I've always felt that my spiritual gifts were encouragement and intercessory prayer. Dr Stanley hasn't gotten to those topics yet. He's been discussing the gift of prophecy the past few days. I've heard many studies and listened to many sermons about spiritual gifts but no one goes as deep and explains it better than Dr Stanley.
I've learned from Dr Stanley's study that the gift of prophecy encompasses much more than just telling the future. It is bundled together with many other qualities and characteristics such as:
- A strong need to express oneself verbally
- Discernment
- Whole hearted involvement
- Willing to be corrected
- Loyal to those around them
- Willing to suffer
- Very persuasive in defining the truth
One biblical character that epitomizes all of these characteristics is the apostle Peter.
Dr Stanley says that the gift of prophecy is fore telling: speaking forth the truth. All believers have this gift to some degree. And, we are all called to speak the good news.
The topic of spiritual gifts greatly interests me. I want to know and understand the spiritual gifts completely so I can recognize them in others and live my own life utilizing my personal gifts to the best of my ability and interacting with the body of Christ and the world for the greater glory of God.
1 comment:
My favorite topic! You should be aware, though in listening to Stanley on sp. gifts that he takes a 3 category view. At least according to his book, he believes only the 7 gifts in Romans 12 are gifts that we can possess and that really define us as a person. The gifts in Ephesians 4 are called, according to this view, office gifts--positions in the church which only some believers are called to fill. And the gifts in I Corinthians 12 become manifestation gifts: Gifts that we can manifest at any time, but don't possess.
this is a majority view among charimatics, although many of the best charismatic scholars of recent years don't accept it, but it is a minority view among conservatives and even among the open but cautious group concerning the miraculous gifts it is an uncommon position. This 3 category view is one of two ways of dividing the gifts into fundamental categories, which is where the rules, principles, and admonitions that apply to one category of gifts may not apply to the other categories at all. The other fundamental category division is miraculous / non-miraculous, sometimes written as temporary and permanent. Most of the dozens of other ways of categorizing gifts would fall into the idea of useful categories which are only meant to be helpful in understanding the gifts, not to imply fundamental differences in the different types of gifts.
I believe all 3 lists contain gifts which make people a part of the Body of Christ and help define their personality and motivations, mine being discernment. My main motivation is to research, write, and hopefully soon teach about spiritual gifts.
I also believe that the results of having a gift list that is (in my opinion) too small (in this case 7) are predictable. First, the definitions of the 7 gifts become instinctively expanded. Typically the descriptions of prophecy and teaching will take on a more introverted feel than they do when more gifts are included in the list. This is an intuitive response to trying to fit in people that don't really fit into any of the 7 gifts or even a combination of two or three of the 7. Expanding the definition of teaching might help people with gifts of knowledge or wisdom feel more at home, but the label never really fits well. Even with the concept of a gift-mix, there are a few gifts that really never feel that they fit into the 7 descriptions of the list from Romans ch. 12. These include faith, discernment, shepherding, wisdom, and evangelism. Someone with the gift of wisdom given only the seven choices would likely choose a gift mix of teaching with a secondary gift of leadership, but since the label would never intuitively feel right, this person would loose their enthusiasm for the subject of gifts over time, thinking that it's just another system of labels and not fundamentally true and accurate (people with the gift of wisdom do like to be precise).
I could go on and on but I mainly wanted to share some of the variety of opinion out there on the gifts that differs from Charles Stanley's views.
Actually, if you have the gift of encouragement I have a question. I believe that there are a couple of aspects of the gift that are often overlooked, and I am curious if they apply to you. One is that encouragement is often described as if it takes place in a vacuum, like an encourager is simply using uplifting words, but I believe they are encouraging others in a direction, which is toward their potential, which means encouragers should be the best at seeing potential in others. The second is that to encourage someone toward their potential encouragers must understand what motivates people and how to use those motivations. The flip side of this is that if someone's motivation (or intent) is to harm others then encouragers (along with shepherds from Eph ch. 4) should be the best at detecting those who intend to harm or in fact all kinds of phonies and pretenders.
Jason H.
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