JUL 16 2020 | Holy Spirit Workshop S1E5

Sea Change Church · Holy Spirit Workshop Ep 5 · July 16, 2020
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Well, good. Well, hey, great to see everybody tonight. Welcome back. Taking a little bit of life risk to show up tonight. Good to have you. One of our values here at the church. And we are in week five, if you can believe it. Week five of the Holy Spirit class. And last week was great. A little bit of workshop. If you're just on video, I can't tell you everything that happened. It was amazing. But the next time you can come and come for the experimental portion of that.

But it was really, really good to see how God began to speak to us in unity in different ways. And even that last song that I played that started talking about horses and all that, I was like, oh, I've never heard this song before. That's kind of weird, but I'll just leave it on. It was meant to be. But then somebody else had, you know, we had had the same, you know, word about, you know, horses in a field. It was just interesting how God speaks to us as a group. And God loves to speak to us, loves to speak to us in unity.

And so one of the ways that we know that something is from the Lord, especially from the Holy Spirit, is that we tend to hear it in group think or spiritual group think. God will not just usually tell one person one thing. The days of the Jeremiah prophet, the days of the Mosaic prophet, those days are over. And God tends now to always speak through the church as a whole, through the entire body. And today we're going to be talking about spiritual gifts.

And the reason and the purpose of spiritual gifts is so that he can bring the body together in unity to work as a team or as a family in order to accomplish the work of God in the world and in the kingdom. And so you'll see in your notes, there is the Wagner spiritual gifts test that is there. That's just a paper test. It's also online. You can go find it. We're going to have you take that and come up with it next week.

And I'll talk through it a little bit next week if you're online. That is also below the video and the notes as part of the notes. You can check that out. But before we do that, we want to invite the Holy Spirit. So whether you're online, around the world, here, let's just take a moment and just welcome the Spirit. Holy Spirit, we just welcome you, Spirit. We thank you, God, for your grace and your goodness. All the ways that you have spoken to us and touched us as you're implored.

So, God, be with us. Be with us tonight as I teach this. And then as we move into a time of ministry together, that you would speak to us tonight and let it be a meaningful time. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, as we talk about spiritual gifts, just a little raise of hands. How many would say that you clearly know what your spiritual gifts are? Raise your hand. So about half of the group and a CSC, you know, a maybe I know.

And that actually makes sense. According to George Barna, the church statistician who does a bunch of work with polls and letting know what's going on in the church and demographics, Barna says that 32% of Christians self-identify as not having been given a spiritual gift by God. They believe in spiritual gifts, but they have not been given a spiritual gift, which is contrary to Scripture. Now, we're going to look at that Scripture in a moment.

But that is a third of the church would say that they do not have a spiritual gift. And we'll also look at how spiritual gifts tend to be grouped or begin to be strengthened when people enter certain denominations or types of churches that look to strengthen certain gifts and minimize the others. I told you that when I did my first spiritual gift test, prophecy and word of knowledge came up in my top three. In the bottom three were like leadership, administration and something else.

And the teacher of the class said, well, don't worry about those top three ones. Those aren't in use today. Why don't you just focus on these other ones? And so I said, OK. And it wasn't until I got to the Vineyard Church years later where I began to see that those other gifts were gifts. And I accepted the gift and walked in the gift. And this is one thing about gifts. It's true with a lot of things from God, especially fruit.

That we need to open the gift. Our gifts can lay under the tree for a very long time, like Christmas tree, and never be open. We have to actually open the gift and begin to practice and walk in those gifts. And then he who is faithful, or her, who is faithful with little will be given more. So as you lean into your spiritual gifts, you're going to see those spiritual gifts become more and more powerful in the same way that God created our physical bodies when you exercise.

When you exercise, you're going to notice a strengthening. You're going to notice the ability to do things you weren't able to do before since the quarantine has started. I decided after two and a half or three weeks of just eating bread and laying around the house and reading the news that I needed to do something different. And so I started this core training exercise thing. It's week nine or ten now. And I was down at the beach this week.

And I was just jumping from rock to rock. And there's things I couldn't do before, like really high steps. I was able to put my leg up and just one leg step up. There's no way I could have done that without ripping my hamstring ten weeks ago. But by continuing to practice these things, you know, God has created our physical bodies to actually be a representation of what he wants to do in the spirit world. He wants to do that all throughout.

The things that are true oftentimes in one element of mind, spirit, and body are also true in the other areas. So in the world, there's a huge amount of attention given to our physicality, but not as much given to the emotional and definitely not the spiritual. Let's look at this verse here real quick as we step into these spiritual gifts and we talk about what God means for them and what he wants for us and what to know about them.

With that said, I want to show you a book I wrote. I wrote a book called Discover Your Kids Spiritual Gifts. It's no longer for sale, so I'm not promoting it because it's out of print, although I think you can get it on Kindle. But the idea is that there was a group of even children that there's no child-sized portion of the Holy Spirit. And that once you make a decision for Jesus, the Holy Spirit fills you in full and then we begin to receive the gifts and to walk in those gifts.

At this church, we want everyone at the church to know what their gifts are. We want them to know what their personality is, their spiritual gifts, and then be able to walk in that. So as a body, we can come together believing that God equips this church with everything it needs to accomplish all that he has called us to. So in 1 Corinthians 12, probably the largest teaching on the spiritual gifts. It says this, There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them, in an every one, is the same God at work. Now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Let's stop there. If you have your notes, circle manifestation. Manifestation means like a bringing out to manifest something. Something that wasn't there or was perhaps latent is brought out for the purpose where it becomes visible, powerful, and has the ability to make change, not only in your own life, but in the world.

