Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: God has deposited in you an amazing gift. Now what if I told you that this gift has the power to give direction and purpose to your life? This gift can give you a sense of deep affirmation of God's own value of your life. And then what if I told you today you can take huge steps toward discovering this gift, your primary spiritual gift?

Dave Druey: God has deposited a supernatural gift inside you. And today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram gives us five compelling reasons why discovering and developing your spiritual gift isn't optional, it's serious business. He continues our series, You Were Made for More, by walking us through every New Testament gift: apostleship, prophecy, evangelism, pastor-teacher, and more, so you can start to see which arena God is calling you into.

Before we get started, remember you can always review these lessons online at livingontheedge.org. Now here's Chip Ingram with today's message titled, How to Develop Your Spiritual Gift for Kingdom Impact.

Chip Ingram: Spiritual gifts, you knowing your spiritual gift, you developing your spiritual gift, and then you using your spiritual gift is serious business. I'm going to say that for a couple reasons, but I think what has happened is we view spiritual gifts in the church many times like a dessert bar. You know, the real meat and potatoes, you walk with God, you pray, you obey, you do the best you can, and then, yes, some people really know their gifts, but it's kind of like dessert. You don't really need it for the meal, it's a nice addition.

What I want you to know is that it's a part of the core of God's meal for growing His church. I've got five reasons you need to develop your spiritual gift. Reason number one is direction and purpose for your life. When you understand your gift clearly, your key motivational gift and then the ministry gifts where it operates, it will give you direction and purpose for your life.

Number two: freedom to embrace and enjoy who you are. The keyword is freedom. You know, we're just people and we grow up and as you grow in the Lord, there's people that you associate with or you admire, and we unconsciously try to be like them. You know how liberating it is to discover who God made you to be and just say, "Wow, I don't have to be like anybody else. I don't have to talk like anyone else." What is holy and wonderful and winsome is the freedom to be the man or the woman God made me to be.

Reason number three is joy. The joy that results from impacting lives. The joy when you meet needs by the good works God has called you to do. In fact, our word for gifts, *charismata*, you know, you have the word *charis*, which is the root word for grace. Well, guess if you keep making that word smaller, the word is joy. Joy, gifts, and grace all come from the same word. When you are in your giftedness, you're going to experience amazing joy.

Reason number four is affirmation of your victory with Christ. This is a real theological one, but we covered Ephesians 4:7. What does it mean that He ascended except He descended into the lower parts of the earth? Ephesians 4:7 and that entire passage is talking about Christ's victory over sin, Christ's victory over death, Christ's victory over Satan. The evidence is He gave gifts to men. When you operate and know your gift, each time you use it, you ought to get a sense of, "You know, I have this gift because I am a co-victor with Christ." It affirms your value to God, it affirms that you're on the winning team, it affirms that life is difficult and it is a fallen world, but I have a supernatural ability that reminds me Christ is the victor and I'm a co-heir with Him.

Reason number five is accountability, as you will be held responsible for the stewardship of your gift. The first four were kind of exciting. Raw, go, I mean, man, you can't afford not to miss it. But number five is there is a day when I will stand before what's called the *bema* seat or the judgment seat of Christ and I will be judged. This is not a judgment for salvation, that's taken care of at the cross when I trust in Christ. But I will be judged as a believer for my rewards.

The stewardship will be, not did I do as much as Billy Graham or not did I do as much as this pastor or that missionary or some great layman. God will ask me, "Chip, what did you do with what I gave you? I entrusted you with X amount of time on the earth, X amount of wealth, X amount of energy, and these spiritual gifts. What did you do with what I gave you?" I don't know about you, I don't want to look up at the Lord and say, "Could you go over the gifts part one more time because I never really quite figured out what mine was?" I think the Lord's going to say, "Chip, it was right there in My word."

