Prayer – Lord, I am so blessed to have You as my Savior and to know that You are a blessing to so many of my family and friends. Please continue to gather them under Your wings of protection, blessing them with Your grace and peace. Thank you…for those I’ve known now and who have gone before me into Your loving arms in Heaven.
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus. Through him, God has enriched your church in every way—with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge. This confirms that what I told you about Christ is true. Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 (Underlined for emphasis.)
Meditate.
Consider God’s faithfulness.
New Life
What are your spiritual gifts?
Do
you feel that God has been faithful to you? Have He graciously given you gifts
of the spirit that you can use for Him? What are those gifts…and how are you
using them?
Gifts of the Spirit.
There are different kinds of
spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are
different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different
ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. A spiritual gift
is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit
gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a
message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and
to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person
the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives
someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God
or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in
unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is
being said. It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He
alone decides which gift each person should have. 1 Corinthians 12:4-11
It is
useful for a person to assess their spiritual gifts so that they can use them
to serve the Lord effectively. Maybe your church, pastor, teacher, mentor or
friend has a Spiritual Gifts test you can use or there are tons of questionnaires
out online to help you do just that. One that I’d trust is on the Lifeway’s
site. Spiritual_Gifts_Assessmentpdf.pdf
(scene7.com) Give
it a try. It was interesting that several years ago my Small Group Bible study did
such an evaluation and amongst the group we had all of the spiritual gifts.
Amazing! God certainly provides—and then expects us to use the gifts that He
gives us.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave
to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and
teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and
build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come
to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in
the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we
will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by
every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick
us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the
truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head
of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As
each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the
whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Ephesians 4:11-16
Paul
points out that we become mature, that is spiritually mature by using these
gifts. Isn’t that just what the Lord wants of us? To become mature and to do
His work?
Are you choosing to discover your
Spiritual Gifts and use them to serve the Lord?
Verses
of Salvation ~ God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take
credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good
things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God's
masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good
things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians
2:8-10
© 2024 Text, photos, and illustrations by Mickey M. Hunacek. All
rights reserved.
All scripture quoted from the New Living Translation (NLT) unless
otherwise noted.
New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale
House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream,
Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Biblical search from Blue Letter Bible - http://v3.blueletterbible.org/search.cfm.
Books by Mickey M.
Hunacek
Available as e-books or paperbacks at Amazon.com
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