One of the purposes of the Holy Spirit is to manifest God's power through you. God can do it all on his own, but he wants to collaborate with us. I ask myself regularly, where am I collaborating with God? Where am I allowing, asking God to join into this journey? And the Spirit is meant to take the things of God, to give you supernatural gifts, and then to empower them so that they can do more than you could ever do on your own.

These spiritual gifts make you supernatural. They make you be able to live and have abilities beyond just your personality and your normal gift set that you were born with. You will only go so far with your normal gift set, but when you have the spiritual gifts, we have the ability actually to take things with the Holy Spirit ability, to take things eternal to that next level and actually live beyond ourselves. Will you close that one door right there?

If you would. Thanks for sliding that close. And one of the things I've said is people always say, well, I want to be everything that I was meant to be. And I've always kind of roiled against that because I want to be more than I can actually be. And the spiritual gifts that God gives us are actually challenging you to be more than you could have ever been. Be more than 100% of yourself because the Holy Spirit adds to that.

So he manifests these things. It says, Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom. To another a message of knowledge by means of that same Spirit. So there you see knowledge that you didn't have being given to you through the means of the Spirit. Now what are the other ways that we can get knowledge? You can read a book, watch a movie, you can go on a trip, you can have an experience.

But this is the Holy Spirit taking it and downloading it. Maybe you saw the Matrix where, you know, Neo was, every time he wanted to get a new trait, they would plug something into the back of his head and they would download into his brain. He had a computer chip in his brain and they'd be able to download Kung Fu. And all of a sudden he'd just be amazing at Kung Fu. The Holy Spirit does this with knowledge. He gives us knowledge.

But one of the things we have to realize is when God gives us knowledge that we only see in part. We only prophesy in part. And whenever I get knowledge from the Lord, I want to be very careful with it. I don't want to immediately start saying, This is what the Lord, thus saith the Lord. That is one of the things we want to be really careful with, especially as a church. We do not want to move into, thus saith the Lord.

We want to move into this. I, thus I thinketh, saith the Lord. And I want the Spirit to confirm it in you. I want the Spirit to confirm it throughout the body. And we want the Scripture to confirm it. And we will know that it's true more often after it is proven out in reality than just because I say it. When you look at Joseph Smith, one of the things you saw with Joseph Smith is he was a prophet that claims to have a download that was specific to him, for him.

And there was no questioning of that download. And Pentecostals can do this. Evangelicals can do this. All types of people can do this. This is not how the body of Christ functions. So when we have this word of knowledge, I just wanted to say that when we have spiritual gifts, when we even have a teaching. So when I teach, you know, I want to make sure that it's a dialogical teaching and that other people are hearing it and confirming, hey, that was of the Lord.

Or, hey, you can question me on that. A lot of times we have these pastors that you can never question. We've been given the manifestation. It says in verse 9, He knows what he's doing. But he does guarantee, it says, Each one will have a gift. It says there at the beginning of the passage. It says there are different kinds of gifts, the same spirit, different kinds of service. And it says, Now to each one, the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good.

So if you have a spiritual gift, the reason God gives us spiritual gifts is for the common good. We want to be operating in the church for the common good of the rest of the body. It doesn't make us a superstar or a rock star because you have multiple gifts or, you know, anything less because you only have one or two gifts. You want to do it for the sake of the body. Moving in now, seeing what the purpose of the Holy Spirit is.

Go to verse 4. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit distributes them. This is the Holy Spirit's job as a quipper. Now, we often think about Jesus, you know, leading us and being led by Jesus. But when you have a leader leading you, one of the things that you'll see, especially if you study the art of war and different things, you have to have a supply line. One of the reasons the Germans lost the Battle of the Bulge is the Americans were able to come and cut the supply line where they got stuck on their way to, I believe it was Antwerp.

The Holy Spirit acts as the equipper of the supply lines. Jesus is leading. He's calling us where to go. But the Holy Spirit gives us the power and the ability and the knowledge and the counsel and the comfort. He is the equipper. And so I want to challenge you, if you haven't spent time actually asking the Spirit, Jesus to use the Spirit or speaking to the Spirit directly, would you equip me? Holy Spirit, equip me with the words.

Holy Spirit, equip me with the knowledge. Holy Spirit, equip me with the faith. Faith. Now, before I move any further, I want to talk about these spiritual gifts as offices or as an intermediate usage. There might be a time where the Spirit gives you the ability to pray for somebody and healing comes through that prayer. You are never a healer. The gift of healing, you are a conduit of the healing. You are not the healer.

You might be the conduit. And when he decides to stop using you, if he decides to remove the gift, he can do whatever he wants. He can remove it. He can say, you know, if you're faithful, if you're not faithful with it, he can remove it. But I've seen people's giftings and anointings diminish because they were not faithful. If you pray for somebody one time and they get healed and it never happens again, then that was an intermittent time of the Holy Spirit using you.

He gave you the gift, just for a moment, to use for a certain reason and a purpose. And that's why I think we need to regularly, when we can, try to employ any of the gifts. So many people have said, I don't have the gift of evangelism. Salvation is a salvific gift. We'll talk about that in a second. And so they never really evangelize because I don't have that gift. I think we always want to be employing and asking the Spirit, would you give me the gift in this moment?

So when you're at the hospital, someone's sick or someone tells you they're sick. Or if someone doesn't know the Lord, try to step into it and see what God does. Now, the next, besides intermediary use, I'm not even using the right word, would be an office. An office means that the Lord says, you know what, that's kind of your main purpose. So I'm a teacher. I have a teaching gift. He doesn't just give it to me once or twice a year.

It's become an office for me. It's kind of like a description. It basically becomes a description of what I do in the church. Yeah, it's kind of like a job description based on the church. So Glenda obviously is an administrator. I know that she has that. It's pretty obvious that she has that gift as well. But it doesn't mean that just because you have an office, you can let go of the other gifts. And so I want to challenge us all to work or at least be open to using all the gifts.

