Concerning the Spiritual Stuff

It is so good to be back in First Corinthians, because I left off at a very important place in Scripture. We are digging into First Corinthians 12. And let me share a little story with you before we get started. A man named Dr. Alfred Blalock.

If you’re in the medicine field, you probably have heard that name. He is the modern. He created the modern methods of cardiac surgery and bypass operations in the 1940s. That is, was nominated for a number of Nobel Peace Prizes in medicine. But none of his work would have been possible unless there was this man in the background.

If you’ll pop him up, do we have his picture up there, Tariq? Yeah, there he is. Yeah. Isn’t he beautiful? Worked with children and things like that.

He was nominated several times for a Nobel Peace Prize. But what people don’t know is none of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for a man behind the scene that was not educated. He was a janitor, in fact, and his name was Vivian Thomas. And Vivian was a carpenter by trade. If you pop his picture up there, Sharik, do you have it?

Vivian Thomas. He was a black man, a carpenter by trade, and with an incredible knack for Mechanical Engineering. And Dr. Blalak noted Thomas skill, and he hired Thomas to run his labs. And Thomas began to suggest new surgical techniques and develop new tools to implement those technologies.

There he is, right there, those techniques. He became so pivotal to Dr. Blalock’s work that when he moved from Vanderbilt, the hospital he was at, to Johns Hopkins, he went with him. And not only that, Thomas ended up training hundreds of surgeons how to perform these type of surgeries. Unfortunately, when you hear about this breakthrough in modern medicine of cardiac surgery, you don’t hear about this man much.

It’s always Alfred Blalock. But as is often the case in great breakthroughs, in any situation that a modern breakthrough takes place behind the scenes, there’s always people working. There’s always somebody that’s enabling the success of that person. And Paul explains this in the body of Christ in 1st Corinthians 12. God has set up his church so that the body has many members.

There are many members. No one member being complete without the other member. Every member is needed. Some are in the background, some are in the front, some are in the middle. But nobody is dependent on themselves.

Everyone is independent on independent of themselves. Everyone is dependent on each other. It’s a profound concept, and 1. If we can get this, it could change the way we look at church. The way church operates.

So if you’re with me, if you’ve got your Bible, turn to First Corinthians 12. Some of you are already there. You can also go to our Bible app, BibleApp.com and follow along there or follow on the paper that was handed to you at the door and you can follow along there. Done the homework for you.

Corinthians 12:1. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. Some say, don’t want you to be ignorant. I don’t want you to be unaware of, of these spiritual gifts. Now that phrase now concerning suggests that Paul has moved from one question he’s already answered to another.

It’s like, now let’s move over to this area. And as we’ve talked about through this series, we’ve been addressing different questions that the church had. The Book of Corinthians, first and Second Corinthians are answers to questions that the church had. And there were five questions particularly that the church was asking. The first question we dealt with in the start of this teaching way back in January, the question of division in the body of Christ.

How to deal with division when you have Apollos people, when you have Paul people, when people disagree and there’s friction in the culture of the church, how do you deal with that? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t follow the prescription that is in scripture when it comes to division and when it comes to disagreements in the church. In fact, many churches have had broken, have been broken, have been split, hearts have been broken, relationships have been fractured. And we’ve even experienced this in our church from time to time. We’ve experienced people leave because things happened or someone was hurt and they walked away and they didn’t handle it according to scripture.

Therefore it left damage, it left hurt. So Paul’s telling the people, let’s deal with division in the right way. Let’s come together, let’s talk about there’s a prescription there. And you can go back to the beginning of that series. You can look it up on our website on that talk, the second part, which dealt with a few more weeks in between there, particularly in February, we talked about sex and singleness.

He talks about all the relationship stuff and what was going on in that culture. And part three, eight through 10, chapters eight through 10, he navigates controversial topics. We talked about long hair versus short hair and all the weird hat stuff and what was going on in the church during that period. Today we’re dealing with the questions about church service stuff, stuff here in the Church, how does the church operate and in the future? And we’ll go through this the next few weeks and then in the future we’ll hit part five, which talks about the importance of the resurrection.

We just celebrated resurrection last week and we’re going to go deeper in Paul’s explanation of why the resurrection is so significant and important to everything that we believe as a church. So for the next few weeks, we’re looking at spiritual gifts. I love spiritual gifts. It’s a very controversial subject because there’s many people that many different types of thoughts, there’s many different churches that believe different things about, about spiritual gifts. So it should be a lot of fun, right?

