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[0:00] Yeah, well, welcome again. It's a privilege to be up here and just kind of let you know a little detail here. We're trying to fill in our pastor, John Hopkins, here. We give him a little break.

[0:12] So as he's adjusting with Kara at home, we got this. God's got this. So that's why you're seeing me up here a little more than normal.

[0:25] Tuesday night, I forgot to mention this. Tuesday night we had a prayer meeting for Kara. And honestly, that was one of the most powerful prayer meetings I think I've ever been to.

[0:38] It was amazing. They're all good prayer meetings. Any prayer meeting is. It just stuck out. It's pretty powerful. You and Kara are well-loved.

[0:51] And God's moving. And he moves by prayer. And we cannot forget that. So I get my stuff ready here.

[1:01] So we're going to talk, I'm going to continue my message from two weeks ago. We talked about gifts from Romans chapter 12.

[1:12] I like to call them the motivational gifts. We're just kind of naturally motivated in these areas, the seven gifts. So as a brief overview, can you remember all of the seven gifts and the body parts?

[1:26] So the head, it leads the body, right? It steers the body. It's the leadership gift. And if you sense that people like to follow you, maybe you have the gift of leadership.

[1:38] You're good at organizing things, and you do this, you do this, you do that. And amongst many other things, envisioned for the church, leadership is, where the church should go.

[1:51] That's a leadership gift. Then we have, inside the head, we've got the brain, or the mind. That's the teacher gift. And someone that can read scripture, and understand it, and they can explain it to someone.

[2:05] If you feel like you've heard someone explain something really well, maybe they've got the teacher gift. They've got good examples. Then we've got the eyes. They're the prophet. They can see out in the church.

[2:17] They can see sin. But we definitely need those people. The prophet gift is, there's three or four other places that talk about gifts. The prophets mentioned almost all of those places, except for one, except for I think 1 Peter 3 or 4.

[2:33] There's a couple gifts in there. Prophecy, I don't think, is mentioned in that one. But prophets mentioned in a lot of them. They're envisioned. They speak boldly. The prophet gift does.

[2:43] They proclaim the word of God really well, and very strong. Kind of like the Old Testament prophets, that's a little bit where they can really, not afraid to proclaim truth. So the eyes, the brain, the head, the mouth.

[2:58] Exhortation. They're great at encouraging one another, coming alongside one and spurring them on. Hey, Tim, you know, maybe you should consider doing this. And they're good at doing those things, making you feel good, encouraging you, giving you lots of encouragement.

[3:12] So that's four, right? Five is the arms. They're good at giving. They just, that's how they think. They love to give. They'll give you a shirt off your back.

[3:23] They can see into the church. They see that person has a need. I want to meet that need. And they're good at it. And usually it's financial, but it can be other ways of giving, giving someone a ride and helping someone.

[3:34] They're giving. Then it's the hands. It's number six, the hands. People that like to serve. We're all called to serve. Actually, all these gifts are a type of service, but specifically there's a service gift that you're highly motivated.

[3:47] Usually it's physical things, moving chairs, cleaning up, cleaning the church, building things. I love, I think I have this gift. I just like doing things for people.

[3:57] I like physical things, helping someone move. They're the silent workhorse in the church. And we see that here at Tri-State as with the other gifts. And the last one is the heart.

[4:09] And that's mercy. And they're a person, the people that are down and out are attracted to this person because they can make them feel really good and they come alongside and encourage them.

[4:21] Oh, I'm so sorry you're going through that. And they're really good at that. And we need those people as well, right? So all these, and there's more gifts we're going to talk about today. So that's just a little recap of those.

[4:34] A couple side notes that I did not mention I wanted to mention is, and it's true for today's message as well, showing appreciation for the gifts.

[4:45] I think once I'm learning these gifts, I can appreciate other people that have these gifts. Because sometimes I get discouraged if I don't see someone serving.

[4:58] I got the service gift. How come they're not serving? Well, maybe they're not gifted in that. They're great at giving. We're all to serve, true, but not in the sense that if you're really good at it.

[5:10] So I'm learning what it means to appreciate other gifts, other giftedness. And maybe someone's really good at giving and I just didn't realize it. So I think let's take some time to think about appreciating your spouse's gift, your children's gifts, because it's all different.

[5:28] Each other gifts in here. How come you're not doing that? Well, I'm not really gifted at it. I can still help. But understand what I mean by that? And then most importantly is let's not forget the giver of the gifts.

