In this two-part series, Pastors Cliff and Derek discuss why and how Christians should identify their spiritual gifts.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California and professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. Today is part two of our conversation on discovering your spiritual gifts. You can find part one at withallwisdom.org and I encourage you to go there, not just to find the first part of this podcast, but also to see all the other resources that we have available. We have lots of articles for you to read on a variety of topics, theological and practical, but we also have a number of books you can purchase and you can also find our latest books on the side. If you scroll down through the site, you’ll find them on the right side of the site and you’ll see our latest three books and most recent is our Rescued by Grace Volume 2, another collection of testimonies that we trust will be very encouraging for you to read. And today we are going to delve right back into our conversation about discovering your spiritual gifts. On the last episode, Cliff discussed all the gifts that are available today to the believer. There are some gifts listed in the New Testament that are not available to the believer today and there are several that are and we want to know what they are, we want to know how God has gifted us, and we’re going to talk specifically why we should be very interested in seeking to discover or identify our spiritual gifts. And then we’re also going to move on to answer the question of what’s the best way to discover our spiritual gifts? What’s the best method? What criteria should we be using? So we just pray that this will be a profitable couple of episodes for you so that you can grow in your understanding of what your gift is, what the gifts are, and then how to use it effectively in the body of Christ. So I want to ask the question, why should this be of interest to every believer? And the first primary point, the most important you might say, is that the Scripture teaches that every Christian has a spiritual gift or gifts. The Bible is very clear about that. First Corinthians 12:7 says, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. That means that every Christian has been given by the Spirit a spiritual gift that he or she is to use. And you might think of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 where Jesus is telling of this parable, and he’s talking about how the master, which is him, is giving resources out to his servants, one he gives five, another he gives two, another he gives one, and that each servant is to make the best use as possible, the best use of those resources that have been entrusted to him by his master Jesus. And so we want to make the best use of the resources that God has given us. He’s given us financial resources, he’s given us natural talents, he’s given us opportunities, and among these things, he’s given us spiritual gifts, and we’re to use all of these for the furtherance of his kingdom, for the service to Christ, and we want to be found as faithful stewards. We want to hear, well done, good and faithful steward, good and faithful servant, and that involves a good stewarding of our spiritual gifts. So the first reason why every Christian should be interested in identifying their spiritual gift is because God has given you a spiritual gift. And tied directly into that is the second reason. He’s given you that gift for the building up of the body of Christ. It’s the verse we had just read. He’s given you a spiritual gift or gifts for the common good, and you’re to use that, we’re to use our gifts to build up the body of Christ, to strengthen it, to serve it, and not for our own use and edification primarily. We will be encouraged as we use our gifts. We will find delight and satisfaction in using our gifts, but the first and primary reason we’ve been given that gift is to build up the body of Christ, and so that’s the second reason.
Cliff: Let me jump in there, Derek, because, amen to everything you’re saying, and you are assuming, and I agree with you, that Christians should be seeking to discover their spiritual gifts based on the truth that God has given every Christian a spiritual gift. There are actually surprisingly a lot of people and church leaders that I know that would disagree with us, and I know because I’ve talked to them, as a matter of fact, there was one pastor that I had served with on a previous church, he was older than me, and we were talking about spiritual gifts among the pastors, and he said, and he just minimized spiritual gifts. Ah, you don’t need to know your spiritual gifts, just get out there and serve, just love Jesus and serve, and he thought trying to figure out your spiritual gifts was a complete waste of time and completely unnecessary, and I was surprised by that because of the verses you just read, 1 Corinthians 12:7, Paul made it, it’s emphatic, to each one of us, that means to every Christian, is given the manifestation of the Spirit. So we had a discussion there, but then I later found out that that’s a pretty widespread teaching of influential people, like Gene Getz, who, church planter, extraordinaire, senior statesman of the church, probably 87 years old today, thriving ministry down in Dallas and around the world, credible man of God, Dallas Seminary Professor, highly respected, and I’ve had the privilege to talk to him many times, but in his books, and in my personal discussion with him, categorically, he says, spiritual gifts are not for today, that was for getting the church started. There are no spiritual gifts, and you just need to love Jesus and serve, find out what needs to be done and do it, and there are a few other names that I would mention that you would know, and that’s a common view.