Just kind of break open this egg and look into it. Because there’s different church traditions. I grew up Pentecostal, so spiritual gifts were it. Man, that was everything, right? I was just sharing.

Like when I was young, there was a small church, my dad pastored and I remember people getting up right in the middle of worship and just running around the aisle like, hallelujah. They got hit by the spirit and they’re just running, running to the aisle. However, I have Baptists in my background as well. I have family that are Baptists, I have family that are Methodists. I have some mentors in my life.

Some of the greatest mentors that have been in my life were people who weren’t in the Pentecostal faith. So I call myself a kind of mixed up bowl of different theology about things. And so I consider myself a hodgepodge basically of theology. I grew up in that Pentecostal culture, so I kind of lean towards more of the moving and the gifts of the Spirit and things. But I appreciate the different traditions.

I appreciate what they bring to, the approaches they bring to these questions. And I’m not saying everyone is equally right, but I do think we can learn. We can all learn from each other. Every denomination, every influence can learn from each other and we can grow. So for the next three weeks or so, let’s ask God to open up our minds, open up our hearts and maybe the things that we’ve traditionally thought about, the spiritual gifts, even for me, open up my heart as I study this and open up your heart as you study this.

Maybe we’ll look straight to scripture and it will reveal some things about what God really wants us to know about these gifts. So again, verse one. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brother, I do not want you to be uninformed. The word spiritual gifts here, this is very important. The word spiritual gifts here is pneumaticon.

I know, it sounds like a superpower transformer, right? Pneumaticon. I thought about that when I was studying. I said, that sounds like some kind of machine or some kind of robot, right? In fact, spiritual gifts is probably not the best translation of this word.

The best translation would be spirituals, things from God. Like, it’s very vague, it’s very ambiguous. Spirituals, the spiritual stuff. We can call it spiritual stuff. In fact, we’re dealing with the spiritual stuff here.

That’s where Paul’s really getting at regarding this spiritual stuff. Regarding the spiritual things, there are a variety of gifts. Now, that’s actually the word charismata, which means gift. So he changes the word there from the spiritual stuff. Now I’m going to be talking about four different types of things, and he talks about a variety of spiritual gifts, and then there’s a variety of service, but the same Lord.

So we have a variety of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit. And there’s a variety of service, but the same Lord. And there is varieties of activities that some versions say energies is actually translated literally energies. But it is the same God who empowers them all and everyone. And then verse seven to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for what?

The common good. So we see these four different gifts that he approaches here, categories of gifts, the charismata gifts, the empowerment for service, where we get deacona, which that’s where we get deacon from the service to be empowered for service. There’s varieties of gifts. These are energies. These are when something comes upon you.

And then spiritual manifestations. And then he goes on to talk about a handful of these gifts. He talks about prophecy, utterance of wisdom and knowledge, miracles and healing, and the discernment of spirits, tongues and the interpretation of tongues. And it’s not an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts, but there is. Like, in fact, if you go to the New Testament, there are six areas in the New Testament that talks about spiritual gifts that give you a list, and none of them hold all the spiritual gifts.

They list some of them and they leave out some of them, and then they have others that they’ve added in for certain reasons and context. But we can add up about 22 different gifts in the New Testament. So no one list contains all of them. And each list has certain ones that are left out from the others. And what all this shows is that Paul is intentionally being ambiguous.

It’s ambiguous wording. Because here’s why we can’t just pick up a catalog and look through the list of gifts and determine, okay, based on this or based on that, or if we have some kind of enneagram that. That looks at our personality and says, oh, that’s not how it works. And so many people. The reason I say that, so many people see it that way.

Let me look at what my personality type is or what my passions are, and somehow that’s my lifelong gift. That’s the gift that’s been put on me. Now, some of that is the case, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But a gift. Here’s a simple definition of a spiritual gift.

A spiritual gift is simply when the spirit of Jesus comes on you. The spirit of Jesus comes on you to accomplish something he wants to do in the world. So that leads me to my first point. Spiritual gifts are how Jesus continues to minister here on earth. He continues to minister on earth.

It’s not seeing it like while Jesus was here and he was working, he was doing. He just left and kind of left us to figure it out on our own. No, Jesus is continuing to work through his church. Jesus never stopped working. Jesus said, I’m sending my spirit through the spirit of Jesus working through us.

