The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: - Vital Christianity

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WHY STUDY SPIRITUAL GIFTS?
YOU are gifted! If you are a Christian you have been gifted by God. Gifted, not just in a
general sense, but gifted in the sense that God has given you at least one, if not several, spiritual
gifts.
Paul told the Christians at Corinth:
“Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant” (I Cor. 12:1).
As in many other areas of life, when it comes to spiritual gifts ignorance is not bliss. Yet
many Christians are ignorant. Maybe that includes YOU. If so, this study can provide the help you
need.
Lack of involvement is a serious result of ignorance. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned his
fellow believers:
“A community which allows unemployed members to exist within it will
perish because of them. It will be well, therefore, if every member receives
a definite task to perform for the community, that he may know in hours
of doubt that he, too, is not useless and unusable.” 1
Useless, unusable is how many Christians feel. To make things worse pastors and Christian
leaders have often resorted to desperate techniques to “encourage” workers to “get involved.”
Emotional pleas, persistent nagging, Bible battering, etc., have been used to spiritually arm-twist
people into service. No wonder many have left the church in disgust and others have ended up
doing tasks for which they were never gifted.
Healthy motivation includes:
• Recognition by Others
• Affirmation by Others
• A sense of Accomplishment
• A feeling of the Importance of the Task
• Definite Responsibility
Ignorance may have caused discouragement, frustration, insecurity, inferiority and false guilt
in your own Christian life. How often I have seen Christians comparing themselves with other
Christians and ended up with a spiritual inferiority complex. What happens so often is that a
believer will compare his lack of fruitfulness in witnessing with the abundant fruitfulness of a