[5:42] God, God. We'll see more of that today. God has given us gifts for his service, for what is profitable. That's such an important thing. The giver. The giver of the gifts.

[5:53] He's got reasons for this and we should appreciate it. And ultimately, we're going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, but if you know your Bible, 1 Corinthians 13 sets it straight.

[6:05] It's about love. He's given us gifts to love people, love each other, love the lost people so they can come to know Jesus. So just a quick overview of that.

[6:17] 1 Corinthians 12 is the primary text today, but I do want to mention some other gifts. I'm going to do it briefly.

[6:29] This is in Ephesians 4, 11-13. I like to call these the ministry gifts or some people call them office gifts. A pastor is one of them.

[6:41] Being a pastor is a ministry gift. But let's read this. I'm just going to do this very briefly. I know last time I heard it was kind of long, so I'm going to watch the time a little more carefully this time so I don't go as long as I did last time.

[6:55] So Ephesians 4, 11-13. And he himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

[7:20] So the first one he gave apostles. They're kind of like leaders that maybe help plant churches. Perhaps they might travel church to church and help those churches.

[7:31] That's kind of like what I would call an apostle, not the original 12 apostles, but the apostles of this gift ministry. And there we see prophets again.

[7:43] There we see prophets again. Some as prophets proclaiming the truth boldly. We talked about that. Evangelists. Very effective in personal and group evangelism. We need that too.

[7:53] We need to be around those people. Learn how to be effective evangelists. Maybe you have that gift. Maybe it's a ministry gift you should be a part of. We need it. The church needs it. We need all these.

[8:04] Pastor, teacher, the shepherd, the flock and can teach well. And then there's the teacher gift that I think the primary job is them to teach. Maybe they're an elder, but they're really good at teaching in the church and that's their primary job.

[8:20] So again, let's just briefly look at those gifts. So let's go into chapter maybe. Can you push the next slide for me?

[8:32] It should be 1 Corinthians 12, 1 to 7. There it is. Thank you. Is that up there? Okay, so let's start these gifts.

[8:43] I like to call these gifts, and Scripture has the word in there, and you'll see in a minute, the manifestation gifts. So here's some more gifts. We talked about the Romans 12 gifts. Now we got more gifts.

[8:54] A lot of gifts. A lot of gifts. It's really interesting. It's exciting that God's given us some special gifts. It's something to take and use, and you give a gift to your child.

[9:06] You hope they use it, appreciate it. Right? Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. Well, if you don't want to be ignorant, if you don't want to hear these, you better leave now.

[9:24] Because once you hear them, you can't be ignorant anymore. Right? He doesn't want us to be ignorant. Ignorant means, yeah, well, I didn't know. Well, now we can't say, well, we didn't know, because here they are.

[9:34] Now concerning spiritual gift, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, you were being led astray to the mute idols wherever you were led. Therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

[9:55] Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord and there are varieties of workings, but the same God who works everything and everyone.

[10:11] But to each one, every one of us, each one, not some, to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable, which we're about to hear and hear in a minute.

[10:27] Gifts that are, they manifest out of us. The manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable, for what helps us profit God and His work.

[10:43] Varieties of gifts and variety of ministries and varieties of workings. There's a lot of things, right? God clearly is doing many different things through many different people. Again, we need to show appreciation to all the different ways God works through people.

[10:58] He works everything and everyone. Let's remember who's doing the work. We just need to be available vessels of God. And I don't believe that any of these gifts are just for the individual of his own well-being.

[11:12] It's to help others. We don't sit around and say, look at my gift. I'm a hands service guy. Look at my gift. We don't do that, right? Clearly. He so desires for us to be useful for His work, right?

[11:27] We get to do these things for God. We get to use these gifts for God. We get to. We need to come to grips with God and our gifts.

[11:39] Examine the scriptures daily and connect with Him to determine your giftedness and purpose in this little fellowship. You've all been placed here. No one's sitting here by accident.

[11:50] Every person in this building right now, there's a purpose for you. God has got an amazing purpose. There's no accident you're sitting here. There's no accident even though you got up tired and you got in here and sat down.

[12:05] You're still here. God's got you placed here for a reason. We have natural gifts given to us at birth, but I believe these gifts came as we became Christians, these particular gifts for His work.

[12:22] So let's read about the gifts. Oops. Sorry, we got a blank slide. I forgot about that.

[12:33] All right. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit. To someone else, faith by the same Spirit and to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit and to another the workings of miracles and to another prophecy.

[12:54] Told you it comes up again. And to another the distinguishing of spirits to someone else various kinds of tongues and to another the translation of tongues. So the first one in the list at the very beginning there, for to one is given the word of wisdom.