Jesus never stopped his work. And we see that by looking at Luke’s account. If you go back to the Gospel of Luke, there’s actually Luke 1 and Luke 2. You’re like, where’s Luke 2? That’s the book of Acts.

The book of Acts. So in Luke 1, if you’re familiar with scripture, the gospel, there’s this dude named Theophilus, and he’s writing, he’s pulling these accounts together to prove he’s a very smart guy. He’s a doctor, Dr. Luke. And he’s putting all this investigative analysis together to prove to this Theophilus that this is in fact the risen Christ and that the things had happened.

And he says, oh, Theophilus, look. What? And if you go to Acts 1, he continues, Theophilus. He says, oh, Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. The key word there is began.

O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. He began the work. He’s not through with the work. He continues to work. It means that the second volume is Jesus continuing to do.

Continuing to teach through people like me, through supernatural gifts, through people like you, who have supernatural gifts that have been put on you to continue the work of Jesus. And whenever Jesus through the spirit empowers you to do his work in the world, that’s a spiritual gift. When he puts something on you at that moment. That is a spiritual gift. Which leads me to the point to a spiritual gift can be either a long time calling, a lifelong calling, a temporary empowerment.

It can be a lifelong calling. It could be something that you work through your entire life that’s been placed on you, or it could be a temporary empowerment. The reason I say that is that Paul is ambiguous in these spiritual things and spiritual stuff and talks about it intentionally because he knows that there’s different callings, there’s different ways the spirit works, there’s different gifts, and some come on you suddenly and some are there with you for a lifetime. And here’s why I point that out. When you think of a spiritual gift only in a lifetime calling category, you might miss out on something he really wants to do with you in the moment.

If we just focus on, oh, because of my personality or because of the way I react or interact with people or react or interact with the world, that must be like who I am. But you’re going miss out on something really special. Like the gift of prophecy, for example, is where God speaks through someone at a moment and gives a message or asks them to pray about, you know, speaking something to a situation. When God places something on somebody all of a sudden. Or the gift of faith is where you have this strong faith and belief in something that just comes over you, that you pray to God and believe that it’s going to happen.

I think about the Gospel of Mark, when the two friends lowered the lame guy down the roof for Jesus to heal him. They had the gift of faith. They believed that if they could just get their friend up on that roof, they knew that Jesus could heal him. That’s called the gift of faith. And sometimes that just comes on us.

And they’ve been given the gift of faith to that moment, perceiving that Jesus would answer those prayers that they had probably been praying for that week and feeling that God was leading them to. So spiritual gifts are whenever the spirit of God comes on you for the accomplishing of his purposes, and those might be lifetime part of it, they might be personal callings for life. But, and we do have that, for instance, some people have the gift of prophecy, some people have the gift of teaching, some people have certain leadership gifts and those are placed on them and empowering. They could be things that you have that are part of your personality type or something that God has placed in your life. So let me point out number three, you got one, you got a gift, you got a gift.

Look to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. The key word is to each. Do we have any two each’s in here? How many two eaches that we have in here? Everybody should have their hand up if they’re a believer in Jesus, right?

All right, we got a lot of two eaches in here. Guess what? You have a spiritual gift. God wants to use your spiritual gift. And God has given you something for what?

The common good of the body. He’s got a special role in the church for you to play. He’s got something for you to do in the church. And guess what? Without that gift, the church hurts.

Did you know that? When it’s not used, when you’re not leaning into it, when you’re not a part of the body, it hurts the entire church. And God has given something for the common good of the body is what scripture says here in verse 14, Paul explains that if you don’t use your gift, the whole body suffers because of it. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. And then he jumping to verse 17, if the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing, right?

Or if the eye cannot, say to the hand, I have no need for you. Nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. And then, on the contrary, even the parts of the body that seem to be weaker, smaller, if we want to say that, are indispensable. If one member suffers, verse 26, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.

So that person in the background that you don’t see, their gift is just as important as the biggest. What we would consider the biggest gift. This church or in the church in general, there’s always somebody in the background. And if they’re not there, a part of it. If people don’t show up in their gift because they feel like, man, my gift’s not that important.

My gifts not that big. I mean, I think about my little toe. You can’t see my little toe, right? But you hear my voice, and my little toes down there are like, well, I don’t have any say in. You know, you’ve got the mouthpiece happening right now, and it’s anointed and everybody’s hearing it, but.

