***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: This evening I’m speaking to you on the topic of the meaning of gifts. There will be three different passages of scripture which I’ll be reading to you, and if you’d care to find those and hold them, I’ll be turning back and forth between them. The first one is Romans 12, 1-6, 1-8, and then Ephesians 4, 7-11, and 1 Corinthians 12, 1-31. I’m going to give most of my time this evening to reading these scriptures and commenting on them. And then after we have done that, there are a few points I would like to make to be as sure as possible on the basis of these scriptures that we understand what gifts are and what they mean. The meaning is very important, and there’s one preliminary remark I want to make because it is a topic which is very much discussed, and that is the topic of tongues. I’m not going to talk about tongues tonight. I’m going to try to use mine but not talk about it. The reason I’m not going to talk about it is very simply because I have something more important to talk about. And secondly, if I were going to talk about it, I would have to devote a couple of hours to dealing with it because it is a troublesome topic and a very important topic really. But you see, what is called tongues is only one of the gifts. And what I want to talk about is the group of things that we call gifts of the Spirit, and I want to try to make as clear as possible their place and function in our lives.
Now let me just say that it’s extremely important, and we cannot have a proper sense of the intimacy of our relationship to God as it should be unless we understand what gifts are and how they work. For all of us, every one of us, great, small, young, old, all of us, are to have and to exercise spiritual gifts. Now a gift is a power or possession which we have and use and exercise, but it did not come from us. If I give you a hundred dollar bill, then you have something which you can use, but it didn’t come from you. If you give me an FM radio transistor, something like that, I can use it, but it didn’t come from me. If I give you knowledge, then you can use it, but it didn’t come from you. If you give me a position, then I can function in that position, but it didn’t come from me, it came from you.
Now let’s understand the basic nature then of gifts, and as we come to read in these passages beginning in Romans 12, bear in mind that fundamental conception of a gift. It is a possession or power, a possession or a power, a thing or an ability which the receiver can use, can exercise, can do things with, but it did not come from them. And there are deep implications of all of that, and I’m going to be trying to go, I’m going to try to go into some of them this evening.
But let’s look now at Romans 12, and in all of these passages we will have in mind the context of the body of the church, the body of believers. This is not so much true, by the way, in the passage in 1 Corinthians 12, but it is true especially in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4. Let us look at the very first verse now of Romans 12.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. See we’re talking about a way of life now, a way of life in which our bodies are sacrifices. Not just individually, but taken together also, our bodies are sacrifices, living sacrifices. And be not conformed to the world, but be ye transformed, and you know my constant emphasis on the understanding of truth. Be ye transformed not by having new feelings, not even by making new choices and resolves and decisions, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. That is, you know by testing how God works, it is as real to you as knowing how your car works.
Now please don’t be excused by all of the homely examples I give of the working of God. Because please believe me, we are to understand and know how the spiritual things work just as well as we understand how our automobile works, or maybe even better. Some of us perhaps don’t know how it works, and maybe just as well. But if you at least have, if you drive at least you have a basic understanding of turning wheels and keys and pushing buttons and things of that sort. Now the spiritual life is to be like that, and if you disagree with that I hope it at least makes you mad enough to prove me wrong. We are to prove what is that good and perfect will of God.
For I say through the grace, now grace, the Greek word grace, here it is karistos, but it’s just keras, keras. And it is the main word in the scriptures which is used to form the word for gifts, kerismata, grace and gift. Gift is just an act of grace, that’s all it is. A gift is an act of grace in which something is imparted to you without your meriting it, without perhaps you even being very well qualified for it. And we’ll go into that in a moment. Now Paul says, through the grace given to the gift, if you wish, given to me, I say that every man among you should not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. Very important term, measure.
One of the things we have to understand in the Christian life is that people have different measures of faith. We must not believe that there is one measure of faith and you have that to get saved and that’s really it. Remember the verse which I have stressed over and over in the previous meetings, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. We progress from faith to faith. There is a measure of faith. There is a measure of grace. We are to grow in grace. And God has given to every person a measure of faith.
