Gifted by God

When I was in fourth grade, I had scored high enough on a test the previous year to be invited to a gifted class. One day a week we would go to a different school and learn about topics more advanced then the rest of our peers. In this sense, being gifted was something that was deemed special. The Father tells us otherwise, in his eyes we are all gifted. The Bible mentions eighteen different spiritual gifts in the New Testament. These are

1. Administration
2. Being an apostle
3. Discernment
4. Evangelism
5. Exhortation
6. Faith
7. Giving
8. Healing
9. Helps
10. Hospitality
11. Knowledge
12. Leadership
13. Mercy
14. Prophecy
15. Serving
16. Speaking in tongues
17. Teaching (sometimes known as shepherding)
18. Wisdom

If you are anything like me, some of these gifts stick out to you and some of them really stick out to you because you know that’s not you. For me, I know that giving, hospitality, and speaking in tongues are not ways that I am gifted. I was baptized nearly ten years ago and those three things either rarely happen, never happen, or are clearly not my strengths. That is how God made me. Other things that impact this are where God called me and my personal experiences. I tithe, and I’m glad I tithe, but at no point in my life have I or my family been wealthy. Not only that, but now I get paid by the church. So I give my ten percent, but the gift of giving is described as, “Those who have this gift are particularly willing and able to share what resources they have with pleasure, and without the need to see them returned” (_A Quick List of Biblical Spiritual Gifts: Which Gifts Exist and What They Mean. – Unfolding Faith Blog_, 2019). What little resources I have received in my life have been put towards things like housing and paying off loans and having reliable transportation. After those things, there isn’t much left for emergencies or savings.

Part of discerning spiritual gifts is figuring out what does not describe you. I shared three of mine, but that still leaves fifteen question marks. I have been working through this list for years now. Four that stick out to me are faith, knowledge, serving, and teaching. In my story, these four things tie together nicely. For around three years now, I have been serving by teaching in order to share my knowledge, because I have faith that this is what God called me to do in order to advance his Kingdom. Before that, I was gathering knowledge until I was ready to teach regularly. These four things are what drive me to serve the Lord and are the reason I am pursuing my M.Div, and hopefully eventually a Doctorate.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Why are there so many gifts?” or “Why has he only addressed seven of the eighteen?” Well, I am not proposing that I am an expert on all eighteen gifts and I believe when you possess a gift then it makes a whole lot more sense for you than it does for other people. Since I don’t fully grasp all of them I wanted to highlight the ones I do understand and focus more on how we are to use the gifts we possess.

If you are a born again Christian who has received the Holy Spirit then you get four things. First is salvation, then sanctification begins and with that comes spiritual gifts and the fruit of the Spirit. If you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior then you have gifts that can be used for the Kingdom of God. The most important thing to realize up front is that not everyone is going to possess the same gifts.

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, ‘I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,’ that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, ‘I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,’ would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? 

But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part!Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ The head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you.’

In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.

1 Corinthians 12:12-26 NLT

I am not going to attempt to assign certain gifts to different body parts but I can assure you that the greatest leaders would be nothing without people who served God as janitors. El Roi, the God who sees, will notice how you serve him even if it is in a way that nobody in the church notices. Service is not about the church you attend though, it is about obedience to our Creator. He created us to love and serve him and sent Jesus to demonstrate how we do that. So why do so many people only go to church for an hour on Sunday just to see the service of others to their God? I pray that this isn’t you, that you don’t have an apathetic faith, that you clearly see where the Lord needs you to serve. If you are a foot, then thank God, because we cannot walk into the world to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ without feet. Go and be blessed in your service brothers and sisters.

References:

A quick list of biblical spiritual gifts: which gifts exist and what they mean. – Unfolding Faith blog. (2019, October 1). https://www.tyndale.com/sites/unfoldingfaithblog/2019/10/01/a-quick-list-of-biblical-spiritual-gifts-which-gifts-exist-and-what-they-mean/

Tyndale House Publishers (Ed.). (2015). The holy Bible: New living translation (3rd ed.). Tyndale House Publishers. https://ref.ly/logosres/nlt?ref=BibleNLT/