But the little toes down there. And he says, nobody hears me. I’m just kind of insignificant. Nobody can see me. What do I do?

But it’s amazing how a little toe that’s hurt when I wake up in the middle of the night can make me say the most ungodly Things, you know, when I hit that dresser. Right, right. And my mouth responds the wrong way because my little toe is needed. And it’s amazing when you watch, how many players in the NFL have you seen that when they hurt their little toe, they’re out of the game for the rest of the game. Right?

They break their little toe. How is this big 350 pound man on the line going to work? You know, it’s super important. It’s significant. And we, whether it’s a voice that carries throughout the community or throughout the nation, or evangelist or whatever that might be, there always are people in the background doing their part.

We’re all working together. And every week here in this church, there are people that do that. There are people that work with those kids back there. You don’t see what’s going on back there. You don’t know what’s going on back there.

You’re just glad they’re back there, right? So that you can enjoy the service in here, that you could sit and enjoy it without a child crying. Right? But you don’t know how significant that is, not only for you, so you can enjoy the service, Right? But because people sacrifice their time for your kids, they’re actually getting blessed as well.

And God is moving in their lives and they will remember things that those, those people back there that you don’t see or don’t get to connect with as much as as you would like. They are significant, they are significant. Or people that come in here during the week, people that prepared this room. We’ve only been in this room for a couple of months. We came in and we, man, I’m telling you, this was an eyesore, guys.

And we walked in, it looked, it was just like an old ugly fellowship hall. We’re like, we’re moving into a fellowship hall, right? This is crazy. But we saw potential and other people saw potential. And you didn’t see the people that you didn’t know, the people that were here until 2 o’ clock in the morning some nights trying to get this thing prepared so that we can move in because we didn’t have anywhere else to go because we lost our other place.

I mean, we were like going weeks without knowing where we were going to be the next Sunday from another. I mean, it was just a crazy time. But people were faithful. They were faithful and they showed up and they used their gifts and they painted and put in lights and hung lights and worked things out and did it and did it and did it and did it. And without them, Pastor Leon Couldn’t have made anything happen here.

Right? I don’t know anything about a lot of this stuff. I didn’t have people that knew what kind of paint to put on the ceilings or what kind of lights to hang or how to do this would be a disaster. And we would be shut down as a church because we wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. But because people are using their gifts, every gift is important, and every gift is a 10 in the Kingdom of God.

Amen. So use your gift number four. And you want to know God’s will? Discover your gift. Some of you are asking, what’s God’s will for my life?

Well, it’s time to discover your gift. If God has given you a part to play in this body, then isn’t it fair to assume that you’ll never really know what his will is unless you know your gifts? I love how CS Lewis shares it in the Lion, Witch in the Woodrobe, because here’s what I want to say. What is your spiritual gift? What’s in your hand now?

What is in your hand and the story the lion, the Witch and the Woodrobe. Remember the part if you are familiar with the movie or familiar with the book, if you read the book of Father Christmas showing up and giving. Giving the kids gifts from Aslan, he just lays them in their hand. They have no idea what this represents or what it’s for. And so that you know, Aslan, the lion represents Jesus putting gifts in the hands of these young children, these mysterious gifts.

And at the time, the children can’t even figure out what these gifts are for. But in the middle of the battle against the White witch, we see these gifts used, like Lucy and the healing ointment she uses to heal people in the battle. Or Peter when he realizes he has given a sword. He was given a sword. He was able to use that sword against the forces of the White witch and the evil1.

So CS Lewis was trying to say that one of the ways we figure out our spiritual gifts, the things that God has placed in our lives, is what’s in our hands. He’s placed things in our hands. He’s given you something. Do you know yours? Is the question.

Do you know what he’s put in your hand? I’d go as far to say that you cannot walk in the spirit. Holy. Holy. Walk in the spirit.

W H O L L Y. By the way, not. Not. Not holy, but holy. Unfamiliar with your.

You can’t. You can’t do it unless you’re. Unless you’re familiar with your gifts, you got to know your gifts. You say, well, well, that’s great, Pastor, but how do I, how do I know my gifts? How do I figure out where mine lie?