We'll talk about what those gifts are as we look at the list. Now, as the Holy Spirit is a quipper, are you using the Holy Spirit as an quipper? Are you resourcing the Holy Spirit? Are you asking him to remind you, to give you, to lead you into conversations, to lead you into opportunities to evangelize, to ask for gifts? The gifts are not static. I was given gifts years after I made a decision to follow Christ. I got the gift of tongues when I was 24 years old.

And God gave me that gift. I didn't have it. There's other gifts. He can give them at any time he wants, when he wants. And so let's make sure that we don't just find these few gifts that we're acting in and not be pursuing the other gifts. I think there's a scripture that speaks about the desire, eagerly desire, I think he says eagerly desire spiritual gifts. As he speaks, I think it's in 1 Corinthians 13. But we want to eagerly desire and ask for more.

God is the giver of gifts. Say, God, I want wisdom. God, will you give me this gift? Just hound him so much. Sometimes he'll say, no. I have this kid who was in my youth group, wanted the gift of tongues. I had a kid who didn't want the gift of tongues. He got it. The other kid who wanted it for years. It actually almost shipwrecked his faith. Because he wanted it so bad, but God said no. For one reason or another. So, we believe that God is a giver of gifts.

And God can give gifts when he wants to. And he can add to these giftings. When I got the gift of tongues, I had not wanted the gift of tongues. I told the Lord I didn't want the gift of tongues. I just felt awkward. Like, how do you get it? I don't know. I just wasn't into it. And I felt the Holy Spirit kept saying, pray for the gift of tongues. And I didn't want to do it. So, eventually I was obedient. Prayed for the gift of tongues.

And then, probably within a week or two, I was getting ready to go on a silent retreat. I used to do five-day silent retreats to this monastery up in Santa Barbara. I did it for like 10 or 15 years in a row. Almost during Lent. And so, the night before I went on the retreat, I have a dream. And my two pastor friends are in the dream. They have robes. We don't wear robes. And they come up to me. And they put their hands out in the dream.

And they start praying over me as I'm sitting at my desk. And all of a sudden, I start speaking in tongues in the dream. And I wake up. Huh. What's that all about? So, I go. And I go to work that day. And I was getting ready. I was leaving in the afternoon to go to Santa Barbara. And both of them walked by my office. And I remembered the dream. And I was like, ah. And I know that they spoke in tongues. And so, I said, hey, would you guys come pray for me for the gift of tongues?

So, they came around. They actually didn't do what happened in the dream. So, it must not have counted. And they came, laid their hands on me, prayed for me. And I went up to the... And I asked them, well, what should I do? You know. And they said, well, just try. And I said, try? What do you mean try? Try to speak in tongues? He goes, yeah. Just speak. Try to speak from your spirit. Try to speak from your spirit. Don't speak from your mind.

Don't speak from your mouth. Just let words come out. And do your best. So, it's the first night. It's like 8 o'clock at night. We had dinner. You go have dinner. Went up to my little cell. My little room. It was more than a cell. It's pretty nice, actually. And I was there. And I thought, okay, I'm going to try it. So, and I'm feeling really dumb. Have you ever felt dumb when you're with yourself? Like, that happens to me a fair amount, actually.

Like, I used to dance before the Lord or whatever. And so, I'm in the room. And I'm going, I'm such an idiot. You know what I mean? I'm just, like, shaming myself. And didn't want to do it. So, I keep going. And all of a sudden, I go, tale. And I was like, that's a funny one. Because I was, like, gurgling before that. You know what I mean? And it was, like, you know, some, like, deep Russian dialect, you know? And I say tale.

And I was like, oh. And my friend had said, if you get a word that comes, just keep saying that and see if you can flow off it. So, I was like, tale me la. And I was like, I couldn't do it. And I was like, whoa. It kind of flowed. And so, I kept doing that. And then I kept starting with tale. And so, you know, and then literally within 20 minutes, I went out to this huge olive grove at night. It was really surreal. Moon was out.

Went out to this olive grove. Really old olive trees. Not, like, Gethsemane old, but pretty nice. And I walked out there. And I was like, tale. And it was like, kilam ni o shulu halam ni o shalakala. And I was like, tilam ni la kulam ni la kulam. You know, and I was, like, getting into it. I was like, whoa, this showed up. The interesting thing is, one thing I knew is, I can't, if I try to, like, make up words. Like, if I try to make up a language and, like, speak that quickly, I can't actually do it.

If I try to, like, make something up in my mind. But if I speak in tongues really quickly, I can just do it. It just is this ability. And I can do it for hours upon hours. It just released. This is one of the times where I was just, I pressed in. I didn't really want it, but God was like, I want it for you. What the Lord has been telling me recently is, I want you to pray in tongues more. And so, I'm actually trying to step back into that to do it as we pray.

But God has more gifts. He wants to give you gifts. The Holy Spirit is an equipper. Comes behind you like a train. He comes before you to give you words. If you don't know what to do, ask for wisdom. James says, if you don't have wisdom, ask for wisdom. Ask for an answer. I said last week that the Holy Spirit will tell us the right time and the way in which to do it. And what we're supposed to do. John 14, 26 says, This is really, really interesting.

First, who's doing the teaching? Holy Spirit. One of his jobs as an equipper is to teach you. So, as we read the scripture, where do we get the teaching from? We're reading the words of Jesus. But the Holy Spirit will give you insights. He is the one that will begin to teach you as we go. Now, the next thing he says, because he does also say, don't worry about what you say when you stand before courts. You know, that's that scripture where Jesus is like, don't worry about what you're going to say.

The Holy Spirit is going to give you this supernatural download and you are going to know what to say. In the first week, I told you about how I ran up to upper campus at two in the morning. God said Gabe was up there. This guy that I've been praying for, I went up there. He actually was up there. And I spoke just words from the scripture that I've been reading, just verbatim, just straight through. I think my mom said you had an experience like that recently.

