According to 1 Corinthians 12 the Holy Spirit administers the gifts. 1) How I can be receptive to the Holy Spirit doing this work of giving the gift, and 2) How I can recognize the gift he gives me?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Finding Your Place in the Body of Christ’ (1989).
I'll take part 2 first. How can I recognize the gift God gives me? I've been asked this question many times—how do I know what gift I have? I should have thought the answer, in part, is:
- We discover what our gift is in the spiritual realm, just like our hands and feet discover what their gifts are in the physical realm. How do we discover whether we have any gift for music, cookery, dressmaking, or for anything? We discover it as we grow.
Similarly in the Body of Christ. We're put into the Body of Christ at our new birth, and as we grow it seems to me that things will naturally happen and we shall perceive what kind of gift we have.
- We need to get a very wide idea of what the gifts are. One of the gifts mentioned in the list is helps (1 Corinthians 12:28 KJV), and what vast possibilities there are for people who really want to do something. It isn't just the man who stands and preaches publicly who has a gift.
There is a vast field for helping others. There is much to be done and we could get working, gift or no gift. We could write to missionaries. We could become part of their teams, in the sense that we're home-based members of a team, and get to know about this particular group of missionaries and what their needs are, and set about working for them. If we wanted to make some extra cash for them we could find some time to do it, couldn't we? Deny ourselves some recreation, perhaps, and do extra work to make a little bit of money to support them. There are a thousand and one things we could do, with a little ingenuity.
So, to part 1: How can I be receptive to the Holy Spirit? Well, by encouraging other folks.
'And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?' declares the lord. 'But you made the Nazirites drink wine, and commanded the prophets, saying, "You shall not prophesy."' (Amos 2:11–12)
I suppose we should all prefer to have the Apostle Paul preaching at every meeting of the church, but you wouldn't develop many other preachers that way, would you? To be frank, if you're going to develop preachers, you've got to be prepared to listen to the beginners. We must be aware of the gifts of other folk, and seek to encourage and develop them. As my elders know, they're always on the lookout for people who are showing gift, so as to encourage them to exploit it.