Derek: That’s interesting.
Cliff: It is surprising. I think that does a disservice, because Jesus promised, at the end of his ministry in Matthew 16 and 18, when he said, I will build my church, I will build my church, and then Paul answers the question, well, how’s he going to do that? Well, Jesus builds his church, the body of Christ, through the saints here on earth. Jesus is gone. Jesus is in heaven, but he is the one building the church, and Paul made it clear that Jesus said he will build the church through his people, serving, using their spiritual gifts and the energy of the Holy Spirit. So they are absolutely essential to build the body of Christ.
Derek: Absolutely. So we would. We would take the view that spiritual gifts, in fact, in the first episode of this podcast on this topic, you’d mentioned that there are nine, eight or nine spiritual gifts that are available to Christians today, that you can discern that from a careful reading of the scripture, and God has given us those texts in order for us to know and identify, I would say, what our spiritual gift is. And I think as we go through this conversation, it’ll become more and more clear why that’s the case, why you should discover and identify your spiritual gift. Actually, it will lead to greater effectiveness, and so we’ll continue to talk about that. But that’s helpful, I think, to set kind of a broader context that not every evangelical believer agrees with our point here, but we’re going to show you why we think it’s not only is it correct, but it’s vital to identify your spiritual gift. And so the last point I gave that the Spirit’s given spiritual gifts to all believers for the building up and common good of the body is that we will be most effective in serving and building up the body of Christ when we know what our gifts are, because we’ll be able to pour our time and energy into developing those gifts. And if you’re a Christian, you, by your new nature, have a heart for the church, you have a heart for service. You might be someone who is hesitant because you’re not exactly sure what you’re to be doing, but you might be someone, in fact, there are people like this at our church, just delightful people, who are serving in just about every capacity, and they’re serving in various different ways and in different places, and they’re just delightful people, but they’re trying to determine, we just had this conversation with someone recently, they’re trying to determine specifically, very specifically, okay, I’m doing a lot of things, but where specifically am I gifted? Where can I be the most effective? And when you do discover and identify what your spiritual gifts are, you can start to narrow down, develop those gifts, and those gifts then become more and more effective in the life of the church. And then finally, we want to identify and discover our spiritual gifts because every gift is vital to the health of the body. Every single gift. There’s no gift, and Paul makes this point emphatically in 1 Corinthians 12, that you can’t look down your nose at any part of the body. Every part is vital. Like in the human body, every part of that human body is vital to the health and overall functioning of that body, similarly with the church. Every gift is vital. There’s not just one or two that we could, ah, we could use those two and then leave the rest. No, every gift is vital. So as believers, we want to identify our specific gifts.
Cliff: Can I jump on to, add on to your reasons here, where you said we should, we are compelled to discover our spiritual gifts because when we do, we can serve with a maximum effectiveness, you said, which is true. And to complement that, I think if there’s somebody in our church who they found their gifts, they’re serving at maximum capacity, and they’re being effective, like you said, to the highest degree, they also have that influence on others to help them serve more effectively. So if somebody’s using their gifts or people around me are using their gifts and they’re as effective as they possibly can be, they’re blessing me because they’re allowing me to be as effective as I possibly can be. It’s like when we started the church plant in 2006, I didn’t have a whole lot of folks and I was doing 17 different things and 14 of those were taken away from where I’m more gifted and probably where I should have been given more of my time. But as the church grew and God blessed us with more and more people, I got freed up to do things that I wasn’t necessarily gifted at. And boy, what a beautiful thing. And I could totally notice it where I’m getting freed up to do a few things where I think God has gifted me and it’s allowing me to function at a higher capacity and it’s blessing other people as a result. And then also, I think you should seek to discover your spiritual gift. Another blessing of doing that is when you do and you’re serving in your area of giftedness at a high capacity, I think you find the ultimate fulfillment. That’s a blessing from God. For me, I think I’m gifted as a teacher. That’s how God’s wired me. And when you have a good teaching session at a Sunday school class or whatever and just as you’re walking away, man, that was fulfilling.
