JUL 12 2026 | Rooted In The Spirit S1E3 | The Epistles: Fruits and Gifts – You’re Gifted

Well, good morning, Sea Change Church. In the last service, I said, "Good morning, Seaside Church," and they all laughed and made fun of me, but I convinced them that they were lying and I had really said it correctly, but you can check the tape. If you are here today, you are at Sea Change Church. Change. And you can open your Bibles, if you would, to 1 Corinthians 12:7-11. We are in the fruit and gifts series. This is a part of a 12-week, three-part series. One is the purpose of the church, and so we did that. We talked about the purpose of the church, four purposes on four corners.

We talked about identity, and then the second purpose of the church is unity. Third is maturity, help you mature in your faith. And then fourth is mission. That was the first few weeks, four weeks, and now we're in fruit and gifts. We've talked about how to see you mature in your faith, and now also to walk in the power of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We're going to move into that today, and then we're going to do four more weeks after this on how to change your neighborhood, how to change the community you live in through the Book of Acts. So this summer, we're in the Epistles, and then looking at the purpose of the church, and then equipping you to go out and do the mission of the church and the kind of church you want to be.

Before I begin, a couple of things I want to share with you. One is, 29 years ago today, I got married. And so, yeah, let's go. Very stoked. Anniversary. And very stoked that we got to spend the day together. And I remember the advice that D**k Cotton gave me, some of you have heard this before. The best way to stay married is to what? Stay married. Stay married. That's what he said. So I told my wife as an anniversary gift, I am getting her and me six amazing counseling sessions so we can fix me. No, but that is my main gift that I'm getting her because I did decide I really want this 29th year as we move to our third decade, go into our fourth decade together, that this would be a year where I'm really leading the charge on investing into our relationship.

And I want to challenge men in particular, whether you're married or whether you're dating, to invest with, whether it be personal counseling, reading a book. I'm not talking about going on vacation, but really investing to change. And I think after 29 years, I can give the one piece of advice, going to speak to our men here as well, and especially if you're not married yet. I have found, and maybe it's not true for all women, that if my wife feels seen and heard, right? If she feels seen and heard, we're usually on the right trajectory, right? We're usually on that trajectory. And so one of the questions I want to really ask her on a regular basis is, "Are you feeling seen?

Are you feeling heard?" I'm not even sure that understand, I'm not even sure she expects me to understand everything about her. But if you take the time to say, "Hey, you are the most important thing in my life." And if you are a speeding train, like myself, that is hard to do. And sometimes we can just be distracted. So I want to encourage men to do that. And if you can regularly ask, just say, "Hey, how am I doing at seeing you? How am I doing at hearing you?" And then don't argue. All right? Do not argue. Whatever they say, "Yes, dear." No. It works.

So that is cool. Another thing I want to give you this week is a resource. We are creating resources so that you can mature in the faith and be into the study. And so one of the things we've created is a weekly seven-day Bible study that will come out on Sunday afternoon. It actually will be there Sunday morning. If you go to our website and you go-- We'll find out other ways to get it to you. But right now, if you go to the website, you scroll down to the middle of the homepage. It'll say Sermon Notes and Study. That's brand new. Hit that. On the top line, it'll say The Current.

It's called The Current. It is a seven-day, probably will take you 10 minutes to do it, but it's just so you can go deeper into the study. Eventually, we'll get Greek words that we'll have there, and just you can go deeper and deeper. This is our first iteration of it, and it's going to get better, but it's a pretty good study. So if you don't have a place to go study, or you don't know what you're going to study this week, or you want to keep up and go deeper into this 1 Corinthians 12 passage, that'll be available every single week. Just one of the tools I want to give you.

It's called The Current. It's going to be coming out. We're going to be making a quiet time corner in the bookstore. So we'll have The Current mugs. You can have a little mug, you can have a little candle, you can have your Bible. The Bibles are in, so they probably told you, you can buy a Bible for your pew, and you can get a church Bible. We go through the ESV. I would encourage you to have as many different versions as possible so you can look at how they're different translations. We're in the ESV. So that is just part of how we're equipping you. If you bow your heads, let's pray.

