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Welcome back to another edition of the Eternal Perspective Conversation. We are going through a leadership training at our church with the sole purpose of equipping the leaders to become grounded in the Truth claims of Scared Scripture. A couple of weeks ago, one of the elders ( elder Bill Krayer) gave an amazing exposition of 1 corinthians 12, a chapter that deals with Spiritual gifts or shall I say Spiritual things. With the controversies that surround this very sensitive matter , I felt compelled to invite him to the EPS ( Eternal Perspective Conversation) to give us biblical answers that address Spiritual gifts. I will invite you to watch the entire presentation. Here is a breakdown of the entire exchange
0:08 introduction of the guest
0:55 Why is it important for the church to get familiar with spiritual gifts?
1:32 Existing confusions & controversies over Spiritual gifts within the church
4:57 What is more important? Spiritual gifts or the fruits of the Spirit
6:13 The Role of Spiritual gifts
6:52 a Thorough look at 1 Corinthians 12
7:48 Reading and understanding 1 Cor 12:1-3
8:45 Criteria 1: How do you know if a Spiritual gift is being used appropriately
12:02 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, gifts, service, activities & manifestations/workings of the Spirit
13:56 Graphic organizer and end goal of Spiritual things ( gifts)
15:47 1. Grace- gifts, what are they?
19:07 What the gift of prophecy is and is not today
23:28 Do I only have one grace- gift?
24:23 How do the grace -gifts work/operate within the church
26:23 The Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit, why is that so important when it comes to Spiritual things ( gifts)
29:16 Be content and stay in your lane31:19 What's my gift? The necessity of affirming one another
34:05 Ministries and roles in the Church( Ephesians 4:11-16)
36:53 D0 Apostles still exist today?
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[Music]
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[Applause] [Music]
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all right uh guys welcome back to a new edition of um i forgot the name of
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my own show it's called the eternal perspective and uh i have um my friend bill claire he's
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been on the show before and i invited him today specifically for a specific purpose because
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we were talking about spiritual gifts and uh he had an amazing explanation and an amazing
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presentation about it that was about a week and a half ago and i asked him at the end of our session
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would you be able to share it with more than just the church members and he agreed to it
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so today i have mr bill clare in front of me and he's going to be telling us about spiritual
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gifts so bill i've already introduced your name and would you please tell us a little bit about
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why you chose to to do this and why is this so so important for the church today
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well uh just briefly i would like to uh uh i'd like to thank you tai for having
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me on and i i feel like when we get into the subject
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of spiritual gifts in the church and i'm not sure you know how much your audience knows
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about it already uh i imagine some of your listeners know more than others
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but the fact is that there's a lot more heat
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than light about uh spiritual gifts in the church uh you have really two extremes and the
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pendulum kind of swings back and forth from one to the other there's uh there's
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one extreme and and some people say that there's no
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room for anything quote unusual or miraculous
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um or anything that maybe can't be explained by some rational
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explanation and on the other extreme there
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there's a tendency on the other extreme to insist that
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only if you have certain spiritual gifts can you be called spiritual that is uh
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you know the extreme version of that is you can't be a christian without having
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x y or z spiritual gifts some people don't go that far but they
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do say that well certain gifts are much more important than others and we uplift
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other yeah uh so there's a lot of fog
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about spiritual gifts and my objective this afternoon is to kind of
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clear hopefully clear the fog and and make it so that
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uh it's not this mysterious thing that we recoil from
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and it's also not something that that causes division or argument or so forth and
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i i think you know to give to give the credit where credit is due
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my um uh a lot of my ideas come from a book that i read several
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years ago called walking in your anointing by dr
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david schroeder now dr schroeder is a former president of alliance
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theological seminary he's an academic scholar of the bible
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and what he said in his book makes a lot of sense in terms
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of balancing out the extremes one from another so that's where i'm
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coming from right and uh i definitely think this is
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important because like you said earlier i wanted to be more specific a lot of people
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think that if you don't speak in tongues then you're not a christian so and then there are other people that
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think just because you when you speak in tongues you are being led by demons so there's like
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extremes where you have one side that thinks there's no such thing as uh speaking in tongues or gift of
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prophecy or gift of miracles or whatever and there's another side that thinks if you don't have those gifts then you
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don't qualify as a christian and sometimes they get to they tend to elevate those gifts
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more than others but now before we start what would you think is more important the spiritual gifts
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are the fruits of the spirit just before we start well i think uh you know my gut feeling
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is that um you know the the gifts are relatively
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unimportant compared to the giver right and uh
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if we get hung up on the gifts at the expense of the giver uh we we lose a lot