Derek: I agree. It’s interesting. I brought up some folks who are serving in multiple capacities. I think in some cases, people are doing that because they have a heart to serve and they just want to serve and they love the body. In some cases, I think people just have a hard time saying no and they think it might be selfish to say, I can’t serve in that area, that particular area, or I don’t have time or I’ve been able to identify certain spiritual gifts and like you said, to give my time to 17 things when I should be giving them to two or three things actually doesn’t benefit the body as much as if I just gave myself to two or three things. So we just want to kind of dispel the myth that it is inherently selfish for a believer to identify their gifts and then pour their time and energy into developing those gifts. In fact, by spreading yourself thin, you make yourself less effective and less helpful to the body of Christ. And so there is a certain amount of self-awareness in acknowledging and recognizing your gift. We’re not trying to be selfish and just say, no, I can only do this and I can only do this, but we want to positively discover our gift and then pour our time and energy then to those things so that we can bless the body as much as possible.
Cliff: Yeah. It could also be detrimental to the church and others when you’re serving in an area where that’s not your giftedness. How many people have you and I met over the years who said, I have the gift of teaching and they just kept pushing and maybe we let them try or they’re doing it on their own and they’re terrible. You are not gifted at teaching. That’s not helpful to anybody.
Derek: It isn’t.
Cliff: So that’s why you got to find out from God, what is your gift?
Derek: Yeah. Well, I think that’s a perfect segue then into our second question for today, which is, what’s the best method to discover one’s spiritual gift? What criteria should I be using? And I know that some in the past have suggested and recommended using something like a spiritual gifts inventory and basically that’s a test you might take and you just answer questions about interests and other kinds of things and things you know about yourself and things that you like and you answer questions, you understand certain texts of scripture and just various things to help you discover what your spiritual gifts might be. And so I know of people that have taken those inventories and I’m sure that some are better than others. And some of you…
Cliff: Quick comment on that.
Derek: Yeah, please.
Cliff: I’ve seen, I’ve used a lot of those over the years. There’s a gazillion of them. There’s some good ones and there’s some terrible ones. Every single one of them needs to be carefully read and edited in light of scripture because they’ll throw things in there from Exodus that you have the gift of crafting the temple or the tabernacle. No, you don’t. So you got to be careful there.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And they’ll put on some of those, they’ll put the gift of apostleship, andd that should be scratched. You’re not on there.
Derek: Yep.
Cliff: And if your gift is [being a] pastor and your’re a woman, well, no, that doesn’t work.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: So if you’re going to use those, you’ve got to be careful.
Derek: Yeah, be very careful.
Cliff: And they’re fun. They’re not indicative or anything like that. But every time I’ve taken one, it’s pretty accurate in terms of how it pegs me. Yeah, I just end up on the leadership side or the exhortation teaching side, which is kind of interesting.
Derek: That’s cool. Well, I think that’s, and that’s fine. I think it all has to be, this is one of the points that we are going to make in terms of methodology of discovering our spiritual gifts. You need the local body to discover your spiritual gifts. And this is essential. So one of the detriments, possibly, of a spiritual gifts inventory is it leads you to start thinking, I take this, I take my inventory home and I do it in my room and I fill it out. And now I’ve discovered my spiritual gifts, but you’re missing a really important component and that’s the local body.
Cliff: Yeah.
Derek: Because you just mentioned something a few minutes ago about someone being ineffective in teaching or in some other role. They’re serving in certain areas and you need the body of Christ to tell you, you are, we love you and we love your heart for the church, but you’re not, you don’t seem to be gifted in this particular area. And the reason we know that is because you’re not effective in this particular area. And so if you just isolate yourself away from the body, take an inventory or whatever your plan is to discover your spiritual gift, and you’re not seeking the input of the people that you’re ministering to, to find out where you’re effective, then things are going to go haywire and you’re going to be misled.