Now what that means is something very simple. There are some things you can’t believe and there are some things you can’t believe. You may, for example, be puzzled about the work of healing. And you may look at it from the outside and you honestly cannot believe that someone can, under the administration of the Spirit of God, pray for someone or lay their hands on them or, as Jesus sometimes did, simply speak, and people are healed. And sometimes people feel very inferior about that kind of thing. They think there must really be something wrong with me because I see all these big things happening and I can’t do it. And so, no, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with you. These kinds of things are matters in which we must understand they are not given to every person and they are given to persons according to the measure of their faith. And sometimes a person has more faith on one day than they have on other days. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays they don’t have much. But Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays they have a great deal. Now I hope it kind of worries you that I would talk that way about it. You have to understand that that’s really the way it is now. And when you come to understand how the will of God works in human life, I think you’ll begin to appreciate that. Sometimes you cannot believe things and other times you can. And there are things which you can believe God for that other people couldn’t touch. And it isn’t a matter that you’re better than the other person or they than you. There is a measure of faith given to every man by God.
Now there’s not only a measure of faith, but the next verse is very important for understanding gifts. For as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office, the Greek word there is praxin or practice. Just simply means we don’t all have the same function. Now that word function is very important for understanding gifts because gifts are tied to functions. Now I’ll return to that again. Right now I’m just trying to read through this and highlight passages that I want you to keep in mind as we go along. Not all members have the same function. Perhaps your function is not to teach. Perhaps your function is something else. Now if that is so, then you are to be happy in that because not everyone has the same office.
Let me just digress here a moment and say that we often go to seed on one thing. And in recent decades in the evangelical churches, among the things which we’ve gone to seed on, is something called soul winning. Now again, if you disagree with me about this, I’ll love you just as much. All right? But I have seen great distress and harm caused in people because someone told them that everybody was supposed to be doing something called winning souls. Now not witnessing, mind you, soul winning. And I’ve seen many people made to feel very bad because they didn’t bring their weekly quotient of people that they had won to the Lord that week or that month or that year.
Now let me just say to you very honestly, in my opinion, it is not everyone’s business to win souls. And in a very important sense, it’s no one’s business but God’s. You may know the story of Dwight Moody being bumped into on the street in Chicago by a drunk who when he recognized Moody said, I’m one of your converts. And Moody said, you must be, you sure aren’t God’s. You see, we can convert people in all kinds and directions. And indeed, there’s nothing so much so big in modern life as converting from one thing to another. And it is sometimes right to convert people. He that converteth a sinner from his ways, the scripture says, saves a soul from hell. And there is a time for converting people, but that is one office and that is not the only office. So remember this, that gifts are related to function and we do not all have the same function. We do not all have the same office.
Verse five of Romans 12, so we be many, our one body in Christ and every one members of another having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us. Our gifts differ. We want to glory in the diversity of the church. When you see someone who has a gift you don’t have, praise God because that makes you need them and love them more than ever. We glory in the diversity of the church. We’re not in the business of stamping out cookies with a cookie stamper that all look alike and have the same dimensions and tastes just alike. We are different.
Let us then prophesy. That’s one of the offices, that’s one of the functions. Now how shall we prophesy? According to the proportion of faith. One of the great problems in exercising the gifts of the Spirit is to learn not to do it with more zeal and try more things than you have faith. We exercise the gift of prophecy according to the faith that we have and we do that in complete confidence because we know that it is God who gives us the faith and he does not require more of us than we have. And if God wants me to prophesy more he’ll give me more faith. He won’t make me and require me to prophesy where I don’t have faith. And if God wishes me to heal more he will give me more faith. He will not make me put on some big strained heavy act trying to heal where I don’t have faith. We prophesy according to the proportion of faith and where the faith stops the prophecy stops. And it stops in perfect peace because we do the work of our office with the grace given by God and that’s all and when that goes out we stop.
Now there has only been one person in the history of the world to whom God gave grace without measure and that was Jesus Christ. Now all of the rest of us approximate to that insofar as God leads us and I believe that together as we live together we are to in fact exercise a power greater than Jesus was able to exercise himself while he was in the flesh. He himself said that the works that I do you shall do also and greater works than these because he said I go to my father which meant that he could now dwell in a different form in his church. And because he’s present in a different way the receptacle the vessel of the Incarnation is greater and more power can dwell in it. But you see now you never want to feel guilty where your faith runs out. You’re not in the faith-making business. The way some people do it you would think that faith cometh by sweat. Faith cometh by trying hard and saying you believe what you don’t even believe. Faith is not effort. Faith is not resolve. Faith is the gift of God which comes by the will of God. As God speaks into our hearts and creates belief and conviction which says it is so and faith becomes the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen in that way.
