Spiritual gifts are God’s tools that enable us to participate in the supernatural workings of God. By sending Jesus down upon the Earth, God allowed us the privilege of relating to the living Christ, the Messiah, someone we live by and someone to follow the footsteps of. Jesus will guide us and lead us along the path that God wants us to journey down. The miracles that Jesus performed were the works of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus appointed these gifts to us all, thus allowing us to start the revival within the cities.
Spiritual gifts are first and foremost gifts. A true gift cannot be earned; it is a show of the givers generosity. This is the same with God; his spiritual gifts are not earned through how many years you have spent in the Church or how old you are. Spiritual gifting is a result of Gods’ unearned favour and is his supernatural tools to release Gods’ supernatural power upon the world. That is where many people, I believe, go wrong. They believe that they can earn spiritual gifts, where that is untrue. God will gift people who he feels fit to gift and who he knows will be able to use these gifts in their personal situation. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we see that Paul speaks of waiting on the Lord or spiritual gifts “so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The people of Corinth didn’t lack any spiritual gift for the waited on Jesus; they did not try to earn it. But God saw their willingness and receptivity and gifted the people with the tools of the Kingdom. God’s spiritual gifts are first and foremost gifts of the Kingdom.
Gifts can be categorized into two different types: Ministry and Situational gifts. God uses both of these types of gifts to enable us to unlock the kingdom here on Earth. Ministry gifts are a gifting to a person so that someone can recognise and use his/her gift for the rest of his/her life. It dwells within them and can be brought forth with the help of the Holy Spirit. God uses these types of gifts for people that can handle them, for the most of the time, ministry gifts are a proportion of our faith, and the higher we climb in our faith the more powerful and effective our spiritual gifts will become. I personally have been gifted with the ability to prophecy over people and when I wait upon the Holy Spirit I am able to see words and pictures for people. An example of this would be one time at youth group we were all deep into a ministry time and I got a picture for John, a senior leader in the youth, this was through waiting upon the Lord praying and asking for him to give me a word for someone in the building this night. And I got a picture for John. This ministry gift is mine for life and is able to be used whenever I wait on the Lord, it will grow as I grow spiritually and become strong as I become strong spiritually.
However, situational gifts are manifestations of the Holy Spirit within someone for a particular situation. May it be a home group or a conference, the Holy Spirit will manifest for a situation to be a powerful experience for the person allowing them to get in touch with the Holy Spirit. Situational gifting is of God’s perfect timing, used when he knows it will be the most effective upon the person in subject. Where the Ministry gifts are used to develop a person of God into a more effective and powerful leader, disciple, missionary… [The list goes on] of God. God uses Situational and Ministry gifts to empower his people.
Spiritual gifts are meant to be used to further the Kingdom here on Earth. Jesus did miracles through spiritual gifts and called his disciple to do it as well. Jesus does this when he commissioned the twelve disciples and “gave them power and authority over all the demons and power to heal diseases…so they went… proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere”. With this direction we are all called to do what Jesus has done, and as disciples of Jesus Christ we do as our Pharisee does and travel in his dust and do as he does. So when God gives someone a gift it is not to lay dormant and unused, for the gift was given out of generosity, yes, but also of expectancy to be used effectively. Jesus died for us, so it is our job, with the tools of Kingdom to spread the message of the Lord around the world, and it is through the spiritual gifts that we can do that. God uses the gifts of missions to empower someone with the heart and knowledge of being a powerful and effective missionary, and it is through this that God is furthering his Kingdom here on Earth. We just have to be receptive. For Jesus said: “You will receive the power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.
Spiritual gifts are effectively used within a team. Not one person can have all the powers of the Kingdom, and it is because of this that we can be very effective with our gifts when we use them as a team. Romans speak of this being “Many Gifts but One Body”: “Now as we have many parts of the body, and all the parts do not have the same function, in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts”. This shows us that united our diversity makes us strong. It is in this same way that we should use our gifts, for example: Prophecy should team up with intercessors and tongues should be paired up with interception of tongues. This can be seen within my own youth group, we have been growing in our faith and the leaders of our youth group have, along with their personal development into Jesus, have developed their own gifts, for example I am able to prophecy and guide God’s words onto other people, along with a girl, Alice, in our youth who is able to intercede with someone and the Holy Spirit, becoming the needed lightening rod that connects the Holy Spirit and the person, who is not able to do it themselves. As a team we are effective, we can handle any problem that someone has for as one body we are strong.
Jesus’ death bridged the world to the heavens, and it is through this bridge that we are able to receive the tools of the Kingdom to further bring God’s Kingdom to Earth. In all gifts that we receive it is important that we use these gifts with the Lord and never by ourselves. The revival is not going to happen with God, we cannot do it ourselves, and so I am going to pair up with the Holy Spirit and the Tools of the Kingdom and make more disciples.
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