There’s a lot of angles we could take. There’s a lot of practical counsel and things that can help you. But there’s one thing, there’s one tool I think that is, it really, really helps me when I was studying it and it can help others, is ability, affinity and affirmation ability. Affinity and affirmation ability is what you’re naturally good at. Some of you are just naturally good at building things and figuring out things.

Some of you are naturally good at numbers. Some of you are naturally good at big picture stuff. Some of you are naturally good at making money. Some of you are good at whatever. You know, you’ve got science heads or you got literature heads, or you got whatever that looks like.

Everybody’s got a natural ability. And then the affinity is what you’re passionate about. What are you passionate about? What gets you going? What gets you up in the morning?

What could you do 247 that passion that you have in your heart. And then affirmation is where people in the church tell you God is using you. They’re like, so what do you need to do? What’s in your hands? Start serving, start doing, start allowing ability, affinity and affirmation.

And often spiritual gifts coincide with our natural abilities when we already have something. God takes some natural talents and supercharges them, right? He takes what you’re able to do and he puts on you the ability to do it at a level that you didn’t even know you could do. That’s how God works. Paul was a great thinker.

Paul was a leader. In fact, his education would be similar to a Harvard education today based on the people that led him and mentored him. And what did God use him to do? To be an apostle, to write, to teach, to lead the church? Because God gave him a supernatural unction of power over his life with the gift that he already had, the leadership and teaching gift that he had.

And so often spiritual gifts coincide with natural abilities. We already have, but there’s an exception. Sometimes. Did you know? Sometimes God bestows a spiritual gift upon us right at the moment, and we don’t even know what we’re doing, what we’re saying sometimes, right?

I heard an example of a young woman who, who was so shy she couldn’t talk to anybody but man. When God laid his power on her, she could evangelize to anybody and lead anybody to Jesus, because God, that’s how he works. Sometimes it’s something that you’re naturally gifted at, and other times he just puts it on you. He lays it on you. So start with your natural talents.

That’s a good place to start if you’re trying to figure out your spiritual gifts. But. But don’t limit it to that. Don’t limit it to that. Pray that God would use you in other areas.

Number five. The gifts are for service, not for show. Paul talks about the gifts not being for show because there was a lot of showboating going on. Remember verse seven to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. Why are they given?

Not for people to admire how spiritual they are. Not for people to say, look at me, I’ve got the better gift. Look at this. You only have the gift of administration. I mean, that’s okay.

But, man, I’ve got the power of the gospel, of teaching and preaching. Mine’s so much better than yours. And that’s what was going on. You loser. You’re just over there doing your thing, right?

Look at what I got. You can’t compare to me. And Paul shakes his head and says, that’s just not how you are to look at spiritual gifts. That’s not how it works. It’s not your power, it’s God’s power.

It’s not your doing, it’s God’s doing. It’s like a boxing glove. Let me just. Like a boxing glove. I was just watching Sylvester Stallone talk the other day about how they’re making boxing gloves different these days.

They’re not as. They don’t hit as hard as they used to, you know. And he was holding his boxing gloves. See, you just take. See, it was tough, man.

That was back in the day. Everybody’s weenies these days, you know, And. And now. And we have this. These boxing gloves back.

Back when I was making the Rocky movies. But the analogy of a boxing glove, man, it sucks a big hit, doesn’t it? But it’s not the boxing glove that moves it. It’s the hand in the boxing glove that moves it. God is the hand in your boxing glove.

You are the boxing glove. God is the hand. And the gifts are for service, not for show. In verse 13, Paul tells them that their pride in their gifts are just. It’s just a huge mistake.

Look in 13. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into the body. Says, you’re misunderstanding your gifts. You’re not focusing on the gospel. It’s about the gospel.

It’s not about you. It’s about what God is doing. It’s an unhealthy understanding of what God’s doing in the world. So we were Greeks, or you were Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. And all were made to drink of one spirit.

There’s no one bigger than the other. The spirit and his gifts weren’t given to us as rewards for awesomeness. You know, like, I’m so awesome because I’m so good. The spirit was a free gift that God gave you based on your salvation in him that he saved you. All of us, Jews, Greeks, slaves, free, were hopelessly condemned without Jesus Christ, without his blood, without his sacrifice, without his resurrection.

We are condemned. And if you’re looking for something to boast in, look what happened to the disciples when they boast about casting out demons. Look, we cast out demons. They were coming in. Jesus reporting to him, jesus, guess what I did?