Cliff: I’m going to be emphatic here, Derek, because I totally agree with you. And I would even say, I don’t think you can actually discover your spiritual gift apart from the local body of Christ, the local church.
Derek: Yeah, that’s a good point.
Cliff: At least not in my experience.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: I don’t see how that’s possible.
Derek: Yeah. I mean, I would, I would agree with that just by the very nature of the spiritual gifts being that which builds up the body and the context in which Paul is giving those exhortations is within the body of Christ. And so you’re right. You’d be at a loss if you are trying to discover it on your own. One thing I want to touch on, and I want to see what you think about this, Cliff. This is something that I’ve been telling the young professionals for the last few years. This is something that’s developed in my own mind as I’ve been studying these things in the New Testament and trying to wrestle with this idea of methodology and figuring out how to identify our spiritual gifts. You do have the spiritual gifts inventory, and there’s other ways. Something that we’ll advocate in a modified way is just to get serving. We’ll advocate that. One thing I have said and is that I see, and this is, I think, reflective of the culture by and large. So you have a culture that when it comes to like career, for example, when looking, searching out a career that we are now being often told that you need to find work that you’re passionate about or that align with your interests or whatever it might be. A lot of that kind of conversation can really terminate on self, really. What makes you happy? What do you like to do? And I think, I’m afraid that some of that thinking has infiltrated Christians thinking on this topic of spiritual gifts so that the default is, all right, what’s my spiritual gift? Well, what do I like to do? What interests do I have? What would I prefer to do? What makes me happy? And so I have tried to get our young professionals to see that rather than thinking first and foremost about personal interests, personal happiness, personal passion, think first and foremost about effectiveness, because your spiritual gifts may or may not initially line up with what you love or desire to do. But if you find out where you’re effective, and as a Christian who loves the body, you start to see, oh, I’m effective here. This is benefiting people. This is building up the body. I’m useful. And this is actually being of great spiritual benefit to people. That’s where you’ll derive great joy in what you mentioned earlier, satisfaction in using your spiritual gifts. But I think it comes, ironically, by first considering effectiveness more than personal interest or personal passion, and then that only can be discovered in the body of Christ and with people telling you how you’re effective and so on. That’s been kind of my mainstay for a while. People ask me, how do I discover my spiritual gifts? Well, find out where you’re effective.
Cliff: Yeah, that is a really good point, because I think you need to do consider your desires, but where’s the balance and what’s the guiding principle in effectiveness, I think, in light of the theology of gifts. That’s a good way to start. That really helps, because desire can be subjective. Objectiveness is objective and can be observed by other people. That’s why that’s a good place to start. And I’ve actually seen that. That’s actually true of me, and I didn’t even think about that. Thirty years ago, a brand new Christian down in Southern California, Grace Community Church, knew I needed to get involved in serving the church, and I wasn’t serving. Being mentored, freshman year in seminary, two elders in the church take me by the side, and they observed me doing a few things, and they decide that they think I have the gift of teaching. I’m not sure that I do. I didn’t think I did. And they basically forced me to teach a Sunday school class to twenty third graders, and I was scared to death. I didn’t want to do it. I had zero desire to teach these third graders. They hounded me for weeks and said, you know what, I think now it’s a matter of obedience. We believe God’s gifted you, you’re available, nobody else is, you need to do it. So I was kind of rebuked resoundingly by these two men. I submitted, and I did it, and that’s when I began. And after I was done, I was like, oh, that wasn’t so bad, after sweating, working with the third graders, and that’s when my teaching career began. So it was not based on my desire at all. It was what others thought about my potential effectiveness.
Derek: That was amazing.