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and so because of that i would say that the fruit of the spirit is more important
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because that shows what's in our heart yes and um
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it's it's something that uh those fruit of the spirit love joy
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peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and
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self-control they are i think the
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the foundation the gifts our opportunities give us opportunities
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to show forth the fruit of the spirit but if we don't have the fruit of the spirit to show
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then the gifts are not worth anything so that's my position i totally agree
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with it and if you want to read about the fruit of the spirit i think galatians 5 does a great
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job at teaching us the fruit of the spirit which you just mentioned because the bible says that against such
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things there is no law so right i'm glad and now so you're gonna be presenting out of
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first corinthians 12. that's okay so let us see what you like
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i'll go ahead and share my screen all right uh here we go all right
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so uh taipe can you see my screen yes i can see it okay good so
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uh so this is just the reference to the uh uh the book walking
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in your anointing it is available um at bookstores and on amazon and
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you can get it if you want to pursue this a lot more deeply than what we do uh
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in this seminar uh so let me uh go ahead and read verses one through
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three uh of first corinthians 12. now i have provided
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some uh some of the greek words here from the original language
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that the scriptures are presented in um and we'll go back and look at those
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in a minute now concerning spiritual gifts and the word gifts is not really
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there in the original language it uh really should be spiritual things
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now concerning spiritual things brothers i do not want you to be uninformed
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you know that when you were pagans you were led astray by or to mute idols however you were led
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therefore i want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of god ever
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says jesus is accursed and no one can say jesus is lord
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except in the holy spirit so what we can do here in these first three verses is
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we see what i would call the first cut criteria
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on whether a spiritual gift is is being used correctly or not
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and that is that no one saying jesus is accursed can be saying that by
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the holy spirit if someone claims to be gifted by the holy spirit and
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says jesus is accursed then that person is not speaking the
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truth so i want to make that clear and can i ask you a quick question
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yes well i remember when we talked about it you mentioned the fact that in first john john talks
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about this could you please give us the background to just give us some more understanding
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about jesus mini cursed yeah notice the phrase jesus is accursed notice it does not say
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jesus christ is accursed or christ is accursed
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or the son of god is accursed it says jesus is accursed and there's a reason for
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that and that is that in the first century a heresy was developing
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that said that when jesus came when the son of god came that
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he really laid aside his deity that that it was a
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common belief in those days it came from greek culture that spiritual things
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were good but the body is bad and so jesus could not have had a
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physical body because that's bad and and so
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the concept of jesus in bodily form if someone
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denies that they are saying jesus is accursed and
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they cannot be saying that by the holy spirit because jesus christ
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is 100 god and he is 100 man
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now you say well that doesn't add up no that is not it's not our mathematics
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and uh he is totally god and he is totally human
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with human attributes all except sin he did not sin
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so that's just an aside i don't particularly want to go down that road much but
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i think that's where paul is coming from uh even in the days of
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the when the first corinthians was written this heresy was starting to rise up in the church
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does that make sense yes okay all right let's continue on
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all right let's look at verses four through seven and again
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i include some greek here and i'll be uh looking at this more in
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detail now there are varieties of gifts or charismata
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that's the word for gifts in greek but the same spirit or pneuma
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like pneumonia or pneumatic drill uh something that works off of air
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that's what the word spirit is in greek and there are varieties of
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service you may recognize this word diaconia
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as in deacon in the church varieties of service but the same
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lord curios that's the greek word for lord okay and there
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are varieties of activities in the greek it's energema
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okay and actually the word activities plural is energy
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okay but it is the same god theos who empowers
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notice the same root word and air gail