Yeah. I cast out demons and this and that. And he says, whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s not about casting out demons. It’s not about casting out demons.

You shouldn’t be rejoicing in that. You should be rejoicing that your name is written in the book of life. That’s why. That’s why God bestows upon us spiritual gifts so that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be known in the world. Jesus is still working through us.

Human nature always has a tendency to go back to boasting, and it’s about me. We see it in ministry. We see it in the world. But we need to be a different people. If God is going to use this church, if God is going to move this church, if we’re going to reach people for Jesus, if we’re going to grow our family, we need to operate in every single gift in this building.

We need people to set up chairs. If that’s your gift. Hallelujah. Martin told me the other day, we were in here setting up chairs. He says, I really like this.

I’m like, are you crazy? I don’t enjoy setting up chairs. He says, this is good. I like it. I like working.

I’m like, oh, gosh. I like chilling and being lazy. I have to work too hard. It’s hard to put you on the spot. Martin, he doesn’t like to be put on the spot.

People just have a tendency. I’m valuable. I’m worth something because of this or that. But Paul says, your value is because Christ made you a son and daughter. Your value comes as you serve others.

And this is one reason I’m not a fan of these self help book Christianity books, you know, that say you can be the most awesome person because we are awesome. But we’re awesome in Jesus Christ, we’re not awesome in ourselves. You’re not that awesome without Jesus. And we need Jesus to be awesome. Jesus makes us awesome.

The purpose of spiritual gifts is to never boast, but it is to bless, never to show, but only to serve. Now I’ll admit possessing that mentality is easier said than done. And even my heart is falling from time to time, walking and working in our gifts. Like sometimes we just feel like, wow, you know, I deserve or I’ve done something special or five salvations today or whatever it was, you know. But these gifts are for service, not for show.

I have to be reminded all the time, like go back to who I was before I knew Jesus and who I am without Jesus. Without Jesus, I’m nothing. I need Jesus. I need Jesus. Number six.

God works in your life through the spiritual gifts of others. Did you know that? God works in your life through the spiritual gifts of others. That’s why Paul says in verse 25 members care for one another. We care for one another.

Each member of the body is taken care of by other members of the body through their spiritual gift. If my left elbow itches and it sends a message to my brain and I’m dying, you know, I’m dying over here, what do I do? The hand goes over and scratches it, right? It sends the hand over. It isn’t like my brain just zaps some kind of superpower over there and it’s like, okay, it’s gone now, you know, my elbow itches.

No, no, no, that’s. It sends another part of the body over to fix that issue. That’s how the head works. That’s how Christ works. That’s how the spirit of, of Jesus works through the church.

He sends other people to help and it puts people in the right place. Go take care of my brother’s left elbow, right? Take care of it. In the same way, when we pray about the needs of others in our lives, God doesn’t usually zap that person and say, they’re good now, right? I’m praying that they have a financial blessing.

I’m praying that they can get through this hard time. I’m praying that they get the right advice. Sometimes God gives you advice. Sometimes God gives you the ability to help somebody financially. Sometimes God gives you the unction or the reason to go over there and sit with that friend when they’re going Through a hard time.

That’s what the spirit of God does. Some people need help in marriage. Some people are dealing with loneliness. Some people need direction in their life because they don’t know where to go. Guess who does?

Who helps out in those areas? People who are anointed and blessed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And if you want God to work in your life, you have, you have to be a part of a church. If you really want God to work in your life, you have to be connected to a church. And.

And when you disconnect yourself from the church, you disconnect yourself from the power of God. Stop asking God to work in your life when you’re not willing to be a part of a church family. I hear people all the time. I really want God to do something. I’m trying to figure out my calling.

Well, what church are you a part of? What congregation are you a part of? What family of God are you a part of? Well, I haven’t figured that out yet. Well, I’m still praying even about that.

Get connected. You have to be connected, a part of a church family. Because you see, this church, like many churches, has a problem with what I call ninja Christianity. Ninjas are cool, right? Yeah.

They slip in, they slip out. Even as a small church. Even a small church, right. It doesn’t matter if you’re big or you’re small. I’ve been a part of big churches.

We’re a small church. And you see people tiptoe. Where’s the door? I’m running after people. Just, hey, hey.

I just want to say bye, bye. Yeah, yeah, yeah, come. And then people complain. Well, I don’t know anybody or I don’t. I don’t feel connected.