Cliff: I had never even thought of that until you just mentioned that. And also, as a lead pastor of a staff where I have to manage and supervise people, there are times where I’ve had to talk to people on our staff and tell them, you do good at this ministry, and you’re telling me you don’t want to do this ministry anymore, you want to switch to something else? No, you can’t. Because you do good at this ministry, you’re excellent at it. As a matter of fact, you’re the best in our church at it, and if you don’t do it, somebody else less effective is going to have to do it.
Derek: Less effective, exactly.
Cliff: I want you to strongly consider, prayerfully consider that this is not good stewardship of how God has gifted you. That’s literally what my answer was. Again, that had to do with desire versus effectiveness.
Derek: Absolutely.
Cliff: They submitted, complied, and realized, yeah, this is a matter of obedience to the Lord and what’s good for the body.
Derek: Yeah. And I’ll give you, so those are two excellent illustrations, and I’ll just kind of speak from my own personal experience. So I’m a pastor and elder at CBC, and a large segment of my responsibilities is teaching through actual teaching, teaching the Yo-Pros, preaching, teaching on Thursday night, teaching on Sunday mornings, also overseeing our writing ministry, doing a lot of writing myself, so that’s all involved in teaching, and all involves teaching. And I can tell you, there are times when I’m reading the New Testament and I’m realizing the weight and responsibility of teaching and the rigor and the difficult work it takes to teach, to not only teach but to prepare, and then to get up and to carefully articulate the Word of God and recognizing that you’re a fallible man and that you’re going to be held accountable and that the things that you’re saying are either benefiting or causing detriment to people’s spiritual lives. The weight of that responsibility, there’s times when I’m like, I don’t really want to do this, and yet people will, and then the Lord just graciously brings encouragement to say, Derek, you are effective in this role of teaching. You’ve benefited me, you’ve benefited others, and so there’s a sense in which there are times when I do, I love, I do delight in the preparation and the teaching, and then there’s times where the weight of responsibility and what I’m doing really hits me, and I’m like, wow, there are times when I just prefer to take a few weeks off, and yet the Lord encourages me with the encouragement of the saints by saying, Derek, you are, you’re effective in this area, and that’s very encouraging to then to press on and to yield in that role of service to the body, because I’m thinking first about effectiveness.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely.
Derek: So we would, I think we would encourage our listeners to, this goes back to something we had said, something you had said, what should you do? Well, the first step is to get serving, to find various needs in the church and begin to serve in those areas. Anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere. And then with an open ear and seeking feedback, and hopefully you’ll get feedback, but seeking it, don’t just hide, but seek feedback from other members in the body, the people that you’re serving in that ministry. Ask, am I effective in this, am I useful, how can I improve? And then as you’re serving and seeking the Lord and being sensitive to Spirit, sensitive to the words of the saints, I trust that you will be guided into identifying pretty clearly what your spiritual gifts are.
Cliff: You’ve got to be willing to take some risks, walk by faith, and also experiment and do something for a while and then get feedback, like you said, and evaluation, self-evaluation, but also evaluation from others in the ministry and in the body of Christ. One other thing in terms of how do I find my spiritual gift, I think you have to pray deliberately and ask God for wisdom and leading for Him to reveal that to you. And I think your church needs to be praying for you. I just want to read this verse, Colossians 1:9, Paul says as a pastor, here’s Paul as a pastor, praying for his people, this is how we should pray for our people. And regarding them, they don’t know their spiritual gift, this prayer applies. Paul says as a pastor, he’s praying for his people for this reason since the day we heard of it. We have not ceased to pray for you, the people, and to ask God that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you might walk worthy. So Paul knew that his people, the sheep, they needed God’s help to be enlightened so that they could walk in His will and I think finding your spiritual gift is getting in His will and the people need help, they need God’s help to find that. The pastors and elders need to be praying for our people.
Derek: Yeah we do and see it as our role to help them identify these gifts. Well our time is up for today and this is the second part of our discussion of discovering and identifying your spiritual gifts and we hope that it has been beneficial to you. Again we would encourage you to check out WithAllWisdom.org where you’ll find a large and growing collection of resources to help you grow in your walk with Jesus and until we see you next time, keep seeking the Lord in His word.