You told me this a couple weeks ago, that God just gave you all these words. The Holy Spirit just downloaded it. It wasn't something that perhaps he had taught me before. So that is just sometimes he will just give you the words so you don't have to worry about not knowing what to say. But what this verse is a little bit different, because if you see it says, he will teach you all things and then will remind you. Well, the only way you're going to be reminded is actually if you're learning from the Holy Spirit.

You see, he will teach you and then when you need it, he will remind you. So often, we walk into situations without the teaching. We haven't spent time with the Holy Spirit. We haven't spent time with the Lord. We haven't spent time in meditation. St. Ignatius of Loyola has a one-month thing called the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. We're going to start using those here at the church for different courses. That we have.

We're creating a group of courses at the church. This is one of them. And so as we listen and as we meditate through the Spirit, he has us meditate on Scripture. And then the Holy Spirit begins to tell us about what is happening in the Scripture and in that place. And then teaches us. So it says that then he will remind you of everything that I have said to you. So he reminds you after we've been taught. So are you asking the Spirit to teach you?

Are you inviting the Spirit more regularly into your life? When you read the Scripture, perhaps start with Holy Spirit. I invite you. Would you teach me? Holy Spirit, when I walk into this place today, this is the place I go all the time. I want to be a minister here. Holy Spirit, would you give me words? When my husband comes home, he's had a hard day. Holy Spirit, would you give me some Scripture? I'm going to look in the Scripture right now.

I'm going to read. Would you direct me to the right path? Would you teach me? Would you remind me what to say? Would you remind me what not to say? Beginning to have the Holy Spirit come as you follow Jesus to equip you from behind you to give you these things. And that's how you begin to walk in power. That's how you begin to walk in faithfulness. Now, there's a specific, as we're going to look at these different gifts, Barna does some interesting, he has some other things that I want to mention that are really interesting.

There's a specific set of gifts commonly described as the charismatic gifts that are widely possessed around the world by Christians. The charismatic gifts are a set of gifts that a lot of churches, I talked about the cessationist movement a few weeks back, do not allow for. They believe that God used those to start the church, and then he removed them and they're no longer available. I think one of the reasons is because they're not as easy to control.

And, you know, I think they can be somewhat scary to people. Words of knowledge, prophecy, tongues, these are things that are difficult oftentimes to control. And when we live in a highly knowledge-based scientific world, we want the things that we can control. So as the Western world has gotten more and more scientific, we've kind of ostracized many of these gifts. If you move into the two-thirds world, you're going to see these gifts rampant.

Let me read through this. Overall, 13% of Christian adults claim to have one or more of the charismatic gifts. These are healing, interpretation, knowledge, miracles, prophecy, and tongues. The people most likely to say they have a charismatic gift are women. This is from Barna. This is from his statistics. And this guy is really well known for his research. Twice as likely as men. Again, people without any college education, born-again Christians, and people over 45 years old, or basically is what he's saying, are more likely to have the charismatic group set of gifts.

Interesting that people without a college education, because you're not all bound up in disproving what you think might be God and what might not be. I had this conversation last week with you guys and with my daughter. My daughter, Lucy, she was talking about hearing from the Lord, and my daughter, Lily, as well. And I said, where do you hear from the Lord? And they mentioned a few spots. And then they both said, well, it's probably not the Lord.

And they did that route where you just choose to believe, because you decided, that it's not the Lord. And I said, well, how is that any different than just choosing to believe that it is the Lord? Why not just all the time choose to believe that it is? I mean, is one more dangerous than the other? They're both extremes. I'm not saying that you should do that and choose all the time. But what if we went from a different type of platform?

We don't do this in the Western world. We don't believe in these things. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Now, he goes on to say that, just interestingly, although 13% say that they have one or more charismatic gifts, the survey revealed that nearly twice as many, 23%, describe themselves as charismatics. It's like saying you're a French cook, but you never cook French food. If you don't operate in at least one of the charismatic gifts, I think it's difficult to be a charismatic.

And so to step into what those are, at least understand them and step into them. Here's another thing. In talking about this, I think, gift bias. So if you're a highly evangelical church, you're going to see a lot of people who have, you know, that say they have the gift of evangelism. In the evangelical church, which oftentimes are not charismatic, although there are charismatic evangelicals, evangelical churches is the church that is really highly Bible-based and evangelizing and discipleship-based, oftentimes not having the spirit of the charismatic gifts to go along with it.

It says 28% of all evangelicals believe that they have the gift of teaching. Like, 28% believe that they have the gift of teaching, which is a really, really high number. I mean, I don't even think you need that many teachers in a grouping, but it shows that wherever we land, we can tend to limit or strengthen things based on the personality of the church or obviously what we believe. But oftentimes, just because the church believes it as a whole doesn't always mean it's actually correct.

And so we see where you get that bias happening. Are you open to the charismatic gifts? And have you actually tried them out? That's what we want to do. We want to experiment. experiment. I said on Sunday, I was on a chat, I wasn't in a chat room, what is it, 1994? I was in the comment section, there was something about Billy Graham and prayer or something, and some guy wrote in the, God is a fake God, he doesn't exist, and he doesn't answer prayer.

And I'm thinking to myself, how do you know? You don't pray. How can you say he doesn't answer prayer if you don't pray? And so, challenging you as well, step into these gifts. Tonight we're going to try to step into this gift of knowledge and understanding and perhaps interpretation and pray for some of you that might want the gift of tongues. What is a spiritual gift? Spiritual gift or charisma, is in the Greek, is an endowment or an extraordinary, extraordinary, I like saying it that way, an extraordinary, so it's not of the ordinary, it's extraordinary, a power given by the Holy Spirit.