[13:11] They understand God's word and are able to give excellent advice. The word of wisdom. Can we all get wisdom? Absolutely. Someone has a special gift of wisdom.

[13:22] Someone here has a special gift of wisdom. Let's look at Acts 4.13. It's up there somewhere. There we go. Let's read this verse.

[13:37] This is about the disciples. Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and comprehended that they were uneducated uneducated and ordinary men, they were marveled and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.

[13:54] I wonder if they saw the wisdom in these guys. Peter had, they had just been jailed and Peter just, had just recently given an amazing sermon. And this is what was spoken to them about these guys.

[14:08] I wonder if they had a great amount of wisdom that people saw that, wow, uneducated and ordinary men. I don't have a slide.

[14:21] If you want to go to Acts, this is pretty good. Acts 6. We're right in Acts here. Acts chapter 6, verse 8. Should have marked it.

[14:35] Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in Acts, right? Chapter 6, verse 8.

[14:46] I'm going to read that. And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. But some men from what was called the Synagogue of Freedom, including Canaanites and Alexandrians, and some from Cecilia and Isaiah, rose up and were arguing with Stephen.

[15:09] This big argument. But they were unable to oppose the wisdom of the Spirit by whom he was speaking. Perhaps God gave him a special wisdom in this case.

[15:23] Let God give us answers. We're always worried about what to say and what to share. We have to trust the Lord. And maybe even on top of we can, even if we don't have wisdom, God will give us the wisdom what to share.

[15:34] But maybe we have a special wisdom we didn't even know. We've got to give God a chance. All these gifts will shine more and more as we connect to God. As we let God have his way.

[15:46] These gifts will shine brighter and brighter. They're amazing. People who teach God's Word need a bit of this. We need some extra wisdom to share good, right things, correct things.

[16:02] Word of knowledge. Word of knowledge. Let's go back here. Okay, we're still there. Okay, word of knowledge is the second one, right?

[16:15] They understand the truth and excellent insight into a matter. It's similar to wisdom. They have this deep understanding of the truth. Similar.

[16:26] If you remember the story, we're back in Acts again. I'm not going to read the story, but it's in Acts chapter 5. A story about Ananias and Sapphira. You can read it. But they lied about selling their property.

[16:38] They lied to the Holy Spirit. And Peter, he understood the knowledge of what took place. Maybe he had the special gift of knowledge. He understood what they had done wrong.

[16:48] He also maybe had a discernment gift as well. So both the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, if you know people that are gifted in this, you want to hear from these people.

[17:04] Hopefully, we all are attending Bible studies and these people will share a little bit more and be like, whoa, I'm happy to be here to listen to these people. Faith.

[17:17] Faith. Is that the next one? We have a word of wisdom, word of knowledge, according to the same spirit. Another, faith. The third one is faith by the same faith.

[17:29] Well, you say, well, we live by faith. Yep. We all do. I hope we all do. We walk by faith. Our faith is in Jesus. That's how our life is marked by faith. Some people have an extra, shot of faith, if you will.

[17:45] They have an extra shot of faith. You can read amazing people from history. Hudson Taylor was a missionary to China. I think he had an extra dose of faith.

[17:59] He believed God that he'd provide money to go on the trip. He didn't even ask people. They just gave it. He believed God would move people to give him money and they did to go on this trip. It was amazing and all the trials he went through on that trip.

[18:15] When he's in, getting, you really got to read the story. You got to read his biography. He was about to get killed many times and by faith he just trusted God and things would happen all in the right place.

[18:27] Really, really amazing. George Mueller was another one. Another story. I like to read old, men of old stories and women of old stories, biographies, because it gives a different perspective than the new culture.

[18:43] Christianity was the same back then as it is today but the culture was different and how they worked with God and how God moved mightily. So George Mueller was in England. He started a lot of orphanages and just by faith God did miraculous things.

[18:58] I think maybe he had an extra dose of faith. Provided all kinds of money to build orphanages to help children. He was doing great things. Milk trucks would break down right outside their door. They were looking for food and the guy would come in.

[19:10] My milk truck broke. Do you want my milk? Yep. Well, they've been praying that God would provide food and there it was. Faith. We all have faith. We live by faith. Some of you might have an extra dose of faith.

[19:24] I want to be around you guys. healing. Healing. In the New Testament times, the disciples healed by touch and speaking.