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and powers them all in everyone to each is given the manifestation
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or phanerosis of the spirit for the common good
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now we can look at this maybe and it makes more sense when we look this let this in
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graphic form so let's look at the graphic organizer and see how
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this makes sense we begin with things of the spirit notice that paul does not
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say gifts of the spirit these are things of the spirit all kinds of things
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of the spirit charismata literally the grace gifts diaconia
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literally ministries or roles or services
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and and their gemata or energema workings or activities
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okay and all of this results in manifestations
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that is what we can see yes what do we see happening
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phenerosis manifestations of the spirit and the goal always the goal
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is for the common good not to make me look great
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but the common good that is my spiritual gifts
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my spiritual things grace gifts ministries workings or
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activities mine are for taib's good
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and the good of others in the church and their gifts are good
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for me okay and and so that's that's the concept here
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let's continue let's look at the grace gifts first and i'd like to concentrate on a
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companion passage that goes with first corinthians 12 and that is romans 12. see it's easy to
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remember if you remember the number 12 you're two-thirds of the way there you
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have first corinthians 12 and romans 12. okay having gifts that
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differ according to the grace given to us there's grace let us
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use them you know a gift doesn't mean much unless it's used
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yes okay i can say i play the piano
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i haven't touched my piano in years oh it's a nice piece and it has stuff on
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top and you know it's it looks nice in my living room
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but i haven't played it i have a gift
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you know that piano came from my mother but i haven't used it yeah
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right if prophecy in proportion to our faith is service
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in our serving the one who teaches in his teaching the one who
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exhorts or in other words encourages
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in his exhortation the one who contributes in generosity
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the one who leads with zeal the one who does acts of mercy with
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cheerfulness okay so there's a list and in first
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peter 4 it gives us a couple more whoever speaks as one who speaks oracle's
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oracles of god that could be uh put together with
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prophecy probably whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that
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god supplies and i think serves can be put together
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with contributes so the two of them are together and in
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fact later in first corinthians 12 uh paul talks about uh
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helps the the gift of helping some people
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have the gift of helping they're in the background they're the
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ones on the other side of the buffet table helping people helping to serve people
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they're the ones who are setting up cares they're the ones who do things that
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nobody notices everybody notices the profit you know
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yeah uh prophecy now
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let's be clear here only a part maybe even just a small part of prophecy
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is foretelling most of prophecy is forth telling did you get the
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difference yep fourth telling is taking the scripture and making it
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clear to the hearers and uh that's what the gift of prophecy
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involves for the most part so some people get really you know
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kind of you know it's kind of an eerie feeling we you know people who are
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prophets are predicting the future and that's possible
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but most of it is you know taking something from the
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scripture and someone really needs to hear that and it hits them between the eyes
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[Music] that's prophecy so would you say that most christians have experienced some type of
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um this kind of prophetic gift like the gift of prophecy the the great gift of prophecy where we
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spoke something and he kind of hit someone and he goes wow i needed to hear this from the lord so
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i think it's safe to say that as christians we will kind of exercise this at least once i
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think so yeah yeah now some people have this gift okay
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the grace gifts and we'll get into into who has these in a minute but
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uh there are some people who have the propensity to have one one or another of these
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gifts okay uh so uh we know what service is there are
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people who like to serve we know about teaching okay
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that's not just teaching in front of 30 desks with 30 students in it
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the concept of teaching in paul's day was much more mentoring
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it was one-on-one one on small group it was uh there there was not a whole
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lot of large group classroom type teaching there are certain people who are gifted
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at lecturing but they're not good teachers yeah and uh
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so yeah it's a difference exhorting or encouraging okay