These are supernatural graces which individual Christians need to fulfill the mission of the church. So powerful. To fulfill the mission of the church. We are working to fulfill the mission of the church, of what God has for us as a church, and you are part of that. As we look at gifts, and the gifts that God has given us, I want to say, a gift becomes really powerful when you are a person, and I've used Glenda already, that has administration.

I believe that she was built with a personality trait of administration. If the personality trait of administration then gets backed up with the spiritual gift of administration, that's where you see people just at another level. They are just like organizing at another level. We have recently brought a woman in to be our, her name is Sandra Munson, to be our administrative coordinator here for small groups, and it was a part-time thing just for the summer at first, but she's so gifted and so talented, no one falls through the cracks.

Like immediately closing the back door of this church, no one comes here and puts a card in that doesn't get contacted anymore. Within a week of new people coming, they're already, I think she connected with you, Garrett, you know, within a week of people coming, they're in a small group, they're, she's, it's this incredible gift. The, the gift backs up the personality. This is where you have these super powerful mixes and gifts that work together.

It says, to fulfill the mission of the church, in the, in the narrowest sense, it is a theological term for the extraordinary graces given to individual Christians, for the good of others, distinguished from the graces, for personal sanctification, such as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So, the spiritual gifts aren't so much for your personal sanctification, although they will, as you walk with God, you're going to be sanctified.

Sanctification means made holier, being more and more conformed in the image of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is God gives you humility, that's personal sanctification. But the gifts are really about getting things done. The gifts are about doing the business of God, doing the business of the church. And I, I hope that as I have released you into the congregation, you don't have to just do it here on Sunday, that you step in and start building up the church.

That you call somebody. Bruce has, he's been here a long time, he knows people. Permission just to call people that come to his mind. Holy Spirit, who would you lead me to in the church today? Okay, so and so. I haven't seen that person. Okay. Bruce gets on the phone. Hey Ted, it's Bruce. Been thinking about you. And as I prayed for you today, I got this, I felt like the Holy Spirit gave me a word of knowledge for you.

And it's backed up by a scripture. May I please share it with you? Because I don't like giving unsolicited advice. Yes, you may. Oh, okay. Well, here's the scripture. And then they say something like, whoa, I just read that scripture this morning. Well, then you have that confirmation. Well, I just wanted to bless you today and say that we care for you. And boom. And then that person leaves edified, encouraged. Bruce, I would believe, has the gift of encouragement.

And can lift people up. And I've seen him do that. And so, releasing you to walk in that power. Would you guys leave that open? Just let the air come through. Thanks so much. Great. So, let me just turn the other page. Turn to the next page. We're coming in for a landing here pretty quick. We're going to have some power, some time tonight to help the Holy Spirit move amongst us. How many gifts are there? Well, this is debatable.

Really debatable how many gifts there are in the Spirit. It's based, you know, if you go to churches that don't believe in the charismatic gifts, will you leave that open, Alex? Eight to twelve, they'll say fifteen. Some say up to twenty-eight, twenty-nine. In the book that I wrote, and it's definitely not definitive, but I said, I believe that there are currently a minimum in the charismatic tradition of twenty-three available spiritual gifts.

All those are listed in the notes. Some people have, in the charismatic tradition, have added things. So, Exodus thirty-one. It says, The Lord says to Moses, I've chosen Basilel, and I have filled him with my power. I've given him understanding, I've given him skill, the ability for every kind of artistic work, for planning, for skillful design, the working in gold, silver, and bronze, for cutting jewels to be set, carving wood, and every other kind of artistic work.

So, some people have said, well, it's a spiritual gift of artistry. I actually don't see that also in the New Testament. So, a lot of times, when you see something in the Old Testament, you want to find it in the New Testament as well, because the New Testament is actually what solidifies, kind of slam dunks the ball a little bit. So, look, I don't think you're going to go wrong if you tell somebody, hey, there's a gift of artistry.

God, yeah, he's going to bless that. Would I actually put it in the list? No. Do I think there's an argument to be made for it? Yes. I'm not going to argue about spiritual gifts. You can, and other people, I saw another one, laughter. People said, a joyful spirit and laughter is a spiritual gift. I don't believe that either. But, I think a joyful spirit is awesome. And, I think if you want to call it a spiritual gift, I guess you can.

And, I don't think it's going to do much damage, as long as, you know, you don't, I don't know how you could use it to harm people. But, I'm not going to argue about spiritual gifts. I'm just not. If you want to walk in spiritual gifts, if you want to deny the charismatic gifts, I don't care. Deny the charismatic gifts. But, just don't try to squelch them in someone else. What you need to do is, you know, your life, or if you're in a tradition, you need to respect that tradition.

In my book, I said that if you were in a church that denies the charismatic gifts, I would suggest you leave the church, if you're really into them, before you try to change the church and cause a division in the church and we've got to go this way. I got, you know, I got the gift of tongues and now all of a sudden the whole church has to have the gift of tongues but they've been, you know, in this holiness tradition without that for years.

That's what happened to John Wimber. John Wimber, I think his wife got the gift of tongues. They were against the gift of tongues. Didn't believe in it. His wife got it and I think the story was he was in bed or something and he got the gift of tongues in bed. There's some story how he got it. Well, he ended up leaving the church and starting, I think he was at a friend's church, ended up going and starting the vineyard church out of that.

So, we want to, you know, we're not going to argue about the gifts but here's how I put the gifts together and through, you know, my research is putting this book together. I sought five categories of gifts and I challenge you to do your own study. This is just what I came up with but it's pretty safe and pretty inclusive. Shepherding. The first category is shepherding. The second category is serving. Those are the serving gifts.