Lord Jesus, pray that the manifestation of the Spirit will overflow in power as I bring the Word, and that you interpret the Word to those that are listening, that you would just bring it in a powerful way that we might do all things for the common good to glorify Jesus Christ, God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Verse seven. We are in 1 Corinthians 12 now, looking at the gifts, verse seven through 11. If you have your Bibles. "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Underlying common good. "For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.

All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills." As you look at this passage We are seeing the manifestation of an apex of biblical history of God's narrative in the world, where the Spirit has come at the book of Acts, chapter 2, where the church is gathered together after the death of Jesus. And according to the prophecy in Joel, which is repeated in Acts chapter 2, I believe it's verse 17. Yes, it is, verse 17. Joel says that in the end times, "My spirit will be poured out on young men, old men." It talks about dreams and visions and power and manifestation of power of God's Spirit that will be poured out upon the church and within individual believers.

This is a big difference from Joel's time. Joel the prophet lived in a season where the gifts and powers of God would come upon somebody, but they did not indwell them. When Jesus died on the cross, we have an indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and out of that indwelling now comes gifts that are not on the outside, they're internal, and that the gifts are being given. We see one thing as we were doing through fruit and gifts two weeks ago when I spoke about the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit is a singular verb in the Greek, and so it shows that when you are abiding in Christ, and Pastor Joshua spoke about that last week, the only way to have fruit is to abide, right?

The way to have fruit is not to focus on the fruit. You don't focus on all the fruit of the Spirit. People would say fruits, but it's a singular, the fruit of the Spirit. And then you think, well, if I have self-control, if I work on love a little bit, if I work on joy a little bit, well, then I can abide in Christ because I'll have all the things to abide in Christ. Jesus says, "No. If you want to have fruit of the Spirit, you abide in me." You don't work on self-control. You don't work on love, joy. You spend time with him, and the manifestation of that will be fruit of the Spirit.

Now, fruit is different than gifts because the fruit of the Spirit is like the saying where it says, "A rising tide rises all ships." What I have found is when I saw the fruit of the Spirit as fruits of the Spirit, I would focus on one. This year, I'm going to focus on patience. And so I'd work on patience, and patience would rise, but perhaps faithfulness would drop. And I saw my spiritual life as a scorecard or a bar graph of things that were doing well and ones that weren't. Jesus says in the scripture, when it speaks about the fruit of the Spirit, if you abide in him, what will tend to happen is you won't have to work on it as much.

All of those things will rise together as one. And so when you speak of fruit of the Spirit, all the fruit is meant to grow together as you abide in Jesus. So the only way to grow your fruit is to abide in Jesus. Gifts are different. Gifts are given individually, and the Greek word there for the gifts is a plural word, and that word means there are different ones, and he will apportion to each one individually. We'll look at that in a moment about how do we get gifts? Where do they come from? But this verse says, if we go to verse seven, "To each one, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." A few things happening there.

To each means that every single believer has at least one gift. You have at least one gift, and others, God has deemed, according to how he wishes, to give them multiple gifts. Let's look at a baseball analogy. If you remember the '98 Yankees, which beat the Padres, which really made me upset. Every time any San Diego team has faced anyone in a world championship game, it has been one of the best teams ever. The 1984 Detroit Tigers, one of the best teams ever against our poor little Padres and Tony Gwynn. 1998 Yankees, on and on. I won't go through that. Well, I will say the Chargers had to play the 1994 Steve Young 49ers.

Yeah, tough teams, right? So the reason I bring that up is because Derek Jeter was a player that had multiple tools. He was considered a five-tool player. A five-tool player in baseball means you can run, you can hit for power, you can hit for average. I think you can throw and field. I think those are the five. You look at Trevor Hoffman. Trevor Hoffman is known for one gift, right? Pretty good gift, right? Big high leg kick, whatever, closes out games, Hells Bells comes on at Jack Murphy, if you remember that. Anybody was there? Anybody there for that? Raise your hand if you ever went to Jack Murphy and saw baseball.