Now, are you motivated? Are you willing? Because when we get to the end of this, I'm going to give some specific applications that are going to take you out of your comfort zone. It's going to take some work. It's going to take some energy. I mean, the last thing you need is one more colored notebook on a shelf that says, "There's the spiritual gift one, I remember when I took that." So with that said, for you to not just discover but really develop your spiritual gift, I think three things need to happen.

Number one is clarity. God has deposited a supernatural enabling in you in order to serve other people. I like to think of it as a grace-giving gift. What you've been given is something that it's really no good unless you give it away. The preoccupation is not all about you and what's my gift and how does it work and how many inventories and tests can I take. The real issue is, "Lord, how can I understand how You made me? How can I understand the environment or ministries that I best can be used so that more people or in deeper ways can experience Jesus at a fresh and new level?" Do you get it?

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and part two of our message is coming up next. Remember the place to go for all of these daily messages is over on our website, livingontheedge.org. There you'll find Chip's full teaching library along with even more content like Chip's free daily discipleship tool to help you grow all week long. You can also download the Chip Ingram app absolutely free through any app store on your smart device. Now let's get back to today's message from Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: Notice as we move on, the next gift is pastor-teacher. It's the only dual gift in the New Testament. He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as—there's only a single article. It's not some as pastors and some as teachers. Literally, it's some as pastor-slash-teachers. Let's find out what it is.

Pastor-teacher is a person with this spiritual gift who has the ability to lead, nourish, protect, and personally care for the needs of a flock of believers. Not all people, listen carefully, with the office of pastor or even an elder or overseer have a need for the gift. In other words, you don't have to have the gift of pastor-teacher to be a pastor. You can pastor that office out of an exhortational gift or for me, it was a prophecy gift. Then notice it goes on: and many with this gift do not need or have the office.

In other words, you've met some people who pastor and shepherd and love people and they love being small group leaders or some of those Sunday school classes where they kind of have teams. This is the person that is always wondering, "Well, I wonder how Betty is, she's not here. I wonder how Bob is. Hey, Bob, how are things going? Last week you shared..." They shepherd. That's what this word means. The word pastor comes from the root word to shepherd. It means to give oversight.

This is the ability to promote spiritual growth. It's a dual gift. It not only has a caring, it means you can nurture, care, and what does a shepherd do for sheep? A shepherd protects, leads, guides, and feeds. This person has that mix and also the ability to teach God's word in such a way to help the person grow spiritually. This has not been taught. A lot of people with this gift get lost in the body of Christ because they think, "You know, I'm not called. I don't have any calling from God to go to seminary or Bible school and be a pastor, but I want to shepherd people." By the way, this is not gender specific. You see, we have gotten so used to the office of pastor, we think of the pastor as a role or office. It's a gift.

The gift of teaching: the divine enablement to understand and give detailed explanation of biblical truth. It's the ability to search out and validate truth which has been presented. Notice this is a motivational gift, but it's also a ministry gift. So we won't go into a lot of explanation other than when I think of this one, especially in this country, if you listen on the radio to what I think are some really quality teachers, if you listen carefully, their ministry gift is teaching, but they teach out of different motivational gifts.

For example, when I hear Chuck Swindoll, I can tell you right now his primary gift is probably exhorter. Don't you hear him? Even as he talks, he puts his arm around you and gives you very specific practical ways to teach. I think of another fellow on the West Coast who is very clear, very accurate, but he's very dogmatic. "This is the way it is." I mean, there is not a gray area when he teaches. I'll guarantee he teaches out of the gift of prophecy. So you can listen to different people teach and you need to realize maybe you have a ministry gift you want to teach but you think, "Well, I don't see myself as a teacher." Well, maybe you're going to teach out of a different gift. Because when you teach out of an exhortational gift, you're going to be like counseling a whole group of people. A prophetic gift, you're going to call people to repentance and to really grow.