Or ministry. Let us wait on ministry. Verse 7. Or he that teacheth on teaching. Or he that exhorteth on exhortation. Or he that giveth let him do it with simplicity. He that ruleth with diligence he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. Now these are different practices or offices in the body of Christ and you will see that not only do we have a difference of ministry here and a difference in the proportion of which they’re exercised, but you’re going to see that there are even different gifts listed in different parts of the Scriptures.
Let’s look at Ephesians 4 for a moment. Ephesians 4. Now you will see at the opening of chapter 4 of Ephesians the same thing, a way of life is being presented. Paul says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. Present your bodies, living sacrifices unto God, walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. You see there’s a way of life which is presupposed, a walk of faith in which God is present. And then he goes on to describe various character traits, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, and stresses the unity of that body, that way of life. Verse 6, one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all and in you all. That’s the stress on the sameness.
Now verse 7 starts with a but. But we’ve had the unity presented, the unity consisting of the one God, of the one Christ, and of the one character that is to come into those who follow that Christ, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another in love. These are the fruits of the Spirit. We’ll talk more about them in a moment. But over against that unity, there is a diversity, and that’s what the but is about in verse 7. But unto every one of us is given grace, charis again, according to the measure, measure again, of the gift of Christ. These little packets of grace are measured out to us by Christ, according to his purposes, and that always includes according to whether they’re going to do us harm or whether they might hurt us. You may wonder if a gift could hurt, I assure you it can. Your life would be changed in a very great way if you began to have a great quantity of power to heal, for example, or of prophecy in the New Testament sense, or the capacity to teach or to know or any of the other things which are important functions in the body of Christ. And in order to bear the weight of that gift, you must have a certain character, and Christ measures it out according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive. Now what does that mean? What happens to captivity if it is led captive? No one is captive of it anymore, are they? To lead captivity captive is to do away, to abolish captivity. It is to liberate people. It is to liberate them from the bondage of sin, the captivity of sin, of guilt, of resentment and anger, and all of the other forms of sin which sit upon us and crush the life out of us. And when he led that captivity captive, he liberated us. And not only did he liberate us by leading captivity captive, not only did he give us freedom from, he gave us freedom too in the form of abilities which are here called gifts. Notice, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.
Verse 11, he gave some apostles, prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers. You see again, those are functions, those are offices, those are practices. Why did he give them? He gave them for the perfecting of the saints. Now that is the work of the ministry. It is to make the saints perfect. I hope you’re not bugged by perfection and by worrying about whether or not you’re really going to be perfect, because there are many, many senses in which you’re not going to be perfect. And yet, it is very clear in the New Testament teachings of Jesus and discipleship and the process of spiritual growth that we are at least to become more and more perfect as time goes by. More and more. And the work of the ministry in exercising these functions is to make us perfect. That’s what your ministers are supposed to do. They are to perfect you. Where you are having trouble in the spiritual life, in the physical life, in whatever life, they are to help you with that in all of the ways in which the gifts come.
You know it is not God’s will that we be oppressed by evil. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, deliver us from evil. Now that’s not talking about deliver us from the devil. And that’s not talking about deliver us from our sins alone. That’s talking about delivering us from everything that is bad. That’s what evil is. Deliver us from evil. And when that prayer says, and lead us not into temptation, that’s not saying, Lord, don’t tempt me to tell a lie. Lord, don’t tempt me to sin. Temptation is trial. Lead us not into trials. Lord, keep us out of hard times.
Now, the ministry which you are to exercise as a king and a priest, which is what we are, will help us to see again how the diversity works together with the unity. Remember now not everyone does the same thing, but as they work together in the body, there is the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, the building up of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That’s simply talking about being Christ-like, do you understand? Until we all become like Christ. Remember this morning I said, using Romans 8 29, that we are predestined through the foreknowledge of God to be conformed to the image of Christ in order that he may be the firstborn among many brethren.
Now as we nourish one another and as we use the gifts which are given to us, we simply are able to become, to be helped by others, to help others to become like Christ, the fullness of Christ. That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and by cunning craftiness. But speaking the truth in love, grow up unto him in all things which is the head, even Christ.