The third category is the compassionate gifts. The fourth is understanding where you get the supernatural understanding. We'll talk about those. And then the fifth is the salvific gifts. What God uses for salvation to help bring people to Christ. So, first is the shepherding. What is shepherding? Shepherding is what it says it is. It is the ability to lead people in a direction. To gather them. To bring them to rest.

To bring them to action. To move. To organize them. To spiritually care for them. It is just what you think it is. It is a shepherd. It is someone who has a shepherd's heart. You care for people. You don't have to have a mega church to be a shepherd. You can have five to eight people that you just care for and you shepherd them along. Disciplers, people who disciple a lot are shepherds. They tend to have a deep care for people.

Of the 23 gifts that I mentioned in the shepherding category, you have administration. Why is administrative, why is that shepherding? Because it organizes people into spiritual causes. People say, what do you do for a living? I say, I'm a pastor. And I say, what does that include? I say, I organize people around spiritual causes and I care for them. That's it. I mean, that's pretty much what we do. Organize you around spiritual causes, bring you into something bigger than yourself, try to change the world through activities and give you spiritual care.

I mean, it's a pretty basic job of what we do. But administrative is a gift that brings people together. Use it to organize. You need to organize the sheep. When I was in Scotland, it was amazing. Watching every day the guy would feed the sheep and he would come, they had the dog and the dog would jump up on the back of the four-wheel machine, whatever it is. It's not an ATC, but I don't know them anymore. The dog would jump up on the back and he would blow the whistle and ride around on his ATC and all the sheep would just follow until they all came to one place.

It's the organizing. Next is apostle. Apostle is a larger shepherd. It is a shepherd who organizes larger territory than just a small group or just a church. The apostolic calling, and many people believe that this doesn't exist today. Now if it does, it's with a small a. We don't have apostles like the disciples. The apostles had a specific scriptural calling that they had to know Jesus, they had to walk with Jesus, and they carried on the ministry of Jesus.

Now Paul argued that obviously because he met Jesus on the road that he qualified as an apostle. These apostles can write scripture. A modern day apostle cannot write scripture. The capital A in apostle and the capital P in prophecy, those days are done. There is no more definitive prophecies. We only see in part, we only prophesy in part. When John prophesied in Revelation, unless God said to him, I don't want you to say what you saw, he saw the totality of it, he would ask a question, but he prophesied in full.

Those days are over. But that doesn't mean that you don't have people that are shepherds over larger cities. So Miles McPherson, in my opinion, is an apostle. He is an apostleship that God is growing. I believe, you know, that while he hasn't moved me into that, I believe I've been told, and it's come up on my gift sheet, that that is either a latent gift for me that he might expand or not. I haven't wanted to do that.

I'd rather just be a local church pastor. But I've been recently wrestling with God about that and saying, well, God, if you want me to do, you know, this, but it'll always be from, hopefully, the small church platform. And what God's showing me right now in the church, which is interesting, is a way in which to continue to be a parish pastor but change the world and have apostleship while still doing it from a small church platform.

That's what an apostle is. It is a larger, you're over cities, you're over nations. That is what it is, that apostle. I would say T.D. Jakes is an apostle. Whether you like his message or teaching, I think he has an apostolic teaching. You have a teacher, somebody who, you know, obviously teaching. Teaching is an interesting gift, and there's two types of it. I believe, some people say that they say the prophetic gift means that you're actually preaching and they see a difference between preaching and teaching.

I don't see the prophetic gift as a preaching gift. I see the prophetic gift as a prophetic gift that actually tells you what's going to happen possibly in the future or God's going to give you some knowledge about what's going to happen in the future. I think we've tried to dumb down what prophecy means because we're not comfortable with prophecy and so we've taken the charismatic teeth out of it and just turned it into preaching.

But teaching is a gift and just because you're a teacher doesn't mean you're a preacher. You've seen people that are teachers and there's captivating teachers, but there's some teachers once you get them in the pulpit, oh my gosh, I can't listen to them. They just, there's just a, they just have the ability to teach in a classroom. It's great, but in other settings it doesn't work. You know who's a teacher and a preacher?

Elliot. Elliot is, there's a captivating, it's not just this incredible knowledge. Like a teacher will bring you knowledge and what they teach is so interesting. They don't even have to deliver it amazing. What they're teaching is so good, the teaching captivates you. But a preacher who can also teach actually captivates your spirit. He captivates the emotions. He captivates, so you'll see that if you come to Elliot's class or watch him, he's just alive, you know, with that.

Jim would also say that while he has a gift of preaching, I'd say he does have a gift of preaching and of teaching, that Jim is, he feels best in the classroom setting. Jim loves, and he loves a dialogical classroom. I'm always telling him, I want you to preach and I want you just to preach and make a video of it so I can put it online. He goes, well, I like talking to my people. He wants to have a dialogical teaching.

So that is a teaching gift. We can talk about that, but it is the ability to teach. Leadership, and I would say for me, there's leader and then there's pastor or shepherd. That's one gift, pastor or shepherd. I have a strong leadership gift. I have a medium pastoral gift, just the way it is. Strong leadership, lead you in the right direction, but if you need a hug because of your boo-boo on your knee, it's hard for me to get there.

I'm not, I'm just, it's just something I have to work at. Other people, and I have deep empathy in the, like, so if we, if I slow down and I spend time with you one-on-one and I'm with you one-on-one, I have a strong pastoral gift when I get there over coffee. Like, one-on-one over coffee, I'm pretty good. Like, I have a strong pastoral gift. Like, I've sat with Steve, a bunch, you know, and there's been a strong, I feel like there's been a strong connection, a strong pastoral gift, really caring about him, really wanted to see him move forward in this, but I have to jump a really big gap from my leadership gift to get to that place.