Miracles: 1 Corinthians 12:10 and 28. It's the ability to serve as an instrument through which God accomplishes acts that manifest supernatural power. Miracles bear witness to the presence of God and the truth of His proclaimed word and appear to occur most frequently in association with missionary activity. The gospel message carries its own authority, but God sometimes graciously uses miracles to authenticate and open doors for the proclamation of forgiveness and life in Christ. Jot down in the corner, Hebrews 1:2-4. Talks about signs and wonders, and we'll touch on it in a minute.

But imagine when the early church, and especially in countries where there's competing worldviews, where people really wonder, "Should I believe in this religion or that religion?" or imagine being an early apostle and walking to downtown Ephesus or Corinth and there's a god on every single corner and you're going out to tell people, "Jesus is the Messiah. God has visited the planet. He's raised from the dead. I'm an eyewitness." And people are going, "Yeah, right." And so God says, "Well, I think we need to do some things to authenticate that these are My messengers and we need to do some things to authenticate that this really is My word."

So that's why you see there's three major periods of miracles in Old and New Testament. You have Moses giving of new truth. You have Elisha, Elijah giving of restoring new truth. And you have the early apostles. But this is a gift God on occasion, and it seems especially overseas where the need for authentication and verification is greater, He'll do miracles. He'll choose to go outside the bounds of what we call natural laws and do a miracle.

Notice healing: 1 Corinthians 12:9, 28, and then 30. It's the ability to serve as a human instrument through which God cures illnesses and restores health. The possessor of this gift is not the source, but the vessel who can heal only those diseases the Lord chooses to heal. I mean, we all know there's times where people were healed and times when they're not. This spiritual gift should not be confused with signs and wonders performed by Jesus and the apostles, and it should not be discredited because of the abuses of grandstanding and faith healers.

The early apostles, I mean, Jesus raised people from the dead. Paul raised people from the dead. I mean, they took handkerchiefs off Paul, Peter's shadow. There were signs and wonders that were unique to authenticate the first century church. That's not this. But the other thing is I think we get to the point where we think God never does any of this. I mean, we have a command in James chapter five, when someone is physically ill, anoint him with oil, pray. And I will tell you as a pastor over the years, we have in faith prayed, anointed people with oil, and then I've watched them die of cancer. I can also tell you that we have anointed people with oil, prayed, and I can tell you a lady who had a brain tumor this big and she went back for the checkup two weeks later and it was completely gone. How and why I do not understand.

God chooses to heal and He does it in response to what He's doing in people's lives. And there are times where that's His manifestation to bring glory and honor to Himself. God chooses to do what He wants to do when He wants to do it.

Administration-slash-leadership: this word, different from the word in leadership, appears only once in the New Testament and is used outside of scripture for the helmsman who steers a ship to its destination. This suggests that the spiritual gift of administration is the ability to steer a church or Christian organization toward the fulfillment of its goals by managing its affairs and implementing necessary plans. A person may have the gift of leadership without the gift of administration. I am a living example of this.

The gift of administration is the enablement to understand what an organization needs to run efficiently and effectively and then the spiritual ability to plan, execute, achieve, and produce the organization's ability to work through people to accomplish its God-given goals. You know, some of you it is just you know how to organize, you know how to orchestrate, you know how to implement. In fact, when things are not well organized, it just makes you nuts. You just can't believe that people can't see it.

By the way, that's one of the indications of your spiritual gift. What comes so naturally, it is so much the lens that God has you see through. Often your spiritual gift is most realized in your reactions to things instead of your actions. Because you react because you can't understand why this isn't being taken care of because it is so easy for you to see. Gift of administration. The gift of leadership often asks the what question: "What is it we need to do?" The gift of administration answers, "How do we need to do it and what do we need to do to get there?"

