Let's say for a moment that God gives you the Spirit Gift of serving. God gives you a heart for serving. You feel energized by serving. You love serving. God gives you that gift so you will serve people. Not only that, God says that, as we saw yesterday, your serving gift is intended for the common good. It should be used to build up the Body of Christ: God's Church. You are called to literally serve people into the Kingdom of God. Not only that, your service is supposed to build people up into Christ who is the head of the Church. Your service has a purpose.
So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." (Acts 6:2-4 NIV)
You're totally fine with serving until you find yourself receiving more and more responsibility. Suddenly, you find yourself with more people asking you how to make the coffee, wipe down the tables, or clean the building. You find yourself coordinating the efforts of those people and even have people saying things like, "She's in charge of this ministry." You feel uncomfortable with these statements because you know God is the one in charge. More than that, though, you find yourself struggling with the idea of yourself as a leader. So, you go to your pastor to talk about it.
He doesn't help at all. Your pastor shares with you that the word for this kind of leader in the New Testament is "deacon." Not only that, you find out that "deacon" literally means "table waiter" or "servant." This doesn't help your case at all. The more you learn from Jesus' teachings, you find out that leadership according to Jesus is all about serving people, not bossing them around. Oh, yeah. The voice inside your head keeps telling you to coordinate the efforts of the team as well. Everything points to you taking this next step - coordinate the team, leading by serving. But you don't consider yourself a leader. So, you fight it.
If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:17 NIV)
Often times our problem is not in believing that the Holy Spirit gives gifts. Our problem is often not believing that we have one of those gifts. Our problem isn't even in using the gift. Our problem comes somewhere along the way where we try to control the gifts we get or the purpose for which God wants us to use them. We try to control the Spiritual Gift. Here's the thing. We can. We can control it. We can fight it. We can suppress it. We can bottle up the Holy Spirit of God. But it won't go well for us when we do.
When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money and said, "Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." Peter answered: "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin." Then Simon answered, "Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me." (Acts 8:18-24 NIV)
When we recognize we are fighting the Spirit of God, the only helpful response is repentance. We should turn back to God and realign ourselves with His Will. We should come back in the house with the Father and join the party. In this particular area, we need to come home.
How about you? Do you recognize Spirit Gift(s) in your life? Do you know how you are supposed to use them to build up Christ's Body? Do you use God's gifts for God's purposes or do you fight God? Are you ready to stop working against the Spirit gifts in your life?
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