Or it’s just this because you haven’t served, you haven’t become a part of the body. You haven’t hung around long enough to get to know anybody. Today you can go right back there and have a sandwich and sit down right here and get to know people. Get to know me and get to know the church and see how you can be a part of salt church. But if you continue to whine and not be a part of a church, then you’re just going to be at the place you always are.

Ninjas are cool, but not in Christianity. Right? They make bad church members. They make really bad bad church members or sitting on the sidelines of a church or continuing to stay at home when you could be in church. And I know some of you have medical reasons and different things not to be here.

And I know some of you are online right now. You watch every Sunday because it’s just hard sometimes to get out because of medical reasons. But I’m talking about those who do everything else but go to church, do everything else. They’ve always got a reason. The weather’s nice, there’s a football game, there’s a kids ball game, or the mall is waiting for me or whatever it is, or the beach, we’re right here by the beach.

This is just such a nice day. I’m telling you that Even if, if you are hearing the best sermons on podcasts and you’re cutting on like my brother Greg says, Charles Stanley. I love Charles Stanley. I listen to Charles Stanley and I love him so much. You can listen to the best sermons in the world and not actually be in a church.

But it means that you’re experiencing only a small fracture of what God wants to do in your life. You’ll never experience the fullness of what God wants to do in your life. You have to be involved and you have to be very involved. Get involved. And there are so many times in my life when God has spoken to me through encouraging words of church members in this church and churches that I’ve ministered in or I’ve been a part in my entire life.

Some of the best advice, parenting advice, marriage advice, words of warning have all come from people that are faithful in the church. Members of the body of Christ, we need each other. We need to hear from each other. We need to do this together. And I know some of you are like, oh, well, you know, me and God are good.

There’s a lot of Long Ranger Christians out there. Right? Right. We know them in the surf world. I’m a surfer and there’s a lot of.

They think that I can just go out and I used to go to church, but man, I just paddle out in the ocean, bro, and I got God. I just hear from God. But I’m telling you, you’ll never experience the real spiritual meat, the spiritual stuff, unless you get in the fellowship, the body of Christ. We can’t do it alone. God puts the spiritual stuff into the members of the church.

Lastly, number seven, which have you experienced? I want to conclude with a special message to our church. I told you that all in all, the New Testament, there are six different spiritual gifts, right? Or six different categories of spiritual gifts that are laid out in different parts of the New Testament. 22 that’s the apostle, the prophets, teachers, miracles, healings, helps administration, tongues, interpretation of tongues, utterance of wisdom, Utterance of knowledge.

Minecraft. Y’ all didn’t catch that, did you? Okay. I wanted to make sure you were paying attention. I think y’ all were not.

Fortnite. Yeah. If my son has anything to do with it. Minecraft. Is it faith, distinguishing between spirits, evangelism, pastors, teachers, serving, encouraging, generosity, mercy, marriage, celibacy, things like that?

Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list. The Apostle Paul lumps these spiritual gifts basically in two categories. Those who speak for Jesus and those who serve for Jesus. Those who speak for Jesus and those who serve for Jesus. Those who are called to offices where they serve, speak, and they’re emboldened and they’re empowered to speak for Jesus and those who are empowered, emboldened to serve for Jesus.

And you’ve got at least one of these. My hope is that you’ll plunge in and figure out yours. That’s my challenge for you. And the best way to do that, serve. The best way to do that, minister serve.

Because I want to at least bring up the gifts that Paul lists in 12 for a minute. Okay? Because we need to. Because these are hard gifts. Okay.

As we close this chapter 12, or this part of chapter 12, that is, and it says this in verse 8, for to one is given through the Spirit, the utterance of wisdom. The utterance of wisdom. That’s when. This is when the Spirit of God will give you insight into this, his will in an area not spelled out directly in scripture. This is what that is.

And it says to another the utterance of knowledge, according to the same spirit, an utterance of knowledge, a word of knowledge, a special knowledge that’s been given by the Spirit about someone’s life, directing you maybe to pray for them or minister to them. Like Jesus in John 4, knowing that the woman had five previous marriages, you know, he had knowledge that was supernaturally given to him, or in verse nine, to another faith by the same Spirit that a special bestowal of faith has been placed on you to believe certain things for either your family, for your church, for the people around. He wants to do something miraculous through you and gives you the ability to perceive what he wants to do. And it says to to another gifts of healing by the Spirit, to another the gifts of working miracles. Those are self explanatory miracles and healing.