[19:35] They were direct, intentional, very specific and the healing lasted. They healed people. This particular gift, I'm not going to say either way, but a lot of scholars believe that this is not a gift anymore.

[19:49] That a person can go and heal someone. Now, clearly, I want to make sure this is clear. God heals mightily and greatly and I have, there's a lot of stories about healing from God.

[20:04] People's tumors disappearing and the doctor's like, where'd that go? That doesn't seem possible. There's a lot of stories about healing out there and it's amazing what God does and I'm going to continue to pray for healing.

[20:18] That's what we did Tuesday night for Kara's healing and God's healing. He is healing. He's healing her. It doesn't always answer the way you want, but we've seen it here at Tri-State.

[20:29] God's healing people in his own way. It's an amazing thing. So, I personally haven't met anyone that has the gift of healing. I've never never ran into anyone that has it.

[20:41] That's all, you know, and that's, scholars say that, but healing is still here and we need to pray for God, plead with God for healing for lots of things. Not just physical healing, spiritual, mental healing of people.

[20:56] God wants to heal all those things. Give God a chance to do that. heal your heart, a broken heart. God wants to heal broken hearts. Desperately he does.

[21:07] That's what he does. Miracles. Gift of miracles. Supernatural event that occurred outside the normal works of what is normal. Is there miracles going on?

[21:18] Absolutely. This is also one that people don't believe that someone actually has the gift of miracles, that they can walk around and make miracles happen. Unfortunately, sometimes we've seen this on TV, not more in recent days, but some people abuse some of these gifts and we've seen it on TV, some evangelistic preachers on TV.

[21:38] But we saw miracles during Christ's time, casting out demons, raising someone from the dead and many other miracles happen. We see them in the Old Testament. Gideon. Well, you better put water on the fleece, dry outside.

[21:52] And God did it. The next day, nope, do it the other way around. God did it. God does miracles. That's just a little one example. And I'm going to pray for miracles. God does great things.

[22:04] I'm never going to give up on these things. It is, it's amazing what he wants to do and we've got to believe it. God still wants to do miracles. I don't want to ever give up on that.

[22:19] Prophecy. Well, we said it two weeks ago. I'll just kind of go over it quick again. We have the full revelation of God right here. We have his word. It's complete.

[22:30] We know what end times are going to occur, what's going to happen. We can read all those things about the word of God. So what does a New Testament prophet look like? I think there's some similarities to the Old Testament prophet.

[22:41] I think they're bold, proclaiming the word. Now they have the gospel to preach. They can see sin in the church. And they're good at it. They care about the church. What's best for the church?

[22:54] They give edification to the church. We saw this verse last week. I'll share it again. Not sure where I'm at. I think I forgot my slides.

[23:05] Okay, there it is. This is supposed to say 1 Corinthians 14.5. It says 4.5, but it's actually chapter 14.5. Maybe I made a mistake or you made a mistake, but by the grace, no way.

[23:20] I don't make mistakes. I tell it to my students all the time. When I make a mistake on the board, I'm just doing that to see if you're paying attention. I do not make mistakes in my class.

[23:33] Right, Jeremy? That's right. Yeah. All right. See? See, I'm right. All right. Now I wish, now I wish that all of you spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophecy.

[23:49] Even more that you would prophecy. And greater is one who prophecies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he translates so that the church may receive edification. The gifts are to edify the church, God's church, to God.

[24:05] It's a good gift. Maybe you have it. Maybe you have this gift. Think about that. Process that. We need it. We spoke of it in Romans 12. Here it is again.

[24:15] I mean, it must be important. God's repeating himself here, and it's also in Ephesians 4. It must be important. We need it. Someone's speaking about sin in your life, listen.

[24:29] Because they're the ones who can probably see it. Maybe better than we can. Listen carefully. Be humble. Be humble. I'm clicking.

[24:45] We're getting there. Be humble. There it is. Distinguishing of spirits. This is the middle one here.

[24:55] I guess it's in there. We read it. Now I want to go to Acts 16 about distinguishing of spirits. This is a really, really interesting, really good gift. Distinguishing of spirits. Discernment.

[25:07] Have you ever been around someone that can discern things? Really good gift. These people are going to help protect us. You're going to help protect this church.

[25:18] Because it happens. It has happened here. People will come into this church and try and get you to open up your wallet. That's happened. They'll come in here with a strange doctrine.

[25:31] And if you gifted with a sermon, and I know some of you have it, you'll see that. Tim, Pastor Tim, I think this is going on. They said this and this. I want to know that if that happens.