What about four of us? Okay, great. Nothing like it when Trevor Time came in, right? And if you're in Encinitas, there's a big picture of him in Encinitas throwing. He's a one-tool player, but he's awesome, right? He's just known for one tool. He's going to the Hall of Fame. If you're a one-tool player, do not be discouraged when you see someone who is like Derek Jeter. You have a place, and so I want to encourage you in your identity that if you were to take that one gift that you have and God were to say, "Hey, this person, they have a gift of faithfulness." That's one of the gifts, of faithfulness, of a gift of faith.

There's a fruit of faithfulness, but then there's a gift. If he were to take that from within you and show you your gift, every one of you has at least one, and to start pointing out the intricacies of the manifestation of his Spirit in that, you would be blown away. Matter of fact, if you could see it in its fullness, you would almost, C.S. Lewis speaks about this, want to bow down and worship at the person's feet who the Spirit was showing you their gift. Why? Because it's a gift of the Spirit. But if you could see that gift, because whether you have a gift of faith or healing, or whether you have a gift of encouragement or word of knowledge or any of these other gifts, we will have a night soon talking about all the gifts.

They are immaculate, they are powerful, and I would believe that the host of heaven is in awe of the manifestation of the Spirit. Once again, it is a gift. I said a couple of weeks ago, gifts are given. You didn't do anything to get it. Fruit is grown. It's harder to have fruit, to grow fruit, than it is to have a gift that's given to you. Now, what I want to see is a church That uses its gifts. So we see that manifestation, and as Paul is fleshing out to the Corinthian church here what actually happened maybe 20, 30 years earlier. They were all together.

This happened. They didn't know what happened. Now they've had time to reflect, and they've had time to see how it actually works. We know that these gifts are important, that the church, the people of the church, begin to assume these roles of the gifts they have and to go out and to change the world. If you look at the Church of Rome, you would ask, who planted the church at Rome? People would say, "Maybe Paul, maybe Peter." We don't know who planted it, but it's believed that just a normal congregant, like one of you or a group of them, went to that city and planted the church.

And when Paul went to visit, he was visiting somewhere that some superstar apostle didn't plant, someone like yourself planted, by stepping into the gifts. And we want to be a church that releases these gifts. And so we see that. The Holy Spirit does a bunch. He reveals Christ, John 16. Regenerates sinners, John 3. Resides within believers, that's 1 Corinthians 6. Renews our character, Galatians 5. Resources the church with gifts, that's 1 Corinthians 12, what we're reading right now, 7 through 11. Reveal God's truth, 16 through 13 of John. And then reaches the world through empowered witness, that's Acts 1:8. That's where we're going as a church.

The Holy Spirit does a lot, but where we're going as a church primarily is to empower you to be a witness in the world. We are going to help equip you, and then we are going to provide resources so you can identify who are the neighbors on your street, what are the houses that you're praying for? What are the businesses that God has sent you to, to make a difference? Where is the gym? Where is whatever it is in your city, how has he sent you there? And then we're going to identify you with other believers in your city, whoever wants to be a part of this, so that you can work as an army of God's consolation and love to bring city change to a city, Bay Ho, Claremont, La Jolla, PB, and beyond.

So you'll be hearing more and more about that over the next six months as we move into that in the fall. Here's your big idea for the day. Spiritual gifts were never meant to highlight gifted people. They were meant to reveal the gift giver. Spiritual gifts were never meant to highlight people. They're meant to reveal the giver. You'll see in a moment the amount of times the word spirit is used in this passage. It doesn't say Pastor Jack. Oh, pastor-- It doesn't use a human person. Paul doesn't point to, "Hey, let me just give you a great example of who has this gift," and I'm going to use their name nine times in this passage to show you a Derek Jeter style apostle in the first-century church.