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uh encouraging could be uh saying something supportive to
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someone and and uh saying how good a job they do and everything but it could also be
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giving somebody a good swift kick if they need it
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and uh so i think we know people who are good at that you know
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uh they know how to say in love they know how to say you know get your
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act together okay um
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the one who leads okay leadership is a gift but it's identified
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later in first corinthians 12 as administration there are certain people
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who are leaders out front but there are also certain people who
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lead by their administrative skill they're really organized yes
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they know how to put things together in an agenda and and get people in their place and
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everything we know people like that yes okay um mercy people who do acts of mercy
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okay people who notice when others are hurting
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step in they're the first ones there they're going to step into a situation
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where somebody is in need again we know people where they just seem to be
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in those positions so these are the grace gifts
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so there's some disagreement in the church as to whether
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every christian has only one gift or maybe multiple gifts but here
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is what we know every christian has at least one grace gift
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there's nobody who is a believer in jesus who can say i don't have a gift
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i don't have a grace i can't and i've heard people say that
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oh but i don't have any of these i just don't i don't know what my gift is
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okay the apostle paul goes to almost extremes to try to teach
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us how these gifts work um
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the church as a human body yeah how important is your little toe your
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yeah i know the joke about that you don't know how important it is until you you hit your toes
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until you stub your toe and then all of heaven and earth is
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brought to its knees by the pain that your pinky toe has
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because you you stubbed it so all of a sudden it becomes the
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most important part of your body right
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um there are certain parts of the human body that we never see
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okay we never see your i've never seen your liver no naive
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ever okay but it is it is it's important if you didn't have
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it you wouldn't live uh
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so that your your heart is protected behind the ribs it's inside
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but your heart is extremely important okay so
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so the the picture of the church as a human body is that some people are gifted in ways
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that are out front you know their mouth their eyes their hands
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and other people are gifted inside you know their hearts and livers and
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stomachs and whatever and they they're not seen
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but they certainly are important try living without a heart [Music]
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not possible and uh so so
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that's one picture another picture is paul's picture of the church as being a
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temple temple of the holy spirit but please understand that it's not the
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finished temple it's a temple under construction
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that's the picture that paul teaches us is that the church is a temple under
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construction okay pardon our mess you ever seen that sign
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okay when you go into a place that's being renovated or it's under construction pardon our
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mess some people say man the church is a mess well of course it's a mess it's under
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construction okay um back when the temple was built
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can you imagine how how this standard was met uh first king six seven
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let's look at that when the house was built it was with stone prepared at the quarry so that neither
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hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was
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being built can you imagine the temple was the ultimate prefab
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stones the pieces were all prepared off-site and then dragged
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to the site well you'd better make sure that you measured right
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because otherwise you got to drag that piece back and redo it and drag it back to the to
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the worksite and there's no jamming it in and there's no hammering it
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we can't make noise that's the hard way to build building isn't it
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and yet that's the standard of how the church is built pardon our mess
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the church is under construction for we are his workmanship notice
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we plural we are his workmanship created in christ jesus for good works
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which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them ephesians 2
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10 god prepared us beforehand eternity
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passed to occupy a place in his temple which someday
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will be complete and and we will be filled with the
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presence of the almighty god with him in heaven when the temple is
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complete isn't that great yes the only catch is that you know
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i'm one of those stones that's over there on the side and i want to be over the front door
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but no i was cut beforehand to fit on the side
