Monday Devo

1 Corinthians 12
4 There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. 5 There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. 6 God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.
7 A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. 8 To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. 9 The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. 10 He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. 11 It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.

Spirit … Lord … God. A Trinitarian reference to the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus, and God the Father (cf. 2 Cor. 13:14). The most common pattern in the NT Epistles is to refer to God the Father with the word “God” (Gk. Theos, which is the normal Septuagint translation for the OT Hb. ’Elohim, “God”) and to refer to God the Son with the word “Lord” (Gk. Kyrios, which is used in the Septuagint over 6,000 times to translate the OT Hb. name YHWH, “Yahweh” or “Lord”). Therefore both names are evidence of deity. The diversity of divine persons within the unity of the Trinity should be reflected in the diversity of gifts within the unity of the body of Christ in Corinth. (See also Eph. 4:3–16.) Therefore Paul wants the Corinthian church to understand how their unity can be enhanced by appreciating the variety of gifts God has given to them.

On Sunday, Clayton talked about all the gifts of the Spirit listed in the New Testament. He challenged us to figure out what our gifts are and how we are using them to serve the church. Below you will find a link to an online spiritual gifts test. Take the time today to take the test and get your results.

Once you have your results, check them against the explanations below to see if it truly fits you. Also, ask people that know you well to see if they also confirm the results.

Click HERE to take your test.
 
Below is a quick explanation of each gift to help you either confirm or question your results!

• Prophecy: Should not be defined as “predicting the future,” nor as “proclaiming a word from the Lord,” nor as “powerful preaching”—but rather as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind."
  
• Apostleship: The ability start new works, church plant, pastor pastors in a movement or minister cross-culturally as a missionary.prophecies in the church are always to be subject to the teaching of Scripture.
• Teaching: The ability to understand and communicate Biblical truth in a clear, relevant and engaging manner so that there is understanding and application. Can read and see a clear way to communicate that information. Usually have a passion for the Word, can clearly, boldly and passionately explain it. Might be to hundreds, but most will use their gift in a small group.
• Pastor/Shepherd: The ability to care for, counsel and build up Christians in their faith and take responsibility for their long term spiritual welfare. Love to meet with people, pray, study Bible, fight against sin together.
• Service/Helps: The ability to joyfully work alongside other people to help them complete tasks behind the scenes. Doesn't seek the stage. 
• Hospitality: The ability to joyfully host people in your home, feed people or organize parties so that people get to enjoy each other's company. 
• Encouragement: The ability to motivate, encourage and console others so that they mature in their walk with Christ. Very positive, lift you up, have a lot of friends, super nice, you feel better after being around them. 
• Giving: The ability to joyfully share, give away and steward money, time and resources in order to meet the needs of a person, mission or organization. Could be poor or rich. Great gift givers. 
• Leadership: The ability to have a clear and compelling vision and articulate that vision so that others are compelled to follow you. Leaders have people that follow them. Strategic. Make good decisions. Take risks.
• Administration: The ability to organize, give direction and make decisions for efficient operation and accomplishment of goals. Love highlighters, task lists, spreadsheets, eye for detail, like to organize, like rules.
• Mercy: The ability to have unusual compassion and empathy for people that are hurting, suffering or done wrong and offer assistance. Understand gospel and their own depravity very well. 
• Discernment: The ability to quickly perceive whether people, things, ideas or events are from God or satan. They default to test and prove, they don't immediately believe. Can be debbie downers! Can spot counterfeit, false teachers/teaching.
• Wisdom: Supernatural or practical insight into people and situations that is not obvious to the average person that is combined with an understanding of what the Bible says to do and how to do it. People come to you for advice, practical. 
• Knowledge: Supernatural knowledge of a situation or the practical ability to research, remember and make effective use of a variety of information on a number of diverse subjects. Love to study and read, love footnotes!
• Evangelist: The ability to speak clearly, passionately and effectively to non-Christians about Jesus. Have balance between urgency and patience... fun, friends with non-Christians. 
• Faith: The ability to envision what needs to be done and to trust God to accomplish it even though it seems impossible to most people. God can do it! 
• Intercession: The ability to pray for extended periods of time on a regular basis and see frequent and specific answers to their prayers.
• Miracles: The gift of miracles may include the working of divine power in deliverance from danger, in intervention to meet special needs in the physical world, in judgment on those who irrationally and violently oppose the gospel message, in vanquishing the demonic forces that wage war against the church, and in any other way in which God’s power is manifested in an evident way to further God’s purposes in a situation.
• Healing: Those with gifts of healing will be those people who find that their prayers for healing are answered more frequently and more thoroughly than others. These healings grant us a foretaste of the physical healing which he will grant us fully in the future.
• Distinguishing Between Spirits: The special ability to recognize the influence of the Holy Spirit or of demonic spirits in a person and identify spiritual warfare.
• Tongues/Interpretation of Tongues: Speaking in tongues is public or private prayer or praise spoken in syllables not understood by the speaker. Interpretation of tongues is the ability to report to the church the general meaning of something spoken in tongues in a public gathering of the church.

3. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Since “all have sinned” and the “wages of sin is death,” Jesus had to die on the cross to pay the fine for my sin so I could be right with God.
(Romans 3:23, 5:8, 6:21-23, 2 Corinthians 5:21; Ephesians 2:1-6; Colossians 1:13-14, 21-22)