[25:44] We want to know that. The enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He'll do it. He'll come right into this church if he can. The discernment gift will help see that.

[25:57] Not just that, but many other things. If you're at a meeting and you're trying to decide who should do this, sometimes the discernment gift will say, I think that person's good for this. This person's good for that. It's a good gift.

[26:09] It's a good gift. So let's read this Acts verse, 16, 16. Now it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, they were praying.

[26:21] A servant girl, having a spirit of divination, met us, who was bringing her master's much profit by fortune telling. Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, these men are slaves of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.

[26:37] And she continued doing this for many days. But being greatly annoyed, Paul turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave her. And it left at that very moment. I wonder if Paul had the discernment to know that something was wrong with this person.

[26:52] And he said, okay. And then he did another gift of a miracle of casting this demon out from this person. Two gifts maybe on this one. Paul discerned her spirit and did something about it.

[27:05] It is to help the church discern all kinds of things in the church. Again, we mentioned it, if someone is trying to deceive the church, we need to learn about that.

[27:16] And God will show us that. That's important. All right, back to, let's see here.

[27:29] I want to go to, oh, I forgot to read that. Okay, yeah, here we are. All right, so the last two, the last two gifts. Speaking in tongues, translation of tongues.

[27:40] And there's a verse I want to mention in regards to that. The last two verses. The last time I spoke on this topic, I deferred it to Jack. This time I'm going to say a little bit.

[27:51] And I still don't want to share a lot because I still, honestly, I don't really fully understand the topic. I don't want to share something that I don't know. As a teacher gift, if someone has that gift, that should be the case.

[28:02] If you don't know something, then don't teach it. But I'm going to share just a couple brief things about the speaking in tongues and the translation of tongues, if I could. And let's start by reading the last three verses of this chapter.

[28:14] It says, now we know that gifts are all spread out and they're not, no one has them all. That's clear. Are all apostles? Nope. Are all prophets?

[28:27] Nope. Are all teachers? The answer is no to all these. Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Nope. Do all translate?

[28:40] But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And we know that going into 1 Corinthians 13 about love, this is all leading into that, the very important chapter on the love, on loving people, loving God.

[28:55] No to every single question. No. Traditional Pentecostals, speaking in church, speaking in tongues, believe that every believer must be baptized in the Holy Spirit as a post-conversion.

[29:06] conversion. It happens after their conversion. They experience, and then they will involuntarily speak in tongues. Just a little history of the Pentecostal church. So that's all I really wanted to say.

[29:20] You're going to have to study it, discuss it among yourselves. Is the gift still present in today's church? I don't know. I don't know. A lot of people ask, well, even what is tongues?

[29:30] I don't even fully know. But gifts are for building up the body. Each member must do its part as does a human body.

[29:42] If you look at my body, I got all kinds of little parts. I like all of them. I like that little vein right there, helping my fingers have blood go there.

[29:53] They're important. I like my body. This next passage, this is great. Where are we at now? Here it is.

[30:05] This next few passages, I really, really like this. It kind of puts it all together. So here we are, verse 11. But one in the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as he wills.

[30:22] That's what we've been saying. God's distributing just as he wills gifts. Here they are. There's one there. You get this one. You get that one. And it's perfect.

[30:33] He don't mess up. We know that about God. Your giftedness. Don't envy someone else. Some gifts, yep, you're in the limelight more. Hopefully they're humble. Hopefully they choose humility.

[30:49] Verse 12. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also in Christ.

[31:00] For also by the one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. Again, God does exactly the way he desires to do it with gifts.

[31:16] Different gifts. They're all different. One body. Just like my one body here, all these parts, fingertips, my thumb, my little muscles in the thumb, my brain telling everything what to do.

[31:29] I like every part here. This right here is one body in Christ. It all has a piece. Maybe you're a vein. Maybe you're a fingertip.

[31:40] Maybe you're an eyeball. I don't know. But you're one of the parts. And I like all the parts. And God loves, I love you guys too. I've been wanting to say this word, my beloved, in honor of Pastor Jack as he always said it.

[31:56] You're my beloved. It's a great word. Each part needs to do its work for this body to function.

[32:08] Every part's got to work. Can't sit around. Doesn't get to sit. All the parts here have to work. Let's continue to read this.

[32:21] We're starting verse 14. For also the body is not one member, but many. If the foot, because I'm not a hand, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.

[32:36] And if the ear says because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body.

[32:47] No part can say it's not part of the body because it is. My ear is right there. It's part of this body and my foot and my hand. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

[32:59] This is funny. A big ear or a big eyeball, you know, I mean, it looks kind of dumb, right? But it's for a point, right?