No, it's the spirit, the spirit, the spirit. And when you partner with your gifts, with the spirit, you are actually dancing with the spirit, aligning yourself with the spirit, and you will experience the power of the spirit as you move through that. Here's the problem. We have turned gifts into idols. We have turned our gifts into idols, and we have turned our gifted people into the things that we worship. As churches, we worship stages. As churches, we worship music. As churches, we worship whoever can do the thing the church wants the best. I have an Instagram feed because I work with other people to run the college Instagram page.

It's a Gen Z page. You can find it. It's called College Gen Z Sea Change. And basically, it gives me a feed based on who it thinks that I am. And because we're always posting Bible verses and things like that, I just get a bunch of stuff from other churches. And I will say what I normally see is this. I see crowds. I see people posting. There's about three things they post. One, people worshiping on stage, amazing people. Usually, a bunch of activity going on, and a lot of people there singing along with them. Awesome songs, amazing. That's probably the number one thing I see.

The second thing I see is a pastor telling me something. It's some pastor up in front saying some incredible little tidbit. We do it as well. I put mine out as well, but that's the next thing that we see. And then probably the third thing that I see is some crowd of some sort. There's some event they're doing, and it's a bunch of people walking into the church. One thing is because of Jesus' experience with crowds, Jesus seemed to distrust crowds. They did crucify him in the end. One of the few things crowds, and C.S. Lewis said this as well. He said the church loves crowds.

One of the things crowds actually do is they give us this ability to feel like we're actually doing something when we're actually not doing something. I heard this week, I was going through one Instagram, and it was a pastor telling me something, and he said the most dangerous, might've been a hyperbolic. He said the most dangerous church is a crowded church that is undiscipled, and I think there is some truth to that. How do we disciple you to use these gifts found in these verses to go out and to change the world? What I want to make sure we're not doing here at Sea Change is just trying to bring a crowd in.

Matter of fact, I don't even mind if we shrink, but everybody here is in it to win it for Jesus in their neighborhood for a manifestation of God's power. Now, I've got a John Calvin quote that's going to make a lot of you happy. If you were Reformed, if you grew up in the Presbyterian Church, you're like, "Yes, John Calvin." And it's a great John Calvin quote. I will probably quote Wesley just to balance it out here in a minute. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about. John Calvin's an old guy that did a lot of stuff for the Bible. Let me read this quote.

"The gifts which the Lord has bestowed, gifted, upon His church are not intended to remain unemployed, but ought to be applied to the common advantage of all." The purpose of the gifts is not to grow followers or to grow a personality of a church based on the personalities of the church. The purpose of the gift is to equip believers, you. You guys are plan A, right? This is what it says, that we send you out, we identify your gifts, and we send you out to be a plumber because you're in the trades, or we send you out to be a teacher, or you're a mom with kids and you go to PTA meetings or you just go to the playground, or whatever it is, we equip you and send you out to make life change, to use those gifts in the marketplace, in the community, to change the world.

That is what we are doing. What I don't see on my Instagram feed is, "Hey, I want to tell you about our church. We're feeding the poor this week." It never pops up. I never see, or if I ask somebody about their church, they'll say, "Oh, it's so amazing. The teacher, the pastor is so awesome. You should see the worship. Wow." You can think about it yourself. When anyone has ever told you about a church, has anyone ever said, "It is the most faithful group of people I've ever met. They are so faithful. They are visiting the poor. They are visiting widows. They are visiting the sick.

The unity, oh, let me talk about the unity. Even when they disagree with each other, they will stay unified. This church is amazing. I can't believe they're doing ... The prayer. Woo, do they pray," yeah? Unless the prayer meeting has 500 people at it, it won't get posted on Instagram, right? Are they a praying church? We want to be, and I'm going to steal this from Miles McPherson because it's phenomenal from The Rock, we want to be ... Anybody know what he used to say? We're what kind of church? Do something. A do something church. That's right. We want you to do something, right? I have to tell you that it is really intoxicating to have my gifts displayed while you all sit here and watch me.