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so i i can't get envious of somebody who's over the front door
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you know like the little toe can't be envious of
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of the the mouth or the eyes or the abs
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the six-pack abs right right oh we can't we no we want to be those
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no we're a little though and uh and so our problem
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is being is not being humble and taking our place where the lord has
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given so let's recap before we go on these are the grace gifts okay
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uh it could be that that people have more than one gift
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just as parts of the body sometimes have more than one function
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or we we may have one gift but for sure everybody who knows
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jesus as their savior and lord has a gift yes and has a place
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and that gift is yours as a stewardship okay
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i can't claim it for myself it's a stewardship
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that i have to use it as god
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has for me to use it but what's my gift i imagine some
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people are saying well what's my gift i know people who spend years asking this
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question [Music] kind of like scavenger hunt they're going all around
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trying to find clues but they never find it they never find
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the clue they never find the buried treasure they don't know what their gift is
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what's my gift and so the tendency is that when we hear
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somebody saying what's my gift we kind of say i don't know
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but it's critically important that if we're the ones hearing
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someone say what's my gift that we diligently look for
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evidence of their giftedness and for heaven's sake tell them
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affirm it tell them what their gift is they
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need to know yes how are they going to know unless somebody tells them
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and and i think that may be one serious weakness
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in the church is that we don't open our mouth and tell others what we see with our
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eyes that someone is gifted to do in the church
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yeah so before i go on uh taipe any questions from you that i need to go back and consider
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about the grace gifts no i uh i like the uh the critical importance of affirming one
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another that's that's very important that we do that as uh the local church and the church at
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large it's like we have to be able to sell to someone hey listen i believe i've seen this in you and i believe this
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is a gift that god has given you and excel in it and i think uh one of the reasons why is
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you mentioned it i guess a couple of weeks ago maybe we think if we tell them then they might be we don't want to
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kind of boost their ego and then we get scared we think well i don't want to say that because then he's going to think he's a big shadow she's a big shot or
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whatever so then we refrain from doing that and actually we've hurt them in the process because they have no clue what their
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gift is yet to see something been happening in their lives and we're not going to say for whatever reason so it's important
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that we do that so i'm glad you brought that up yeah good okay let's move ahead
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uh these are the diaconia let's uh let's read through ephesians chapter
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4 11-16 [Music] and he gave some and he gave the
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apostles the prophets the evangelists
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the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry
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for building up the body of christ until we all attain to the unity of the
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faith and of the knowledge of the son of god to mature manhood
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to the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ so that we may no longer be children
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tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human
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cunning by craftiness and deceitful schemes
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rather speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in every way into him
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who is the head into christ from whom the whole body joined and held
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together by every joint with which it is equipped
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when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself
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up in love there's a whole lot here that's beyond
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the scope of this interview and i would i would encourage you to go
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back and reread all these verses uh carefully because there's a lot here
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but i just wanted to point up the fact that diaconia are roles in the church
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so apostles some people say that well there are no apostles
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today other people say well yes these are people who go and do um
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pioneering ministries in cross cultures for instance across cultures and
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in places where the gospel has not been preached so i i i don't pass judgment
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on one or the other i don't yeah well question i thought apostles meant
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sent once um they're sent ones in
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in the scripture apostles specifically are those who had
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personal contact with jesus and if you take that as your narrow
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definition then no there aren't any apostles now because it's just it's been too long
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um but but prophets evangelists shepherds
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teachers they're all roles yeah okay now teaching is also a gift
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right but i submit to you that there are teachers