It just doesn't come naturally. Jim has a huge pastoral gift. Jim is just right in there with you, like, right, just immediately, AM to FM, just, you know, flips right over, it's that pastoral. I can lead a lot of people, and you, it's easier to lead a lot of people than it is to pastor a lot of people. People with a very strong pastoral gift, but not a strong leadership gift, will probably never be able to have a church or a movement over 150 people.

Because every time it's time to go to a project or to visionary or to go to that next level, what they're going to do is they're going to slow down and be like, well, I wonder how, I wonder how Ted is. I got to do that vision work, but I just, man, I'm concerned about Ted. I know that, you know, he, and so they'll call Ted. And, you know, and it's great. You have these incredible small churches. That's why so many churches in America are smaller, but most of the people that are leading, like, your larger churches are not highly pastoral.

You know, Miles, huge leadership gift, you know, but I don't know how much one-on-one he's doing. I don't know the man that well. Oh, I knew him a long time ago, but not recently. So that's, those are the shepherding gifts. So that means you're gathering people. Do you like to gather and lead people? No. Just coming in for a landing, a few more minutes, we'll have serving gifts, which are giving, helps, and service. So giving is great.

I had someone contact me this week. We've been at the church. It's awesome. I've been, you'll notice recently, I've been doing more and more encouraging people to cross the bridge from being a visitor here to being a family member. And that doesn't mean you have to be a part of the voting members, but there's two definitives of that. One, you're a part of a small group, community, or a volunteer group. That's one. The other definitive is that you give financially a percentage of your income on a regular basis.

Those are the two things. Obviously show up on Sundays on occasion, but those are the two things that we say that you're kind of crossing that bridge. As I've done that, it's been amazing how many people have responded to that call. And I haven't led well enough. This is a leadership thing that the Lord really spoke to me about, is I want you to quit being so libertarian and you're leading, laissez-faire, hands off, give them the buffet and let them come to it if they want, and actually begin to lead people and have a higher challenge and a higher call.

And so as I've done that, people have responded. So somebody contacted me this week. We came to the church once in February, and then COVID happened, and we've been online since. And we've just been watching from afar. We love it, love the teaching, love the worship, came back since we opened up. I haven't met them yet, personally. You haven't met me. But we're crossing the bridge, we're on board, and we feel like our thing is to give financially.

And so we want to give financially, tell us what the needs are. Now, let me tell you how many times I've gotten that email in my life. Once? You know what I mean? It's not an email you get a ton. It's a giving. It's just, you know, we're all called to give, but somebody just wants to give financially, give other things, time, talent, and treasure. Next is helps and service. And so helps and service are interesting. Helps is different because you want to come help somebody.

So if someone's here at the church and they're cleaning, you want to come and be next to them in the kitchen. Somebody with a gift of service doesn't need anybody to be there when they get there. Somebody with a gift of service will show up by themselves on a Saturday, they will go into the kitchen, they will organize the kitchen by themselves, put music on, and leave super happy. Somebody with helps, if they get there and no one else is there, this is a bummer day.

They might still serve, but they're not happy because it is about helping and it's about coming alongside and that's the difference between helps and service. It's a lot more social. You'll see a lot of people that are just grinders. You know, they're just happy to come in and grind all by themselves and work. I'm kind of that way. You know, I'd oftentimes rather work alone than with people. I just get it done, put the headphones on, go into my own little world and boom, boom, boom, boom, but I love helping you, serve you, build you a fence, do the whole thing.

I'm probably a stronger gift of service than I have a gift of helps, but that makes sense as well because my pastoral gifting is also highly one-on-one and all that. So I'm letting you guys in on all the secrets. And there's hospitality, which is, you know, obviously sharing quickly through compassion, which is encouragement, healing, and mercy. We know that healing flows from compassion and mercy. Jesus, before he healed people, had compassion and mercy.

If you're a very compassionate person, you're a very merciful person, I want to inspire you to pray for people to be healed because it is the foundational premise for healing is compassion. For Jesus so loved the world that he healed us. He had compassion and love. A lot of people just want the healing gift, but if you're not empathetic, you don't have a lot of compassion, I think that's a big jump to make sometimes.

So you have mercy, healing, and encouragement. Those are all compassionate gifts. We have a lot. This is a highly compassionate congregation. So we have new people coming in, but there's a lot from the Barb Hoffmans to the Glendas to just, we had Carol. I mean, when I got here, Pastor Jim, I mean, obviously the Adlers, at least half, I would say at least 40% of the church, this is off the top of my head, were highly compassionate.

One of the reasons this church has survived, it survived because of, you know, the third grouping here of compassion. And then they also, and also two. When I got here, this church was strong in the serving gifts, hospitality for sure. And this church was, I believe, surviving because of high serving, high compassion. Those were the two things, but they were so good at it, they were able to care for people. But they needed the leadership in order to take those, add to it, to the next level.

What I've always said is, they had all the plumbing. Because you can have a lot of church that does a lot of stuff, but doesn't care for anybody, that's not the church. You'd rather have a church that cares for people, and doesn't do a bunch of stuff. Because you're actually caring for people. When I came in, I just said, the piping was here, the water pressure was here, they didn't have a spigot. You can't, you were going up, you're thirsty, go there, can't get the water, I'm a $5 spigot, probably $3.95.

Go down to the hardware, Mealy's, I'm just a spigot. But, I'm just enough to get that water out. And then all of a sudden, once I turned it, oh, it was already there. I don't do that much. Preach a little bit, say yes, say no on occasion, and try to lead as best we can. We can't go into any more of these, I'll just give them quickly, maybe we'll hit them next week. There's understanding, which is discernment, tongues, interpretation of tongues, knowledge, intercession, prayer, wisdom, and prophecy.

The interpretation of tongues is an interesting one. I'll just give you a quick story. We were in Ireland with a group of high school kids, and I have a kid, he's become a youth pastor now, he had a mohawk, and he was, I don't even know why he went on the trip, he was not following God, but maybe he just wanted to go to Ireland. So, we were there, and we were praying, and I felt like the Lord said, I want you to give a tongue.