I'm just saying. I'm a human being. It is very intoxicating to try to get a crowd of 500 people to show up to do something that we put on, when it would be much more effective to just send this congregation and the first service out to try to touch 10 people this week and see what the ripple effect of that is. And so what God has said to me out of Revelation is there is a river that runs through the city, which I preached about a few weeks ago, and that river flows through the city of God. This is the fount of that river. You are the molecules in that river, and you are the ones that is going to go out.

So my first question to you is where has God placed you? Are you aware of where God has placed you? And are you aware of what he's called you to do, and are you aware of your gifts? Next week, we will have a spiritual gifts test. You don't have to wait for me, but we will have one for everybody in the congregation to take, and then we're going to send you results, and then we'll have follow-up with you to make sure we can equip you to go do that. Main point is this, every believer is gifted by the Spirit. Verse seven, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit," for what?

"The common good." Amen. Let me tell you why you have a gift. Not so everyone can say, "You are so gifted." It is for the common good. If you have a gift of faith, and I've seen this recently. One of the things I didn't realize is how much of a gift of faith I have. Some people call it Pollyanna. Some people call it too optimistic. But what I have realized, and I've talked about kind of walking through a journey with a family member through sickness at the moment, and as they've done that, the ability of the Spirit to sit beside somebody's bed and encourage them to move on for another day is super powerful.

And so to realize that that is a gift of faith, which I really haven't thought about or employed that much, I've just kind of walked in it, but to really understand, I think I have a gift of faith. I think I have a gift of faith. It's not just like, "Hey, I believe in the best. The cup, it's always half full." I don't think that's it. I think I have a legitimate gift of faith. I've identified it. I guess I should've known this before, but now I'm like, "I'm going to use it." I want to be wise in how I share it with somebody. When someone's depressed, I don't want to be like, "Hey, I believe you're going to get better," a little bumper sticker.

I'm not talking about that. There's wisdom as well. You need a wisdom. Your gift of faith needs to be with wisdom. If you have faith without wisdom, jump out of the plane without the parachute, and I've done a fair amount of that in my life. But there is this gift. And so what is your gift? Where is the place that you are coming alongside? God has created in advance, before you were formed, He knew you, and He created good works in advance before the foundations of the earth, it says in the scripture, I believe it's Ephesians. The foundations of the earth, so that you might walk in the good works that He has predestined for you to walk in.

Now, you don't want to walk in them without power. You need to know what those gifts are, and here's just some of the gifts. There's a lot more that we go through. And so I want to say that these gifts, if you look back to verse seven, that's the verse that is focused on in the Current, if you download that for the Bible study this week. But to each, we talked about that, every one of you has one, is given. Now, this word given is a verb that is present, passive, and indicative, okay? Now, what does that mean? Well, when you look at Greek, it's important to know the tense, and it's the same thing.

I used to have this problem with to. Not like I was upset at the number two. I had this problem with also. Does that make sense? So I want to go there to. How many O's in I want to go there to? Right, two O's. I was a big one O guy, all right? For a year, I think into my late 40s, instead of implying like I'm going to go to also, and so you can see that if you don't put that extra O there, not only is it grammatically incorrect, it doesn't imply what it's actually saying. So what is this one word? This is why these words are so important, and in the Current each week, we're going to try to give you a Greek word to break down the most important Greek word in the passage, so you can study a little bit and see what actual that meaning is.

And so it's present. What does present mean? Present means that God is currently doing it. Gifts are not static. It's never Christmas 1966, and you can always look back. It's Christmas every day with the gifts. God can give gifts when he chooses to give gifts, as much as he wants to give gifts. And I have seen myself have gifts given to me. Perhaps, a prayer language was given to me when I was 31 years old. I'd been walking with Christ for a very long time at that point. I did have one caveat, put the message on hold for a second, that I felt like the Lord said, "If you have a prayer language, I want to encourage you to use it." And he said, "Encourage the congregation who has a prayer language." You might not have one yet.