[33:09] If the whole were hearing a big ear, where would the sense of smell be? Of course, it's not all one big ear. No. It's not all a foot or an eye.

[33:22] We need all these parts. A large part of the future of this church is wrapped up in how we use the gifts, tools, that the Heavenly Father has given us as for our effectiveness.

[33:35] It's for discipling each other. As I said, we've got to remember this, it's for loving each other better. Our gifts, as they shine, it's going to help us love one another, love our enemies.

[33:48] We've got Sunday service, and I'm not trying to criticize anyone here. I just want to challenge everyone here. I think Sunday morning service is pretty good. We've got a great worship.

[34:01] We've got some teaching. I guess you've got to decide if it's good or not. We've got good fellowship. It's good. Let's think about the other days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

[34:14] How are we using our giftedness with our family, with reaching our neighbors, attending small groups, discipling one another, helping each other grow, evangelism, all those things.

[34:29] That's what the gifts are for. Take a little, check your pulse. I have a hard time finding it. Is it there? We do a pulse check where we're at with our gifts, giftedness.

[34:43] Now you know what they are. You can't be ignorant. You can't claim ignorance. There's a number of things you can do with your giftedness. I heard this one recently.

[34:55] You could become a pen pal. Maybe you've got the gift of mercy and you want to become a pen pal with someone in prison. Maybe someone who has AIDS. There's a way to become pen pals with these people.

[35:06] You can write them a letter. Go to a small group. If you don't know what your gift is but maybe you think it's teaching, pulling it off to the side at the end and say, I want to share something with you.

[35:17] I'll listen to you. Maybe you can teach me something. Maybe you've got the gift of giving. Oh yeah. Meet me and you can give me some money. I'll take it. I'm kidding.

[35:31] Practice. You can practice. Learn how. Maybe you don't know. You've just got to take a chance. The gifts are amazing. It's incredible gifts of God and it's ultimately to glorify Him.

[35:45] and His Son, Jesus Christ. They are not to be given for us to sit around and show each other. Not at all, right?

[35:57] Gifts are to be used seven days a week. We've got gifts from God, special gifts to help love people better. God's calling us to all seven days, 24-7.

[36:08] Now, one more thought from this passage. This is an important one. If you are here today and feel weak and inadequate for God's work, because I know some of you do.

[36:22] I've talked to you. Some people feel inadequate. I love this verse. I can't remember where it's at. I think it's in Corinthians. It says, not that we're adequate in ourselves to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy comes from God.

[36:40] Weak and strong alike. All of us. I don't care how good you are. It all comes from God. If you think you're weak, that's what God uses as our weaknesses.

[36:50] Let's continue to read. It's coming. Here we go.

[37:04] On the contrary, how much more it is that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. I need that little vein right there.

[37:16] It's going to bring blood down to this one little finger and I can use it. I need every little part. Every little knuckle. We need all of it.

[37:27] On the contrary, how much more it is that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary and those members of the body which we think are less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor.

[37:43] Wow. If you feel inadequate or weak, God's bestowing more abundant honor. And our less presentable members become much more presentable. and they become better because of it.

[37:54] Whereas, our more presentable members have no such need. But God has so composed the body giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked.

[38:09] That's the love of God. If we're feeling weak at all in any part of our thing, abundant honor, God wants, giving us. Hmm.

[38:22] Are we valuable to him or what? He loves us so much. You think you're weak? God's going to bring abundant honor to that area of your life.

[38:32] God's going to bring us to that area of God. Amen. Amen. We read the first verse. Let's see here. And that leads into 1 Corinthians 13.

[38:48] The powerful chapter on love. Hopefully, you have some little better understanding of how important our gifts are today and how valuable you are to God.

[39:02] And we need you. We need every part right here. All of you. Everyone. Don't think anything less of yourself. Join a Bible study.

[39:14] Come, come, come and join us. Fill up, let's fill up, fill up the room. I'd rather have too many than not enough. It's one way to get involved, to find out more about yourself and get some encouragement, someone to chat with about your giftedness.

[39:29] Keep coming Sunday, of course. There's other ministries we have helping people, helping doing things, serving things, potlucks and picnics and things. So, all right, let's pray. Father, I want to say thank you for the Word of God today.

[39:42] It's amazing. It has so much to offer. us. We give our hearts to you today, Lord. We offer our bodies to you as a living sacrifice to you, Jesus.

[39:56]  We praise your name. Amen.