And I’m going to tell you, when God bestows miracles of gifts and healing and you pray for people, they are healed in the name of Jesus. It isn’t a process, it isn’t a learned one. Through five, one through ten. One, let’s pray it through a little bit more. No.

When God bestows on you the gift of miracles, the gifts of the spirit, and I want to see more of that happen because God is still, still doing that today. But he lays on that gift upon people. And to another prophecy, it says in verse 10, prophecy is the ability to speak God’s will into a situation, exhort and move things a certain way at just the right time. And how to apply scripture to someone in just the right way. And to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits, the ability to know whether that someone is saying what they’re saying is really God.

Is it really God or is it another spirit speaking? To be able to discern and know something’s not right about what that guy’s saying or that girl’s saying or what those people are saying. Understanding that and then the various types of tongues and another, the interpretation of tongues, the word for that, Glossalia. It’s when God gives you a language other than your own language to communicate something to someone or your spirit is lifted based on worship or whatever it might be. And we’ll unpack that more in the weeks to come.

That should be a really fun week. Okay, I bet everybody wants to hear about tongues and how to understand the tongues and interpretation of tongues. But for now, this is what I want to leave you with. Serve. Right now, let’s just get started with serving.

The first thing you can do is serve. A first time guest survey I recently read across many churches said that people were people who came back a second time. It was based on their guest team’s joyfulness and helpfulness to be able to serve people and to serve others and to have an attitude of joy and excitement to see them there. That resulted in return guests. Our kids volunteers play a significant role in each children.

When it comes to faith prayer groups that we pray for our church, get involved in any team in this church, there’s opportunities and you can find more about those opportunities at our guest connect here right after church if you want to hang out and enjoy. In fact, in fact, Ms. Becky’s back there pulling out the food right now. So y’ all, it’s very enticing. But in closing, I want you to serve not just because it makes a difference in the lives of others, but it really makes a difference in the lives of you when you serve.

It doesn’t change just the person you’re serving. It changes you. It changes your heart. There’s something powerful about it. You know, when I’m, you know, What I do when I’m down, you know what I’m doing.

My wife might have something to say about that, but I’m down. I look for opportunities to serve. I get to work and serving, I figure out how I can help somebody else. I make myself available to people who need to. Who need to be ministered to.

And that makes all the difference, all the difference. You’ll find that nothing helps you grow in your relationship to Jesus like helping somebody else grow in theirs. Can we do that as a church? Can we operate in our gifts and start with service? All ninjas, let’s serve.

Amen. Let’s pray, guys. All heads bowed and eyes closed. Maybe ask God, as you pray today, how should I serve? Am I ready to take.

Take the next step? Am I ready to move into that next place? Father, I pray over the people here today, these wonderful people that are here today, those that are regulars here, those that are just guests for the weekend. I pray that, God, you would inspire them, that you would move them, that you would touch them deeply. Based on the words of scripture that are spoken today.

May it live in their life, may it live in their hearts that they be moved to serve, that they be moved to work in the fullness of who you are. For you have come to give life and life to the full, that they would experience life to the full body, the power of service, the power of working within what they’ve been gifted to do. God, I pray that from this room, world changing would take place. Things would happen not only in our community, in our city, Lord, but beyond the borders. God, our desire is to see the gospel will go forward.

Maybe there’s somebody here today that has never experienced the living Jesus Christ, the risen Christ, that he transforms your life. He transforms your heart. He wakes you up from the inside out. You don’t even know what we’re talking about today when we say gospel is good news. Can I tell you there’s nothing like an encounter with the risen Jesus Christ.

It changes everything. And today I pray that you have an encounter with him right now, that you’d hear him, hear his voice saying, come home, my child. Come back, my child, wherever you are in your spiritual walk, would you believe Jesus today? Would you receive him as your savior? Would.

Will you rededicate your life to Jesus today? Would you do that? Pray that with me. Pray that with me. Lord, I am a sinner.

I’m far from you, Lord, without your grace. But God, I receive it today. I receive the blood of Jesus Christ on my life. Come in, Lord. Change me, save me.

Make me a new creation. As you say in scripture, I am made new in you. I receive that today. I give you my life today. I’ll walk with you from this day forward.

In Jesus name, amen.