From whom? Now this is one of those stem-winding sentences of Paul’s and so you have to sort of put periods in brackets and braces in every now and then to break it up so you can get a hold of it. This verse 16 is extremely important for understanding the nature of the church and for the nature of our lives as Christians, as disciples, as followers of Christ, even Christ. From whom? That’s Christ. The whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth. Who are the joints? You and me, aren’t we? We’re the joints. We are the elbows and the biceps, the knees and the toes and the ears. And every one of us supplyeth something. And where did we get that which we supply? We got it from Christ. The grace of God in us enables us to function in our relationships with others.
Now I want to make this just as simple as I can and as concrete as I can. And I want to say simply, what this is talking about is how we see one another and how we touch one another and shake hands and look at one another, and how we listen to one another and how we speak to one another. It comes down to how we help one another. You see? That’s what love comes down to, isn’t it? It’s how we look at one another and touch one another and listen and help one another. That’s what it’s talking about. When we come together, there is something that is to go from us to the other person and something that has come from the other person to us. That’s the joints supplying. That’s what’s supposed to happen in a congregation that comes together. The joints are supposed to supply something to one another. And whenever you are out in your neighborhood and you touch with a fellow Christian, a fellow believer, you’re supposed to supply something.
Now, it isn’t that you have to say every time you see someone, now I’m going to supply something, because it isn’t that kind of thing at all. Rather, you see, we are directed by the head, and as we dwell richly in the grace of God which comes from the head through the whole body, we simply come naturally and indeed rather effortlessly to perform the function that is appointed to us by God. And then as we do that, and as we wait on God for that kind of thing, and in our prayers, and in our words, and in our consciousness of where we are in this world, and who is ruling, and who God is, in that consciousness we simply build one another up by naturally supplying confidence, and love, and joy, and faith. And beyond that, special things sometimes, because you see, you may need an improvement of health, and your brother or sister may have the ability to come to you and give you a gift of health, healing. You may have a problem with knowing something, and it may be appointed to your brother or sister to sit, and as they listen to you, speak a word in which the darkness on that particular point, it may have to do with some practical matter like your business, or your family, or the church business, or it may have to do with the spiritual matter, that darkness will just be dispersed. And you will know all of a sudden, you will simply know, and that will be something that your brother or sister has done for you, and that is that which every joint supply.
See, now out of that you get community. We often talk about fellowship. Now, fellowship is, when you break it down, is just a matter of being in the same boat. Fellowship, right? Same boat. And when you have fellowship, you are sharing life. The joints are supplying, according to the effectual working. Now that word in Ergiyan, effectual working, is one of the words which is used in the New Testament, which you’ll see in a moment in 1 Corinthians 12, to refer to the same thing as a gift, the effectual working. You have something in you, in your body. Now I mean that quite literally. Christ is in you. When you believe, you receive Christ into your heart and your life, and your heart is in here. Now of course it isn’t your literal heart, and we’re apt to pass that off so easily that we miss the simple point that your body, having been offered as a living sacrifice, is now accepted and becomes the temple of God, and who dwells in the temple of God? God. Right?
Now many people who will fight big wars to insist that God incarnated Himself in Christ don’t understand that they are to be extensions of the incarnation. Christ is in you, and that Christ in you is your hope of glory. Christ is in your hands. Christ is in your body. That may be a little too much for you, and you may really be worried about that, and I hope you will think about it and ask for the Holy Spirit to teach you about this. But I want to say again, Christ is in your body. Now you know one of the things we have to do with the scripture is learn to believe what it says. But it puts such a strain upon us many times that we kind of just pass it off and say, well, yeah, sure, Christ is in me. But we don’t really think anything about it, and we don’t come to a practical grasp of what that means.
Now Christ may not be in part of your body because you haven’t welcomed Him in. You see, Christ is a gentleman. He’s not pushy. And if you want Christ to be in your hands, you’ll have to invite Him in. And if you want Christ to be in your brain, you’ll have to invite Him in. If you want Him to live in you fully, you have to invite Him. And as you do that, you will go from faith to faith on that, and you’ll begin to understand more and more about how the body of Christ works through the bodies of the believer.
I mean, why do we have to come together at all? Why couldn’t we do just as well by everyone of us in our homes thinking about one another or something like that? Why couldn’t we just sit around and think of one another and say, well, I don’t need to go to church today because I’ll just think of them? Well, it’s because we are bodily creatures. We come together by contact, and we give that which every joint supplieth through the contact of the body. And we make increase of the body into the edifying of itself in love.
