This week our sermon we continued our ‘We Are’ series with: “We are a gifted church” from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. You can listen to the sermon here. The main hope for the message is that 1) we’d take a step back and see what the purpose for the Spiritual Gifts are: Spiritual Gifts are given to every Christian for the common good of the church, 2) We take a step forward in pursuing the practice of those gifts by: pursuing: God, love, faith, opportunity, and order.

There was a great anecdote from Dr Grudem that I said I would share in the blog, here it is:

‘If you desire to cultivate the spiritual gifts then, firstly, you must be convinced that the Bible teaches the gifts are for today and that they are important; otherwise you won’t have faith to exercise them or pray for them. Likewise, you must be confident that the gifts are given to all Christians rather than just a few specially deserving people.

Once I came to these two conclusions, I was in a place to begin to cultivate the gifts in my own life. As soon as I was convinced that the Scriptures taught the gifts of the Spirit are for today, I began to pursue them diligently. The most important thing I’ve done in pursuing the gifts has been to pray very specifically for the gifts I felt the Lord wanted to give me… Probably the second most valuable thing I have done in my pursuit of spiritual gifts is that I have attempted to use them on a regular basis. More often than not this involves some risk, and specifically the risk of looking foolish. Almost as soon as I began to ask God to give me the gift of healing, I began to pray for sick people. Most of the sick people I prayed for at first did not get healed. When I first began to give words of knowledge in public, I also had some embarrassing moments. But there is no other way to grow in anything apart from constant practice and risking.’

As I said in the message, we are already a gifted church in so many ways, but let’s continually be those who “earnestly desire the Spiritual Gifts”!

1Pet. 4:10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.