Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Evening Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/ev/ev20010325.htm

1 CORINTHIANS: MINISTERING TO BELIEVERS WITH DEEP PAGAN BACKGROUNDS
Part XXIII: Viewing Our Individual Specialties Of Spiritual Gifts Correctly
(1 Corinthians 12:1-26)
  1. Introduction
    1. One of the most awkward of tensions a believer notes in his experience in the church is that, in one way he appears to feel way out ahead in spiritual ability to others, but in other ways he feels terribly inferior.
    2. The ungodly route to respond to this awareness is to feel alternately discouraged or frustrated, depending on whether we are focusing on our inferior or our superior capacity for service respectively.
    3. Paul revealed this awareness is God-intended, designed to produce a godly, edifying response as follows:
  2. Viewing Our Individual Specialties Of Spiritual Gifts Correctly, 1 Corinthians 12:1-26.
    1. Every person who confesses Jesus is God come in the flesh is a true believer, for only the indwelling Holy Spirit can elicit such a confession from otherwise helplessly spiritually blind mortals, 1 Cor. 12:1-3.
    2. Well, every such Holy Spirit-indwelt person is appointed a spiritual enabling for service to other believers in the Church, an enabling that puts him way out in front of the rest in a given area, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.
      1. Every believer is given a supernatural enabling by the Spirit for service in a local church, 1 Cor. 12:4.
      2. That supernatural enabling is assigned to him by the Holy Spirit for the completion of a particular, practical ministry of edifying others in the local church in one, specific way, 1 Corinthians 12:5.
      3. That supernatural gift is given with its assignment and a unique emphasis as well, 1 Cor. 12:6, 7-10. For example, combining the gift of "showing mercy" with the assignment of "Hospitality Chairwoman" in the Nepaug Church, together with the emphasis of "the word of wisdom" (12:8a), the following ministry develops: God may use a lady in a hospitality outreach endeavor as the Hospitality Chairwoman who spots other women in distress with spiritual needs, and, using Scripture, advises them on its application with accurately corrective responses to their edification!
    3. Yet, God has not gifted any single believer with comprehensive enough gifts to operate in all areas of the Church's ministry well all by himself, 1 Corinthians 12:11-12. This is why every one of us, including every one of us Church's leaders, feels grossly spiritually inadequate often in several areas of ministry!
    4. The REASON for this individual imbalance is found in the plan of GOD: God has created this imbalance to urge us to rely upon one another for fulfillment so that we would tend to unify, 12:24-25. The goal is to get us to pool our specialties of ministry so that we excel ONLY as a unified BODY!
    5. For this reason, God wants the following personal responses from us as individual believers when we sense our imbalance of ministry strengths with ministry weaknesses:
      1. We are to avoid feeling spiritually inferior to another believer's GIFTS just because he has what we do not have by way of spiritual ability, 1 Cor. 12:15-17. We are rather to desire to have that other party around us to make up for what we lack in spiritual ministry ability, 1 Cor. 12:31.
      2. Conversely, when we see we have an ability in ministry that most other believers do not have, we are to avoid feeling superior, 1 Cor. 12:21-24, 25-26. Rather, our awareness of other believers' inabilities should cause us to want to help our less-gifted brothers in Christ in their area of need for our ministry!
Lesson: The notable imbalances we see in ourselves and in other believers regarding spiritual service enablings are CREATED by GOD'S gifting program. Thus, feeling INFERIOR or SUPERIOR is only a CARNAL reaction where smoothing out the imbalance by cooperation is God's intended response!

Application: In a practical way, (1) If we see we LACK a ministry ability of another believer, we must resist feeling innately inferior, for that is a carnal reaction to a divine intention. Rather, we should appreciate what the other brother has to share in ministry unto us. (2) If tempted to feel SUPERIOR to another by way of ministry ability, instead of isolating ourselves from him in a haughty manner, we must view our ABILITY as a God-given OPPORTUNITY to help the brother who is weaker than we are in that area. (3) We need to educate one another on the division of gifts God has planted in the local church body: we need to instruct one another that this disparity is designed by God in order not to divide us, but to show our need for interdependent unity for effective church-wide ministry blessing.