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who have the role of a teacher in the church whose gift is more
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prophecy than teaching and so uh so there's not necessarily a complete
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one-to-one correspondence here between gifts grace gifts and roles
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what we do know is that the purpose of these roles is to
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equip is to equip the saints notice it's not to do all the work
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which ends up what it is in most churches is that you get a small number of people
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doing everything no the purpose of these ministries or roles is to equip
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the saints for the work of ministry to equip others to make disciples to make disciples who
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make disciples for the building up of the body of christ
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and so a on a teacher
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is to look for other people who may teach and train them up not just to do all the
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teaching in the church so does that make sense type yes okay
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so i'm going to leave that there because there's a whole lot more in this passage and i would invite you
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to study this yes okay okay now let's get into the interesting
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the most interesting stuff because this is where some of the disagreements happen okay
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and that is the energema the workings or the activities so let's read
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four to one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of
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knowledge according to the same spirit to other faith by the same spirit
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to another gifts of healing by the one spirit to another the working of miracles to
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another prophecy to another the the ability to distinguish between spirits
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to another various kinds of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues
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all these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions
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to each one individually as he wills
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and i emphasize those last three words because it is the
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it is the business of the holy spirit and the holy spirit alone along yes
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to distribute these gifts these are not gifts as i understand it
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these are not gifts that are given to individuals forever
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okay yes these are not the grace gifts these are the workings or activities
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of the holy spirit true people okay and so think of it
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as the holy spirit overseeing the whole church and as he
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sees a need he drops in
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an issue okay and uh and so
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he drops in a gift he gives that right for that purpose
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and an individual may have that gift once or many times or never
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okay so there are some of these gifts that
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i can identify in my life i've seen them but not every day yeah maybe only once
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there are some i've never experienced and i don't feel condemned about that
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okay um i i feel like the spirit of god
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has um has the priority to to distribute these gifts
42:55
as he wants to as the need of the church indicates yes so
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let's let's look at this specifically no one person has any of these permanently
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they're often manifested now listen here apart from the conscious awareness
43:20
of the one gifted so that only god gets the glory
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think about that for a minute and how that how that fits with the idea of humility
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yes okay maybe some [Music]
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of the listeners to this program maybe they've had the experience of
43:49
uh being in a meeting they're in a meeting and there's uh
43:56
no agreement in the meeting about the agenda and then you say something and everybody
44:03
goes oh yeah yeah that's a good idea
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and everybody unites around that solution okay
44:16
well that's a word of wisdom okay and maybe you said that
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having no idea that that what you said was going to have
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that impact and that's okay because who gets the
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glory god gets the glory for that right
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or uh in one or two circumstances i remember uh where i prayed with someone
44:51
who needed something and at the end of our prayer together the person who had asked me to
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meet with them said how did you know what i needed
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i i don't know what you need what do you need
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and somehow in my prayer for them i address their need
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so that would be a word of knowledge i somehow knew their need
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but in a way that my conscious awareness did not dictate yeah so that
45:32
only god gets the glory i'm glad you make that point because
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when people read apart from the conscious awareness of the one gifted they can interpret it as
45:43
being in a trance or in some type of like i don't know that's how some people may interpret so
45:48
i'm glad you you you you clarified exactly what it means so people know we're not talking about
45:54
losing yourself in some kind of inaudible way yeah right that's true that's true i didn't
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think about that but that's true but but um
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i think that um someone who is in that
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in that role of exercising one of these energy mata is
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often not fully aware of the magnitude of what's happening
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exactly and uh and yet that's the way the spirit of god
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retains the glory because if i if i orchestrate all of this and if
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i think it's my if it's my great idea that made
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made the meeting come together on a solution then who's getting the glory you're
46:49
becoming pufferfish yeah right oh yeah
46:55
it's because of me yeah you get up and i get puffed up okay and