First Corinthians 12 is written on a slightly different principle because in this chapter, we have a problem that Paul is attempting to address. In this group of people in Corinth, there are certain excesses involved with the spiritual gifts. It shocks many people to know sometimes that spiritual gifts are not limited to Christians. Strictly speaking, a spiritual gift is simply any kind of gift that comes from the spiritual realm, and there are a lot of things in the spiritual realm which are not God. And the pagan religions were very well acquainted with all of this, and they are today. Many people are astounded to know that there are other religions of all kinds that have healings, that have visions and tongues and prophecies and all these sorts of things. Well, it’s only because we misunderstand gifts if we’re puzzled about that.
Now Paul, understanding these matters, says in chapter 12, concerning spiritual matters, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. It’s very important not to be ignorant about how these spiritual things work. You know that you were Gentiles carried away under these dumb idols even as you were led. Now the idols are dumb, but it was the view of Paul and of the early church that associated with the dumb idols were very live spirits. And they were capable of entering into people and accomplishing things through them.
And Paul wants to give to the Corinthians a way of distinguishing the spirit which is of Christ from those which it is not. And so he says in verse 3, Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and that no man can say, that is, can genuinely say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. The confession of Jesus Christ as Lord is taken as the mark of the spirit which is of Christ.
But now having given that, we see the same emphasis by Paul on diversity against unity. There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. Gifts, kersmaton. There are diversities of administrations, a different word, but the same Lord. There are diversities of operations, again that term in ergia, one of its variants. So you have gifts, administrations, and operations. They are not, I think, distinct things, but three different terms for the same sort of spiritual movement in the soul of the believer.
Now the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit. For one is given the spirit of the word of wisdom, the other the word of knowledge, another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another diverse kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of tongues. But all of these worketh that one and self same spirit dividing to every man severally as he will.
Now I’m going to leave aside any details of commenting here because I’ve already covered, I think, the main structure of these verses by referring to the other passages. And I want simply to make a number of points very briefly in closing about spiritual gifts.
First of all, spiritual gifts are tied to spiritual function or office. We must understand that the gift of God is given to you and to me as we go about simply doing the work of God in our life. When we have a function, we are free to open ourselves to God in order that he might accomplish more through us than we can do in ourselves. Every office or function of the believer is to be carried out and executed by the power of God. And the mark of the work of the Spirit is always this, the effect is greatly incommensurable with the effort that goes into it.
You cannot explain what happens by simply looking at the effort and ability of the person who is acting. If it is teaching, if it is a word of knowledge, if it is even solving a practical problem which a friend may come to you and help you with, one of the gifts of the Spirit or one of the offices of the Spirit, which is mentioned in verse 28 of chapter 12, is helps. The simple word helps. And some people are given the ministry of helping others in all sorts of ways, and their function is just to help people. And when they come to help, the effect of their efforts is always far greater than anything they could do in their own ability.
And when you go to help someone, remember to ask God to do something with you, to cooperate with you, to let you be a co-laborer with him. And if you’re helping a neighbor fix his lawnmower, remember to ask God to give you the gift of helps in that relationship. And then praise God for it when it happens.
If we wish to minister to those around us, we do so simply by showing forth God’s availability in all of the functions of life. We never say of anything, oh, God doesn’t have anything to do with this. If we are concerned about anything at all, from solving algebra problems to getting married or getting a job or whatever, we always, according to the measure of faith that is given to us, we say, this is God’s concern.
The alienation from God, which is in the world, comes from believing that God does not care. God only cares about the big things. Turn it exactly around and you’ve got the truth. God mainly cares about the little things. That’s where the care of God is. Where you are, that’s where God is. The thing you’re concerned with, that’s what God is concerned with. And the point of the gifts is that in all of the functions of life, we should understand and know that.
There’s one other thing that it’s very important to understand. The gift that comes to us does not reveal the inner condition of the soul. I said a while ago that a gift does not come from us. And that’s why it’s so important to understand the difference between gifts and fruit. Now the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness, goodness, kindness, meekness, faith, temperance, self-control. Against such, Paul says in Galatians 5, 22, 23, there is no law.
And you see, those are fruit. And when you see a person who is able to exercise those kinds of things, you are looking at something which comes from the very depths of that person’s soul. But when you see a gift, the gift does not tell you the story on the condition of soul of the one who has it. What the gift tells you is about the giver.
