Pursuing The Spiritual Gifts

Pursuing Spiritual Gifts

1 Cor. 14

When Chinese food deliveryman Min Kuang Chen went missing after delivering an order to an apartment complex in the Bronx, the likely conclusion was that someone had robbed and killed him - when deliverymen go missing in the Bronx that is usually what turns out to be the case. So for several days the police searched the apartment complex where he was last seen, and poked around the edges of the rivers to see if a body turned up. 

After 3 1/2 days of searching they finally found Min Kuang Chen. He hadn't been robbed or killed after all. For almost 4 days he had been stuck in the elevator at the apartment complex. On his way down after delivering the order, the elevator suddenly dropped about 30 stories and got stuck between the 4th and 5th floors. He tried using the intercom button to call for help to the people in the security office, but because he only spoke Chinese they couldn't understand him, and they had no idea where the voice was coming from, so they finally turned the intercom off. No one in the apartment complex expected the elevator to work, so no one was surprised that it was stuck between floors. 

AW Tozer wrote a book titled Tragedy in the Church: the Missing Gifts. Some have come to the conclusion that the spiritual gifts are dead and gone, that they're not for today, God removed them, and the church is meant to do what it does without them, even though they were vital to life of the early church. Like that old elevator, some churches know the spiritual gifts are there, but honestly don't expect them to operate. Because we don't understand what the gifts are or what they do, talk about them can seem like so much gibberish and eventually we turn off the intercom and the spiritual gifts get stuck somewhere between weird and useless. 

But God's word urges us not only to believe in the spiritual gifts, or begrudgingly tolerate them in the church, God's word urges us to pursue them, to seek them, to desire them. Let's read together 1 Cor. 14: 1-25.

I.  Pursue love by eagerly pursuing the spiritual gifts 

Remember the flow of chapters 12-14: Paul closes chapter 12 by urging the Corinthian church to earnestly seek the spiritual gifts, and he opens chapter 14 by again urging them to pursue love and eagerly desire the spiritual gifts. Remember the Corinthian church was a hyper-charismatic church - telling them to eagerly desire the spiritual gifts is like telling Donald Trump to eagerly desire confrontation! If ever there was a church to encourage to tone it down, to lay off the spiritual gifts, to work on some other priorities, this was it. But Paul knows that the answer to misuse of the spiritual gifts isn't disuse, it's correct use. It's using the spiritual gifts motivated by love. In chapter 13 he explains that any spiritual gift, if not accompanied by love, is worthless in God's sight. The spiritual gifts need to be motivated by love, not by a thirst for the wild and weird. We pursue the spiritual gifts because we love and we pursue love by pursuing the spiritual gifts. 

Paul makes this point by taking two gifts, prophecy and tongues, that the Corinthians are very familiar with, and shows us how we are to measure the importance of a spiritual gift. What makes prophecy better than tongues? What makes some gifts greater than others? It's the same measuring stick that he uses in chapter 13: love. If prophecy is better than tongues it's not because it's got more "wow" factor to it. The spiritual gifts weren't given to amaze and entertain people. They were given as a way of ministering to people, building them up in love. So the measuring stick for greater and lesser gifts is how effective it is at building up the church. The more good it does people, the more it builds up and benefits the spiritual life of others, the greater the gift is. The purpose of the gifts is love. Vs. 12 states this: So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit (that's a good thing!) strive to excel in building up the church.

The reason prophecy ranks as a greater gift than tongues in the church is because people can understand what it is God is saying to them. By its nature tongues builds up the individual but prophecy builds up the congregation. That's exactly what Paul says in verse 4: The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. Vs. 4

Without an interpretation, tongues can't help people grow because they have no idea what's being said. So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. (vs. 9)

Tongues is a good gift from God. Paul thanks God he speaks in more tongues than all of the Corinthian believers, but, he says, for it to do anyone any good it needs either to be a private and personal prayer language, between the believer and God. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also. (vv. 14-15) Or, if a tongue is spoken in a public setting, there needs to be an interpretation along with it: 

Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. 1 Cor. 14:5

Do you see the underlying theme in all of this? It's not what amazes people or looks impressive or draws large crowds. It's what builds up the church. Love builds people up, strengthens them in their relationship with Christ, encourages them to keep walking with the Lord, provokes them to love and good works. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 

If, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the spiritual gifts aren't so much a matter of secret abilities that God has given each of us that we then need to discover as it is ministry assignments that God will give each of us along with the grace to fulfill that ministry assignment, then this explains why we should eagerly pursue the spiritual gifts. Because pursuing the spiritual gifts is a tangible way we can pursue love. Love ain't a thing, love is a verb. Love is an action word. 

The spiritual gifts are really just meant to be ministry motivated by love. Because we love people, we want to make a difference in their lives for Christ - ministry is just that, making a difference in people's lives for Christ, leaving them stronger than we found them. Building the church up by building each other up. But what ministry assignment? That's discovering your spiritual gift: what ministry assignment is God calling you to serve in now? Whatever it is, He will give you the grace-gift to do it effectively for His glory and for the building up of His church.

The healthier a church, the more people in the church are energized and envisioned to serve the Lord 

with their gifts and passions. Some churches think the pastor's part is to do the ministry and the congregation's part is to put money in the collection plate, but the NT tells us that God has called the congregation to do the work of ministry and pastors and the five fold ministry to equip the saints for those works of ministry.  

It excites me to see various ministries birthed in people's hearts in GCC. I mentioned how Mike Reade approached me one Sunday with this burden of seeing our outreach to this community grow. That brief conversation has given birth to a new outreach team as Mike Read, Mark Wilber, Bree Wakefield, and myself talk, plan, and pray about how we can grow our outreach footprint in the community.  

• The Lord put running a VBS on Roxy R's heart and last year and again this year she planned and organized it, and what a joy to see all of the workers serving these children so wonderfully two weeks ago! But if Roxy had kept that ministry burden to herself, none of that would have happened.
• Over a year ago, Tim Rawleigh came with the burden of discipleship on his heart. Under his leadership, we've run two "How People Change" classes and are now planning our first Financial Peace University class in Sept. And that won't be the end of it, as Tim plans out other contexts to help people grow in day to day practical discipleship. 
• Mike and Linda led and hosted a Chip Ingram marriage teaching series and five couples benefited from the teaching and discussion.
• One of our teens came to me recently with a burden to see a teen mission trip organized, and I've asked him to do some research on that and come back and share what he finds with Jeff and Rachel.
• Another of our teens came to me just yesterday saying that God was stirring her heart to get more involved in serving in the church in a couple ways and she is now writing out some of the things that God is putting on her heart. 
• Today several musicians are going to be sharing their musical talents with us at an audition so we can consider with them whether serving on the worship team is something God is calling them to.
• And then there are the long term faithful ministries going on in the church all the time: church board of directors, worship team, CM, CGs, youth group, welcome team, ushers team, hospitality team, and others, all carried on by faithful men and women who want to serve the Lord with their time, passions and talents.

A year and a half ago, two women, Bree Wakefield and Dee Murch shared with our board a vision they had of starting a Christian school. Grace now has the privilege of hosting KWA, and it's enrollment has nearly doubled in one year. Wouldn't be happening if these women hadn't moved on the burden God was putting on their hearts.

But my point in sharing this isn't just to say, look at all we're doing. Actually, I'm very aware of how much MORE we could be doing! There is so much resource, so much ability, so much gifting in the chairs that I'm looking at. 

Eagerly pursuing the spiritual gifts means pursuing ministry motivated by love. Love ain't a thing, and it ain't primarily a feeling. Don't pray and ask God to give you such a feeling of love that it sweeps you into ministry, ask God to give you a spiritual assignment that will sweep you into a feeling! Don't ask God to give you a greater love for God's people and the church, serve God's people and the church, and the love will follow! 