You might have one you're going to get. But pray audibly in your prayer language five minutes a day. I had kind of not used that gift, and God said, "Just tell people to do it." Since I've been doing it, it's been a bit of a game changer. Back to the message. And so as we see that these gifts are present, God is continually giving. It says in the scripture, who is faithful with little will be given what? More. Will be given much more. And we'll see at the end of this message that there is a verse that says, "Keep asking for gifts." Find out what the gifts are and ask for them.

I would just keep asking, "God, I want the gift." I have a friend that wants a prayer language. He doesn't have it. I've prayed for him. Didn't happen. And for some reason, it says that the Spirit, as it says in verse 11, hasn't apportioned that to him yet. But there are gifts that God will give if we continue to ask and continue to be a nuisance to God. He talks about that, and to be asking for those things. What do you want? What do you need to be equipped with to do the work that he has given you in the place that he has set you?

So the first is it's present, so it's happening. It's passive, which means we receive them rather than earn them. Once again, we take way too much pride in gifts. It's like if someone gives you a Ferrari, you're like, "Woo, check me out." You didn't earn that Ferrari. You didn't do nothing. You just have it. It was given to you. I'd say gifts are given, fruit is grown. It is a lot harder to grow, and I'd rather have a church full of fruitful farmers of God's fruit and character than have a really gifted church that has a bunch of moral failure. So as we move forward, we find that it is present, it's passive, and the word "didomi," given, didomi, is also indicative, which means it's a statement of fact.

It's something that he has done. And so we can believe that in faith, that he is continually giving, we receive it rather than we earn it, and it's a statement of fact, not a command. I believe we live in churches and a society that just loves gifted people, that just worship at the feet of gifted people. It always amazes me that somebody can sing, and then people will cry at their concerts when they see them, like . You have a voice. DNA and God gave it to you. Why should I think you're cool because of that? The way you use it and for the purpose you use it is the thing that we need to go after.

It says that he gives a manifestation of the spirit. Go to that next word. So he said to each to given in verse seven. Now the manifestation, what does that mean? The manifestation of the spirit means God takes part of himself, and he puts that gift of it, whether it be peace, joy, faithfulness, whatever the gifts are or the fruit is, and he puts it within you and gives you a supernatural power. As I preach right here, for every person that is here, there is a different message happening. You are hearing something that is connecting to something that you heard over the weekend, maybe even last night, or a verse.

I'll bring up a verse. You're like, "I just read that verse yesterday." I have to tell you, AI couldn't do that. I don't care how powerful it gets. The Spirit of God and the manifested power of God to work in your lives through supernatural gifts is far beyond any other power the world has. The question is, are you going to use the gift and step into that supernatural power? When I was in high school, I went to a very bougie school. My mom had this theory after my dad died, and I was rebelling, that if she took more money than she could afford and sent me to Francis Parker, which was this amazing really bougie school.

Super bougie. And send me there, that it would fix me. Didn't work. I just got in more trouble there. But it was a bunch of wealthy people there, which wasn't great for me. And my best friend, they were rich to the point of opulent. And I'll tell you how rich they were. At 16 years old, he got a brand-new 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS. Brand new. Blue metallic with a cream interior. And I would ride with him in his car. You know how cool it is, you feel like you are when you're 16? He crashed it four times. Yeah, he crashed it four times, and on the fourth time, they couldn't get insurance, and so I came to their house, and there was a bow around a yellow Corvette convertible.

This was at the Del Mar house, the one that Barbra Streisand ended up buying. So it's super bougie. They also had a house in Rancho Santa Fe. The reason I'm telling you this, because I would walk into their house, and he got really mad at his dad and cussed his dad out and said, "No, we can't drive an American sports car. We have to drive European sports cars." I thought that was the raddest thing to say ever. And so he got mad, cussed at his dad, went upstairs, and I drove the car. So his dad gave me the keys, and I went and drove around Del Mar in his brand-new Corvette.