If you see me with a million dollars in my hands, you know it didn’t come from me. It came from somebody else. Someone else is rich, not me. I may be now that they’ve given it to me, but it doesn’t show a thing about my background or where I came from that I have that. It shows something about someone else. If you go out into your backyard and someone says there, well, I want to change this tree from an apple tree to an orange tree, so I’ll just tie lots of oranges all over it, and it’ll be an orange tree. You would say it won’t work. Well, but I want to give it oranges. But giving it oranges doesn’t make it an apple tree. If, on the other hand, you see a blossom come out of the end of the branch, and you see an orange grow on that, you know it’s an orange tree. That’s fruit.
The gifts will not solve your personal problems. You can be as nutty as a fruitcake, and God may still give you gifts for his purposes. In the 10th chapter of Matthew and the 10th chapter of Luke, God sent his disciples out to heal the sick and to cast out devils and to preach the kingdom of God. And they went out and did it. They probably didn’t even believe it when they went out, but boy, when they came back, they were walking 15 feet off the ground. And they said, even the devils are subject to us through your name. And Jesus said to them, don’t rejoice over that. You remember that? Luke 10, don’t rejoice over that. Rejoice rather that your names are written in the book of life.
You see, gifts do not cure our character problems. They’re not meant to do that. Those are meant to be treated by the process of growth and discipleship through which we change from what we are to a different kind of life. And I’m going to be talking about that on other occasions. But it’s very important to understand this, because many people are misled by gifts into thinking that whoever has a gift is somehow all right.
No matter how big a gift we have, our righteousness is a different matter. God’s gifts are for the accomplishing of his purposes, and he gives them to that end. He does not give them to make us loving where we are not loving. He doesn’t give them to make us patient where we are not patient.
The fruit is one thing. The gift is another. And the gift is always subject to the limitations of the bearer. You can give a monkey a typewriter. And it is said that if you had a monkey and in infinity of time and they would peck on the typewriter, they might write the works of Shakespeare. I doubt it. And it’s for sure that if they did, they wouldn’t have any idea of what they’ve done.
The gift does not remove the limitations of the receiver. And we exercise the gifts under those limitations. The gift must be received where we are humbly, thankfully, and with an understanding that it is a gift of grace, that God by it intends to use us for his purposes. And in all humility and thankfulness, remember that even though we have a gift in our hands, that does not take the simple fact away from us that our righteousness and our peace and our joy rests entirely in our dependence and faith upon Christ.
The gifts shouldn’t threaten us then. They should be something when we should be able to say, I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to look at my function in light. I’m willing to ask, what am I doing? And I’m willing to say, Lord, lead me into an understanding of your gifts where I am. Lord, set me free to make mistakes with confidence if it’s necessary in order to learn. That’s for you. The meaning of gifts is for you. It is for you where you are.
If you want to know how the gifts work, you can know very simply. By looking at the functions which you actually carry out in your daily life, and asking God to lead you in to the practice of the gifts of God which are available for those purposes. Now if you do that, you will come to understand what it is to have the constant presence of God in your life. There’s an old book written by a man named Brother Lawrence called The Practice of the Presence of God. And that is the ultimate meaning of the gifts. Because it isn’t merely that God is present to us because we’re thinking about him all the time. When Jesus said, lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world, he wasn’t just saying, you can always think about me wherever you are. He was saying that where you are working, he would be at work. And you would see it, and you would know it. And again, you would become to the point to where you are so familiar with it that you could work with it in the way you work with the wheel of your car.
In the Old Testament, many times the Old Testament does the best job of expressing the kind of blessedness that is offered to us through the life of Christ and the will of God. There is in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy a passage in which the scripture says, blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, and the increase of thy kind, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket, and blessed shall be thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. That’s the meaning of Giz, the constant consciousness of God at work with you where you are.
We’re going to sing a hymn now. I believe it’s number 275, Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, and that is a very suitable passage or song for us. Often we associate this again with the forgiveness of sins which we experience in first coming to Christ, but I’d like for us tonight to think of the amazing grace which is in the constant presence of God through his gifts to us moment by moment as we look to him for it. So as we stand please, number 275, let’s sing together all four stanzas.
It was grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved me from fear. And grace my fears relieved, How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. His grace that brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home. The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.
Shall we bow for benediction? Lord, we pray that this week you will teach us in surprising ways of your presence in our lives. Our faith is small, Lord. We believe, however, help thou our unbelief by showing up in all of the places where we are, but don’t expect you to be. Make that true of everyone in this room. May they learn to rejoice in the God who is there. In Jesus’ name, Amen.