Gifts of the Spirit // The Holy Spirit and Me, Part 4

God is a supernatural God – God goes ahead of us – God knows all things – God is all powerful – God is all loving and God pours out gifts through His people into other people's lives. And that's the powerful truth we're going to share in today!

 

A Loving Dad

Let's imagine just for a moment, that there is a father who has some children – he is their dad - in a very real sense, he created them. He loves them as a father loves his children but well, they've been separated from one another for a long time. He has never stopped loving them; he has never stopped thinking about them and one day they come back to him. They are reunited as a family and the father is just overjoyed. He goes to the airport to meet them; his heart is in his throat, there are tears in his eyes and like any father in that situation, he takes with him some gifts to give to these children – beautifully wrapped and especially chosen for each of them.

To give a gift in that circumstance would be completely in character for a father to do because that is what dads do because there would be love and a joy – and it just makes us want to give gifts. And since we are made in God's image then it would be entirely reasonable to expect that God our Father would be exactly the same.

Over the last three weeks we have been working our way through a series that I've called "The Holy Spirit and Me". Three weeks ago we began looking at how Jesus promised to give each person who believed in Him the Holy Spirit – another Comforter; another counsellor, just like Jesus. And then the next week we looked at the fact that, when that happens; when we accept Jesus and we are filled with His Spirit, then He begins to deal with our sin.

The Spirit is called the Holy Spirit and part of what He does in us is to help us take that rubbish out from our former life and throw it out so that we can be free to live the life that God always intended. And last week we looked at the fact that God knows each one of us intimately. He looks at you and knows you just the way you are. He looks at me and He knows me just the way I am. And so He approaches us in different ways - in ways that He chooses to build a relationship with us through His Holy Spirit.

This week we are going to finish this series off looking at the gifts of the Spirit. It turns out that the New Testament talks about three different types of gifts of the Spirit. Now I'm no Greek scholar but the Greek word that is used in the New Testament for "gift" is "charisma" – we know that word fairly well – and the Greek word that is used for 'joy' is almost the same word, it's "charis" – the same sort of derivative. So they are free gifts that come from God that give joy at being reunited with Him as His children – they are free gifts and they are gifts of joy.

Let's take a bit of time today, if you can hang around with me for a few minutes today, just to look at some of those gifts and just to get a sense of what God is doing. We can't go through them all in detail, but just to kind of expose them and unpack them a little bit and be aware of them so that we can eagerly desire those gifts.

A gift by definition is free but we need to be ready to receive. So it is given as a gift not only to us but for the potential benefit of other people. The first lot of gifts that are talked about in the Bible happened in Romans chapter 12, verses 3 to 8 – it's written by Paul. Let me read it to you.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, don't think of yourself more highly than you should but think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as one body we have many members and not all of the members have the same function. So we who are many are one in Christ and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us – prophesy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness.

Now, none of those are kind of spooky, airy-fairy gifts – they are pretty straight forward gifts – to prophesy means to speak God's will; to speak what God is thinking into a situation. We sometimes think of it as predicting the future, but most often, it's about speaking God's will, encouraging, admonishing into a situation. Some people have that gift.

Other people have the gift just to minister to other people. Some people have the gift of teaching. Other people have the gift of exhortation, of encouraging, of lifting them up. Other people are motivated to be givers – they are just really good at giving of their own things and wealth into other situations. Some people we know; we meet them and we go,