True story. I tell you because I would walk around the house, and there would be the coolest- Rich people stuff laying around never used. So one of the things is they had a cellphone. Now, 1986 or '87, a cellphone. Remember Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street?" He had this massive cellphone. It looked like he was in "Apocalypse Now" or on the Moon landing. And so I would use the cellphone and call people, and it was like six bucks a minute to make a phone call on this thing. I was like, "Yes," I would just make phone calls. Or they had a Rolls-Royce, and his dad one time said, "Go get milk for us." So he threw the Corniche convertible keys to me, and I'd have to drive the Rolls-Royce to go get milk, which was super cool.

They had all these foreign coins laying around the ground. One more thing I'll tell you, they had a Xerox machine that had a printout, and this is 1987. And if you held it and went like this, it would print it out on the other side. That is so cool in 1987, right? You want another thing? They never used it. They never used any of the stuff. All this incredible stuff that just sat there, never being used. I want to say, the reason I tell you that story is because I think it represents a lot of churches. I think it represents the incredible gifts that when unused, unknown, and uncared for, just litter the floors of our homes and our churches, and we never step in and use those things.

I think it is so important. If I could just right now, if the Holy Spirit could come and he could actually take all of your gifts and put them up here, like in a little jar, so you could somehow see it and understand what the manifestation of that is, and I laid all the gifts, just so you guys sitting here, and I put them on display in these jars in front of you, with God's power glowing in it, whatever, you would be blown away. But yet we sit with our gifts latent because of selfishness, because of distraction, because of all these things we do, and we don't step into the power of the gift that God has for us.

So my question is, where has God placed you? Where has he called you? And what is at least your one gift? To each. Each one of you has a gift. Where are you actually using that gift? We're coming in for a landing, and I will say that the final thing is that, and I mentioned it a moment ago, that the star of this passage is the spirit. As you read through it, just in verses 7 through 11, the Holy Spirit, the Greek word pneuma for Holy Spirit is used six times. As you read through it, it says to each one is given the manifestation of what?

Of the Spirit. If you go to verse 8, through the Spirit. But if you continue on in verse 8, at the end, according to the same Spirit. Beginning of verse 9, to another, faith by what? The same Spirit. At the end of verse 9, by one Spirit. Then it goes on all the way to the end. You go to verse 11, empowered by the same Spirit. Who's the star? Who is the star? The star is the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is the one who owns these gifts. And I would say with our gifts, they're borrowed. I've seen God remove gifts from people.

Gifts are not static. Says to him who's not faithful, he'll have less of it. It might even be taken away. To others that are faithful, more will be given to that. God will increase your territory and your influence. You want to know the most important thing you can have in this society is actual influence. Influence to change a community. And not superficial influence. You're an influencer, and whatever you're wearing, people want to wear that. I'm saying where they think, "This person did this in my life and made a difference." What does it look like if we all go out to change this city in that way?

The Spirit is the star, not personalities. And so as a church, I want to make sure that the Spirit in you is the star and that you're plan A. What we do here is what the scripture tells us to do, to equip, to empower, encourage, and send you out to be the ones that plant a church in Rome, to be the ones who plant a house that makes a difference on the street that you live in. Here's your practical takeaway. It's from 1 Corinthians 14:1. Pursue love. Chris, if you want to come up. Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. That shows the present tense that they can be given now.

Especially that you may prophesy. We can talk about what that means on another time, but what that verse is showing is ask for more. Identify what the gifts are, identify the ones that you have, we're going to help you do that next week, and begin to ask for more. Ask that God would equip you with what you need. If he has sent you somewhere, which he sent us all somewhere, he will equip you with what you need to fulfill that mission. Ask for more, identify, change the world. Stand up if you would. Let's sing this together.