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uh so i don't want that you know i don't want that glory
47:08
that robs god okay it's the holy spirit's business
47:16
and his alone yes okay so finally i wanted to
47:24
to say this all of these all of these aspects of remember
47:30
spiritual things is where we began spiritual things the grace gifts
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the roles the services and the activities that
47:45
the holy spirit drops in on occasion
47:50
for the purpose of building up the body okay they're all called phanerosis
47:57
now the old word for saran wrap is cellophane i remember growing up in
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the kitchen my mom had cellophane it didn't stick to things very well but
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it's what she used on bowls of food
48:17
which she prepared and she wanted to keep them fresh and uh so she put a piece of cellophane
48:24
on top and that cellophane was perfectly clear okay and
48:32
and so she could look and she could instantly see oh there's the coleslaw okay i can
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pull that out because it was clearly evident that's coleslaw
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the cellophane or now we call it saran wrap that doesn't come in
48:49
that that does not come into play it has no color
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and so phanerosis is the same root as cellophane
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we are cellophane the almighty god shines forth through us in our grace
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gifts yes and our ministries and our special activities
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so there's no fog there's no discoloration there's no blurriness we're not getting
49:23
in the way but the only one seen
49:30
is the spirit of god yes
49:35
in order that as first peter 4 says in order that in everything god may be
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glorified through jesus christ to him belong glory and dominion for ever
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and ever amen and i leave you with that
49:57
that's my summary of spiritual gifts i hope it makes sense to you
50:02
[Music] i would encourage you to go back and look at the scriptures
50:08
in detail i've only scratched the surface
50:15
yes well thank you for the presentation and i remember when we talked about it the first time you mentioned some key passages to read
50:22
alongside uh first corinthians 12 when you mentioned first corinthians 13 would you
50:28
please tell us why it's important to read first corinthians 13 right after you read good good yes well first corinthians 12
50:37
is about the the spiritual things okay that's about uh spiritual things
50:45
um but first corinthians 13 is the love chapter okay
50:52
love is patient love is kind and he's not selfish and so forth
50:58
uh the the whole intention of spiritual gifts is they be used in love
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they are used in love if they're not used in love then they're probably being used
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in pride um or in dominating over one another
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and that doesn't how attractive is that to the world around us
51:27
it's not at all that love is the key
51:35
you know paul said at the end of chapter 12 and yet i show you a better way
51:44
because the argument was over spiritual things spiritual i've got more than you have i
51:50
have a more important spiritual gifts gift than you do i'm a more important
51:58
part of the body of christ than you are and when we get there we are not
52:04
speaking or thinking or feeling in love towards one another
52:11
so it's really important to go to first corinthians 13. so think about this
52:19
romans 12 1st corinthians 12 and 13
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and ephesians 4 and 1st peter 4. those are the passages that really focus
52:32
in on spiritual gifts and their purpose yes well thank you bill and i will leave
52:40
uh you guys with uh i think it's first continue 13 where paul says pursue love yet desire earnestly
52:48
spiritual gifts we are to go after lord by the same time we ought to also seek the spiritual gifts for the common
52:55
good not for ourselves just like we shine for ourselves so that we build up the church
53:01
because when we do that then we function properly and everybody is edified in this process and
53:07
the world around us see that god truly lives in us and this is how we grow as a church and we grow as christians
53:13
and and to recap what bill said uh we are not to use these gifts for our
53:19
own benefits it's for the building of the church and also we are to to learn to affirm
53:25
one another that's so important to do that so what would you say to someone who may be a baby in christ and says i
53:32
don't know what my spiritual gifts is and i can't truly i don't i'm so afraid to ask people about it so what
53:38
can they do is there any other way besides let's say they don't go to church yet they want to know what their
53:44
spiritual gift is is there some kind of uh some kind of a counsel you give to someone that is in this kind of
53:51
predicament you know i think it's just uh
53:57
uh try something try something if they really don't know
54:04
you know the other thing is that we need to get to know each other yes
54:10
better about what our past has been yes um because even a person
54:19
before they come to christ you know after all a person who comes to
54:25
christ and is part of the church has been in process since eternity
54:31
passed yes and and so even when that person is a small child
54:39
there may be some evidence of um
54:45
the giftedness i'll give you for instance from my own life
54:50
okay my my parents used to tell me that when i was a baby or or a toddler
54:59
that i was gonna be a teacher okay and they i have the i have the
55:05
photo my my dad took a photo of me sitting in my high chair
55:11
and i was i had these all i can describe is john the baptist's
55:17
eyes they were wide and wild and i had my finger up like this
55:24
and it's like it's like i looked like a wild teacher yeah um
55:32
yeah so even i mean that's a funny thing
55:38
but but getting into a conversation with someone just about you know
55:47
how their life has gone even before they became a christian
55:53
you know because because god starts early with his preparation of all of us
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uh it's not like you know when we say yes to jesus all of a sudden
56:08
god is like caught off guard he's been involved all along yes
56:16
makes sense yes it does well well thanks for your your words and
56:22
everything that you said now would you please uh end this in prayer i would love you to pray for
56:27
those that are listening today thank you lord for the
56:34
the beauty of the spiritual things that you offer your children lord they
56:40
are they are grace gifts they are gifts they are ministries
56:49
they are activities and they are all given by you
56:54
generously you get the glory lord help us to be
57:02
like that cellophane that we not get in the way that people can see you perfectly
57:10
through us lord thank you for this opportunity to
57:16
share about these spiritual things with this audience you know who's
57:22
listening you know the need you know the gifts that are out there and so we place that
57:30
in your hands in the strong name of jesus we pray amen amen
57:35
and if you have any questions about spiritual things and you want to ask bill would you be
57:42
willing to receive any questions would you mind if i sent your email inside our description that would be
57:48
fine because you do a better job than i do when you come chapter here so
57:54
i will direct people to you yeah all right well thanks again for watching this and
57:59
i'm looking forward to the next one i'm sure we're going to talk more about this again so thank you very lame
58:05
and again thank you guys for watching this