The Spiritual Gift we all agree we all have …

It doesn’t take long (after starting to hang out among christians) that one begins to hear about “Spiritual Gifts” or “Gifts of the Holy Spirit”. Quite simply put, and at the risk of oversimplifying, consider these enablements from God to better serve the Body of Christ (the group of humans who have become believers and are indwell by the Holy Spirit). The local church you attend is a portion of this body. It also doesn’t take long to realize that there are diverse opinions about the dispensation of these gifts which outweigh the diversity of the actual gifts. These differences of interpretations are a major cause of division among believers (ironically, these gifts are intended to bring us closer together as we serve each other with them rather than argue about the meaning of “tongues” or what a real prophetic word is and other such “stuff”).

 

Where do we even think that such gifts exist ?

Romans 12

• encouragement
• giving
• leadership
• mercy
• prophecy
• service
• teaching

1 Corinthians 12

• administration
• discernment
• healing
• interpretation of languages
• languages
• prophecy
• wisdom
• apostle
• faith
• helps
• knowledge
• miracles
• teaching

Ephesians 4

• apostle
• pastor
• teaching
• evangelism
• prophecy

1 Peter 4

• serving
• teaching

These lists have been broken down and their gifts categorized and grouped in various ways over the years:

• Father, Son, Spirit
• knowing, doing, speaking
• revelation, power, verbal
• motivational, ministry, manifestation
• I’m sure there are more

Here are the lists we pull our dispensed enablements from as well as our divisions over them.

If you don’t know your gifts, here is one test available on our church website to help you get started (gift test)

Major areas of division (disagreements causing strife and damaged unity in the body which hinders working together for a greater good in the name of Jesus):

• some believe that all believers get the same gifts (to use different ones for different occasions or situations)
• some believe that all believers get common gifts and then various others from the list (such as “speaking in tongues being a proof of baptism of the Spirit)
• some believe that we get different gifts and that no one should try to be like another believer (or envy one gift over another)

What I believe is not the issue here and I choose not to make it an issue, since that is not the point of this study. What is my point is coming up next. As I previously stated, these gifts are supernatural enablements from God to serve or benefit other believers in the body. There is a supernatural enablement that is not mentioned in the four lists above but is found throughout scripture and is the source of power that should be motivating and controlling all those gifts listed above since using any of the “gifts” without this overarching power would render the effort either wasteful or damaging to the body.

LOVE !

love (the type of agape love given to us from God) is supreme gift we all are given, entrusted to invest and multiply, and use as a governing umbrella over all the other gifts.

Lets take a look at some verses which clarify this:

stay tuned as I develop this into the fruit that God has been seeding and watering for months now.

 

in His service, Dave Cadieux