In yesterday’s #AfternoonTea we were talking about the Gifts of the Spirit. How do I know what gift I have? How many are there? How do I grow in my use of the gifts? Here are the headlines with the video to watch below.
- The NT has a number of lists of gifts, they all differ. This shows there isn’t an exhaustive set of gifts, rather there are lots of different gifts.
- In fact we do better to say that people are themselves gifts from God to the church
- Don’t worry about trying to work out if you have a gift that fits exactly with the list in the NT, rather see what God is using you to do.
- Do others recognise that you are gifted in an area, do you enjoy doing it, are others blessed and does it bring glory to Jesus not to yourself?
- We would do better to distinguish spontaneous gifting from long term/innate gifting rather than spiritual and natural.
- You are no less spiritual if the gift is developed over time with training than if you receive it suddenly, spontaneously.
- We recognise pastoring and preaching as gifts but we also train and equip. So what about other gifts, surely there should be training and practice too?
- Training for all gifts must start with good knowledge about God’s Word
- It will also include specific technical knowledge and skills relating to the gift.