So I said, okay. So I told him, hey, I'm going to give a tongue, and this is what will happen. You'll probably, if it's from the Lord, a scripture will come, or you'll get words in your mind, you'll just know, you'll get a download. And if you know it from the Lord, you'll get this download. So I gave this tongue, spoke, minute, minute and a half, finished, and I said, anybody get anything? The kid, I think it was a green mohawk at the time, looks up, he goes, I got something.

I'm like, oh, really? You? He goes, yep. He'd been a Christian since he was a kid. He said, I saw a scroll go across my mind as you were reading, as you were speaking. And then he goes, and he could remember, and he could see, and he could read. I'm, to the truth, it's in my journal, what he said, I don't remember what he said off the top of my head. But he basically saw this scroll, and he spoke to us, it was about the trip and everything.

But that was really, really interesting. God, you know, does all types of ways that he interprets. He could give somebody a song. Hey, well, I was listening to a song, and this song came back to me, but I heard it this morning, and I'm going to play it right now. Sometimes he gives multiple people the same emotion. Somebody will start crying, there'll be an emotion. God doesn't always speak through words. It's like, hey, I just feel like a burden.

So, sometimes, you know, you'll have all these words. You'll do it a minute and a half of tongues. Ten minutes of tongues. I have no, I don't, I don't understand that language. The Bible says we don't understand it. But somebody will say, I got an interpretation. God's burden for the poor. Well, I just spoke for ten minutes. It's a burden. And then maybe they'll start crying. It's a burden. They'll just know it was from the Lord.

So, I don't match how many words I spoke with what the answer is. But people will usually affirm that. And we hear it together in community. And once again, you can make mistakes. We allow for mistakes. So, that was the interpretation. And then you have, I'll say one more thing about knowledge, because we're going to do that tonight. We're going to let you break up into groups tonight. And then we're going to do some ministry time with your mask on.

And we're going to minister over people. And we're going to pray for everybody who wants a gift of tongues. We're going to pray that they would get that. But this gift of knowledge is in the spirit realm. And I was walking, where was I? I forgot where I was. No, I was in England. And I walked into a park. And as I walked by this homeless lady, she was drunk. And she was, she was going through the trash. And as I walked by, she turned around, she goes, teacher, preacher, evangelist.

Like that. And I was like, and that's the second or third time that's, second, third? Second or third time that's happened to me where I've walked by people in the street that are nutto. You know, they're demon possessed. And they actually stop and speak my spiritual gifts out to me. She said, teacher, preacher, evangelist. Actually, it wasn't in England. It was down at Balboa Park at the dog park when I walked by. And I turned around.

I said, I know who you are. You don't know nothing. I said, I know exactly who you are. She goes, I don't know nothing. Teacher, preacher, evangelist. I said, okay, see ya. You know, it was just this sense, this knowledge in the spirit realm that they were able to see it. The enemy knows who you are too. The enemy knows who you are probably better than you know. That's not how God wants it. God wants you to know who you are.

He wants you to know deeply who you are. So this is this knowledge. So tonight, we're going to have our opportunity to do that. And then the final thing is salvation, evangelism, faith. Faith is believing that things are going to happen. Faith that God's going to do miracles. God's going to do wonders. And then also tongues. And then mission, calling to missions. My daughter Lucy has a calling to missions. We've known that for a very long time.

We never told her. As she grew up, we felt that she had a calling to missions when she was in the womb. We prayed for God to give us knowledge of who she was. We called her Lucy. It was a series of events why we called her Lucy. But it means bringer of light and joy. And then based also on C.S. Lewis, where Lucy goes in the dark place and finds the light in the dark place, she definitely has that ability. All of her friends are just, I mean, her friend group is like out there.

And she's always going to them, caring for them. But when we'd go to cities, she has a couple things. And I wrote this in the book, How You Can Discern Your Children's Spiritual Gifts. A couple things I kept noticing as God confirmed that she was a missionary. One, we would go to the airport and we'd take her overseas or wherever. And then all of a sudden, she would just bounce. Like two and a half years old, gone. Now Lucy, I mean Lily, Lily was always on the leg.

Like she would freak out. You know, if she got alone, she'd be crying, freaking out. Lucy, she didn't care. She'd be like, I'm out. I got to tap. Well, that's how missionaries are. They're just, you know, hey, I got cut off. I know I'm here. I know you don't want me to move and go, but I got to go to Africa because God's told me to go to Africa. The other thing is, every time we'd go to a city, big city, she'd go, city, city, city, city, city.

Another time she wanted, when we were in the inner city, she saw somebody that was homeless she said, she was like four. Can we, they don't have blankets. Can we get them a blanket? So we went home and got a bunch of blankets. She just wanted to go get blankets for the poor. You know, when she was like four. And so God began to confirm. I began to see this. Your children will have spiritual gifts. You can start seeing, if they've accepted Christ, they'll have spiritual gifts.

And there's no child-sized portion of the Holy Spirit. My children both accepted Christ at a very young age. Very, very young. Like three and five years old. And it stuck. So these are just some of these gifts. So this is just a primer. This class is just a workshop. I mean, we're not going through all these deeply. But I want to intrigue you with the gifts of the Spirit so that we can move on and move forward and deeper into those.

So with that, we're going to move into our time of giving words to one another and prophesying over one another and experimenting. You know, we're going to find a partner. We're going to ask women with women, guys with guys, and we're going to break up into groups. So we're going to give a five-minute bathroom break and then we're going to break up into groups of three, if you can, two or three. Socially distanced. We'll be in our area.

Find a good seating. And then when we come back, I'll lead you through that as we do that. So, all right. Michael Eisenéndнова � por Vil Passion