifts, amen, and so I want to have what God wants me to have. Now, I’ve heard some folks say I got all nine gifts of the Spirit, you know pridefully, and it’s funny, and I personally don’t know of anyone that can operate in all nine gifts of the Spirit but, maybe there are some folks.
I don’t know, but the Bible says, and we’ll talk about this a little bit, that the Holy Spirit is the One who gives us the spiritual gifts as He wills. Now, if He will someone to have all nine spiritual gifts, He’ll give them all nine spiritual gifts, but actually there’s more than nine spiritual gifts, so we’re going to talk about that a little bit tonight.
So, tonight, again, this is not a jump and shouting Hallelujah message. It might end up that way, I don’t know, but I like to discuss things to get you thinking on things because I believe that’s the job of a teacher, and I don’t even call myself a teacher, I’m just a talker, so, however God wants to categorize me, that’s fine, amen.
I just want to be used by Him in whatever capacity He chooses me to be used in, amen. So, if it’s nothing more just to bring attention to what His Word says, I’m happy with, just a sign pointing, amen!
Okay, so tonight I want to talk about just the basic spiritual gifts. We may not cover all of them, but there are more than nine spiritual gifts in the body of Christ, depends on who you study. It depends on what you study. They categorize these in different ways, like manifestation gifts, motivational gifts, power gifts and all these kind of things.
I’m not going to get into that, that’s again, maybe, we might at a later time, but what I like to do tonight is at least mention the majority of the spiritual gifts in the Bible, in the New Testament specifically. I’d like to define what a spiritual gift is. I already gave you the answer to that, One who gives spiritual gifts.
Then, lastly, what is the purpose? What are the purposes, or what is the purpose of spiritual gifts? Now, obviously God gave them to us because He believes we need them. When Jesus left this earth, He sent the Holy Spirit, right, to come and on the day of Pentecost especially, the Holy Ghost came and people knew about it.
Amen, it wasn’t some secretive thing, but a spiritual gift, and, again, it depends on who you look up the definition from and where you look, but it’s this is kind of a general definition of spiritual gifts. It is a special Divine empowerment bestowed on each believer to accomplish a given ministry God’s way according to His grace.
Spiritual gifts, you could say, are a gift of grace. Spiritual gifts are abilities that God uniquely gives to those who believe in Him. So, spiritual gifts are not for unbelievers they are for believers. They’re for Christians. They’re for God’s people, okay? And, they’re different from natural talents, okay?
You can have a natural talent to sing, but when the Holy Ghost gets upon you, that gift of evangelism can flow right through you and conviction can fall upon people and bring them to the Lord. Isn’t that something how a song can touch you?
I went through a dry spell one time and I could not break through my prayers, and I turned on I think it was Sister CeCe Winans as it was some new CD she had out, the upper room or something like that. I said this has got to be, huh, The Throne Room that’s what it was yea.
I just put that anointed music on and that gift, Hallelujah, broke whatever that enemy was attacking me with! You know the Bible says put on the Garment of Praise for the spirit of heaviness. I couldn’t praise because I was in just such a mess. I wasn’t doing anything that I knew of, but it was just a spiritual attack, that oppression.
And, sister Emily, I’m not glad that these things happened to you, but I’m glad that you shared about them because it lets people know even though we’re Christians, even though we’re filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues and all these things, things still happen on this earth. We still have trials and tribulations.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulations,” but what did He say, brother Steve, “but be of good courage,” right? “Fear not for I have overcome the world,” so we just need to be real. I like being a real Christian.
There’s days I want to quit. There’s days I want to give up, not on the Lord, but just sometimes you get tired of fighting. Sometimes you just get tired of fighting the devil. Sometimes you just, it’s like, what’s the use? That’s what the lies that the devil tries to put in you, but we have to hold on, Church.
The Holy Ghost spoke through sister Shelby, said, “Hold fast!” Isn’t that what the Lord said? The Spirit said, Sister Shelby, last Wednesday I think it was, “Hold fast,” talking about repentance, but hold fast.
I don’t know, sometimes the devil might say just leave that church, they don’t care anything about you. Just leave that church.
Hold fast, Church! Hold on! That’s what the devil wants to do, he wants to separate us. He wants to get you out of the will of God. He wants to get you out of your calling. He wants to get you out of your gifting because these spiritual gifts flow and operate, amen, in the body of Christ, amen!
So, if he can get you mad and upset and offended where you don’t go to church anymore, then whatever gift you have, it’s you can’t use that to encourage the body. Isn’t that right? That’s what the devil wants to do, Church. He wants to discourage us, and, again, I appreciate brother Steve’s message so much last week on encouragement because, Church, we need it!
God knew that we would need it. We face tribulations and trials in this earth, and we need each other, Church. We’ve got to stay connected to the body. I need you. Brother Steve. I need that encouragement.
Sister Shelby, I need to rebuke sometimes. We’ve got to be rebuked, right? The Lord chastens and rebukes those whom He loves. We’ve got to have the balance, but, and see, the thing I’ve noticed with spiritual giftings, whatever it is that you’re more prone to be used in, in your mind, it’s always we don’t do enough of that at the church.
If it’s evangelism, I’ve heard people say as big as this church is, we need to be evangelizing more. Then, I’ve heard people that flow in the prophetic gifts, this church doesn’t flow in prophetic gifts enough. We need to flow in the spiritual gifts more, just what we don’t have enough things on marriage, if that’s your whatever it is, or music, we need more music in this place.
So, what you’re gifting is, you have a propensity, a tendency to say we need more of that, amen, but it’s a body ministry. We all have to work together. Everybody has a part. God wants us to know that He’s wanted me to call attention to that, brother Larry Carlisle, you are important, brother. the devil wanted you to stay home look what a blessing this brother’s been to our class.
Timmy Brewer, the devil wanted you to be backslidden. He wanted you to stay home. He didn’t want you here playing music and helping us out. Brother Larry, it’s the same thing.
