In the past couple of weeks, God has led me to do some research on spiritual gifting. I think this is because He's showing me the different ways He can use His children and to show me what I'm going to be doing for the church in this upcoming season. I remember earlier this year I found myself on a similar chase focusing on the more charismatic gifts (prophecy, speaking and interpretation of tongues, miracles and healing, etc.) because honestly, I was completely ignorant of their existence until I was blessed with some friends who were a bit more familiar with these gifts than anyone I'd ever known. In both cases, learning about the spiritual gifts has greatly deepened my relationship with God and has brought me to a much greater understanding about who He is.
In the first case (earlier this year), God used it to reveal to me that charismatic spiritual gifts do, in fact, exist. This was important to me, because since I've become a Christian there have been many times when God has spoken very clearly to me. Before knowing that God actually does speak to His children today in miraculous ways, and that it's not only something we talk about or read about in the Bible (although that's important, God says we should do it! Joshua 1:8 and Psalm 1:2 are examples), I would be confused and unsure of myself when this would happen. On a side note, I want to be clear here. I'm saying that reading the Bible is important and even commanded, and is used by God to speak to His children, while at the same time supporting the idea that God also speaks to His children in miraculous ways today. Both are biblical, and both are real, today. God used my study and the people He put in my life to get my doubts out of the way. When I finally let myself realize that the God of the universe was speaking to me personally, the concept that I had of God being distant and non-personal (although I didn't know it and wouldn't have said it) was crushed by the reality that I am God's child, God deeply loves His children, and He is intimate with them in all of their affairs. I would have said this before because it says so in the Bible, but I had no idea what it meant and I was squelching the Holy Spirit in me in many ways simply because I was very ignorant of Him and how He works. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and in me as a conduit for communication with God (by experiencing, and not only because it says so in the Bible even though that truth is important, referenced in Ezekiel 36:27 and John 16:13-15) has completely changed my walk with Christ.
In the case of the past couple of weeks, God has used my study to teach me about the gift of "apostle" (not the position, of which there have only ever been 12, or 13 including Matthias who took Judas Iscariot's spot). This has been significant because I have been thinking that God might be telling me to be involved in several churches in the area, instead of working a lot at just one church, kind of like an apostle. Again, I found myself silencing the voice because I really didn't think that was allowed (maybe a silly thought, but I can still be pretty clueless). I'm not saying that having a home or base church is not important, because we need a place to grow and be in community (following the example of the early church); and I'm working hard at bringing myself to commit to calling a church my "home". I am saying that God has gifted some people to encourage and strengthen Christians at many churches, and I didn't realize this. I'm still not solid on what I think about the "apostle" gift yet, but this pondering has been fruitful.
I say all of this to make the point that it's important to study the spiritual gifts because it can show us God's character, how God speaks to His children, how God uses His children, and to open us up to see how God might use us. I think sometimes we get distracted by all the spiritual gift test propaganda that's out there. Spiritual gift tests are neat because they can give you a clue to what your gifting is, but we tend to take them a little too seriously, and we can forget that God can use us however He wants to no matter how we're gifted. Don't be fooled into thinking that because you don't have the gift of "evangelism" that you don't have to share Christ with others; that's a lie because God commands all Christians to share Christ with others (and we are pathetic at it because we just don't do it, but that's a different post). Similarly, don't be fooled into thinking you shouldn't study the Bible because you don't have the gift of "knowledge" (or you don't like it), because that's a lie since God says it's important to do so (according to verses I've already referenced, and Psalms 119:9-16). At the same time, we shouldn't look at those who have screwed up or twisted certain ideas and not study spiritual gifts at all or take them seriously. We should study it because we should study all things about God because He tells us to, we love Him and we want to know Him better, and in the case of spiritual gifts also to know how He uses His children to build up the Church.
With all that said, here are some of the things that I have come across in my journey that may help others. None of these things are to be taken as Scripture, because they aren't Scripture, but they have been helpful to me.