Serve the Lord with gladness

As I was locking up on the Friday night VBS ended, it was late, about 10:30pm and as I walked across the parking lot alone, I couldn't help but think, God, it's fun to serve you. Now, I did very little with VBS, but I did a little, and watched a lot. And my heart was filled with a gladness by what I saw over the course of the week. That's biblical, Ps. 100:2 says, Serve the Lord with gladness! Some of you aren't glad because you aren't serving. Or you're serving but you've lost sight of why you're serving. Let's reclaim that. 

Pursue eagerly means we don't wait for it to come to us, we pursue it. We seek it. We intentionally work to make it happen. I've mentioned several situation where people acted on a burden and then things happened. How much ministry dies on the vine because people don't do anything with it, don't take an action step, don't pursue eagerly the spiritual assignment God is putting on their hearts. I don't say that to condemn anyone - I've been guilty of it too.

II.  Pursue love by practicing the gifts in an orderly way (vv. 26-40)

Apparently there was a nearly chaotic atmosphere in the Corinthian. Because they saw the gifts as an opportunity to demonstrate how spiritual they were, the wilder and weirder the better. There was also a misguided belief that if the Spirit came upon them, they wouldn't be able to control it. So whatever impulse anyone had, if they thought it was the Spirit, they'd just blurt it out so that services were being disrupted with outbursts of tongues and prophecies and whatever else they felt led to do. Verses 34 indicate that women, maybe flush with a new-found liberty in the Lord, were also disrupting the services.

God isn't a God of confusion, He's a God of peace. If the result is disorder and people leaving confused and there's a sense of it being weird and disturbing, well, that's not of God. God loves to work within order. That doesn't mean that God is going to confine Himself to what we think of as normal. God doesn't fit in our boxes. Jesus rocked a lot of boats, shocked a lot of people, and offended a lot of religious people's sensibilities. But there was an orderly peace even in the midst of Jesus' supernatural ministry. Amazing, but not weird. Wild people grew calm through his ministry, but calm people didn't grow wild through his ministry.

So Paul says, time to put some order to this thing. Let everything be done for building up. In other words, let love guide what you contribute to the service. Limit supernatural messages to two or maybe three in a service, rather than an unending time of scatter-shot prophesying and tongues. God doesn't take control away from the prophet, they have full control and can keep quiet. Hypothetically ten people could receive an impression from the Spirit - might even be the same impression or word. After two or three, let the others refrain from sharing what God has put on their heart. Getting a word from the Lord is no longer a mandate to share that word. Let the message be evaluated by others. If there is something unbiblical or it's determined to be unhealthy spiritually, correct it.

Ministry mic (call band up)

One way we attempt to steward the gift of prophecy and exhortation is through the ministry mic up here. If the Lord puts a word of encouragement on your heart during the worship time, you can come and share an overview (doesn't have to be word for word) of what the Lord put on your heart, any scripture along with it, and then I (or whoever is at the ministry mic that Sunday) will seek to discern whether that word fits in well with the service flow, and if so, when a good time to share it is.

It's subjective. You can miss it, I can miss it. Paul is saying we need to discern, and we need to remember that the prophet's spirit is subject to the prophet. A prophet can have a word from the Lord and not share it. If we have 3 or 4 words, I'll probably bring it to a close because it can be overload at that point. But right now, we have very little going on and I'd like to encourage more. Eagerly pursuing means asking God and being open to God giving you a word to build up the congregation. It can be scary, but it's an atmosphere of love and acceptance. We won't stone someone for missing it.

Conclusion: The gifts are supernatural, powerful, orderly, and for the building up of the church. We have more gift than we are currently seeing used - I'm convinced of that. Let's take this encouragement to heart, let's do what Paul tells Timothy to do: fan into flame the gift that is within you. Let's serve the Lord together with gladness. Let's let ministry motivated by love multiply in this church. Let's not one of us be content to be a spectator or a seat-warmer, but let's all get on the field and do our part, and let's do it with renewed vigor and faith that God will take our little and multiply it in a big way for His glory! God's grace is enough for us to do amazing things in Jesus' name!