The gift of wisdom: the ability to apply the principles of God's word in a practical way to specific situations and then to recommend the best course of action at the best time. The exercise of this gift skillfully distills insight and discernment into excellent advice. These are people that are saturated in the scriptures. They have a gift of wisdom. There is one thing to know the Bible, it's another thing to see the chaos and problems and struggles in life or problems. It is the gift of wisdom that takes the truth and the insight of God's word, the struggles, challenges, problems, or opportunities and brings these things together and to understand how this word and insight given by the Holy Spirit can address out of this truth those situations.

As a young pastor there was a guy named Bill Carter and he traveled a lot and had the gift of teaching. I learned probably more from him than I did in any seminary class. He would study sometimes six or seven hours a night on the road. Often I would come with just my—have you ever felt like your life is like a ball of twine that's gotten just totally all messed up and no matter what you do you just can't unwind it? I would take my ball of twine issue, issues in my marriage, issues in parenting, issues in the ministry and I would bring them to Bill. I would just lay out all this junk and I don't know what to do and I know part is my attitude and maybe it's the season. And he was a godly older man and he said, "Chip, it would seem to me," and he would just open the word and say, "You know there's a timeless principle here," and then he would describe it.

He said, "You know as you think through this," and then little by little about 45 minutes later he'd taken my ball of string and he would deliver six pieces of string nicely laid out about what to do, why to do it, God's character, issues in my life, how to respond. And it was just like, whew. Some of you have that gift. Prop, as we call him, is 81 years old and so I said, "Prop, do you have plans for breakfast?" He said, "No." I said, "Could I eat with you?" He said, "Well sure." And so we made a time and we ate breakfast and he's a very direct guy so we did a little small talk for about 45 seconds.

Then I basically, I thought of you know how many times will I get this, and I laid out, "Here's my season of marriage and grown kids and this is different and I know these are my insecurities and you've known me for 25 years and bleh. And here's this other really big issue I don't know what to do with." And man I'll tell you what, then I ate my eggs and I came back and told Theresa what he shared about how do you love grown kids and in-law issues and what happens in your 50s and what happens in your 60s and what you need to do now so you finish well. Theresa said, "Chip, you better go write that down." And so I did. It's the gift of wisdom.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and a message titled How to Develop Your Spiritual Gift for Kingdom Impact. Living on the Edge has been helping Christians actually live like Christians for over 30 years and today's message is a perfect example of why that mission matters. Chip laid out five compelling reasons why your spiritual gift is not a nice-to-have, it's a stewardship: direction and purpose for your life.

That kind of teaching reaches people because generous listeners choose to make it possible. Right now someone is hearing this message who has been sitting on the sidelines for years, going through the motions, wondering why their faith feels hollow. Today could be the day something finally clicks for them. Would you help us keep reaching people like that? Give online at livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003.

And if today's message stirred something in you, if you're not quite sure what your gift is or where it fits, we've built a free tool to help you find out. It's called The Real You, a short biblically-grounded assessment that helps you understand exactly how God has wired you: your personality, your strengths, and your spiritual design. Take it free online at therealyou.org. We also encourage you to check out the Chip Ingram sermon podcast where you can hear complete, full-length messages anytime. You'll find it in your podcast app, so subscribe today. Now here's Chip.

Chip Ingram: At the beginning of today's message, I said that spiritual gifts are serious business. I mean Jesus died upon the cross, He paid the debt for your sin, He broke the power of sin, and He defeated Satan. The evidence from Ephesians 4 is that He gave gifts to men. These are deposits that mean a lot to God. Many Christians I meet not only do not know what their spiritual gift is, but when you read through those key gift passages, they really don't know what the gifts even are. Now I did an overview and a review, and in our next broadcast, we are going through every single one of the gifts. Here's the gift, here's the definition. I am so excited for you and I long for you to capture the extreme makeover God wants to do in your life through this amazing spiritual tool called a spiritual gift.

Dave Druey: I'm Dave Druey, inviting you back next time when Chip Ingram continues our message about the New Testament gifts you need to know, and when one of them lands, you'll know exactly why. That'll be right here on Living on the Edge.