Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] All right.
[00:00:20] One of my favorite movies is a movie called Miracle. It's not just one of my favorite movies because it is awesome, because it is.
[00:00:28] It was the last movie that I saw with my grandfather who raised me. So before he passed away, when I was 16 years old, like weeks before he passed away, we went and saw the movie Miracle together. And Miracle. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details of the synopsis of the movie, but it's about the American hockey team who goes up against the Soviets. The Soviets were professionals, and the Americans were a group of college kids, and they were just expected to get blown out by the Soviets.
[00:00:56] And the movie title gives away the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, the Americans win. And it's just this.
[00:01:03] It's just an amazing movie. It's awesome. If you haven't seen it, you should go watch it. But there's a particular scene in the movie where they're playing. I think they're playing Sweden. And the Americans are expected to dominate Sweden.
[00:01:15] But due to their lackadaisical attitude and apathy and just being distracted throughout the game, they end up tying.
[00:01:23] And Drew knows what I'm talking about. And so they end up tying the game. And after the game, as the players are kind of skating off the rink and they're getting ready to go home and party, do whatever they're going to do, the coach is like, now you need to get back on the ice.
[00:01:39] So people start leaving the stadium and the other team's gone, and coach is like, get back on the ice. So they get back on the ice, and he has them skate lines, and he has them skate so many lines that the players, actually, some of them end up collapsing and. And kind of crawling on the ice. And it's just an excruciating moment for these guys.
[00:01:56] And at the end of this, as they're all just totally spent and exhausted, can't go anymore, the team captain blurts out this statement.
[00:02:08] He says, I'm sorry, let me go back.
[00:02:14] This is what the coach says. The coach says, you think you can win on Talon alone?
[00:02:19] He says, gentlemen, you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone, says the name on the front of their jersey. USA is a heck of a lot more important than the one on the back. Okay. The name on the front is a heck of a lot more important than the one on the back. Their name. Okay, Good lines. And so at the very end, as all the players are collapsing all over the ice, the team captain stands up. And he says, michael Ruzioni, that's his name, from Massachusetts.
[00:02:49] And the coach says, who do you play for?
[00:02:52] And he says, I play for the United States of America.
[00:02:57] And the coach says, hit the showers, boys.
[00:03:00] And I'm just like, I love it. It's awesome.
[00:03:04] And so they hit the showers, and I just. I think when we're talking about spiritual gifts, this is really helpful.
[00:03:13] The name on the front is more important than the name on the back.
[00:03:17] What was the problem of the Corinthian Church?
[00:03:20] The spiritual gifts had become about them.
[00:03:24] Their gifts, their abilities, their platform, their following.
[00:03:31] Right?
[00:03:32] It was about the individual. It wasn't about the collective.
[00:03:37] And I just wonder for us. And gosh, I mean, again, I feel like I say this every week.
[00:03:43] For those of you who don't know me, I just. I want to, like, put myself in your position, the stage. Don't let the stage be misleading. Like, I struggle with these things as much as anybody in the room.
[00:03:52] That's going to be the only time I say that throughout the whole sermon. It's implied now, but I.
[00:03:59] Man, we've all done this.
[00:04:01] We've all made life and ministry about us in a variety of ways.
[00:04:06] We've made. You know, marriage oftentimes is less thought of as this is about us and more this is about me. This is about my personal desires and my personal wants. Okay? Our job, right? Whatever job you do, oftentimes it can be easy, especially now in generations following.
[00:04:22] It's all about job satisfaction and job fulfillment and what makes you happy. It's not about the collective of how does what you do benefit society?
[00:04:31] Okay? How does what you do bring glory to God, et cetera.
[00:04:35] It's all about us.
[00:04:37] And when we live this way, when we do ministry this way, it leads to chaos, as it did in the Corinthian church in the first century.
[00:04:47] Okay, So I want to read just a couple of passages to give us context for why Paul addresses spiritual gifts in the first place. And this is going to be the point of the sermon today. I want to give you six things that the Bible has to say about spiritual gifts. Okay? So today is going to be more of like a. Let's lay some groundwork and talk about why has God given gifts to his people, okay? In which, by the way, a spiritual gift is not the same thing as a talent.
[00:05:15] Those two things can overlap one another. But we're not talking primarily about just things that you're good at. We're talking about ways that God has supernaturally gifted, you in power with certain things, attributes to be used for the building up of the body of Christ to the glory of God. Do you see the difference between those two things?
[00:05:37] Why did God do that? Why has he given us these gifts? That's what we're going to talk about. So I'm going to give you six things, and then I'm going to give you a seventh point as to how we're to pursue the gifts. Because we don't want just the number six is not as pleasant as the number seven.
[00:05:49] So you get seven things. So six things that pertain to the spiritual gifts. But let's do a little bit of context work before we get to chapter 12. So flipping your Bibles with me to First Corinthians, chapter 1, First Corinthians, chapter 1. So hold your place in chapter 12.
[00:06:04] Flip to 1 Corinthians 1, and I'm just going to read verses 1 through 13. This is going to give us. I'm sorry, verses 4 through 13. Chapter 1, verses 4 through 13. This is going to give us context for what Paul's saying in chapter 12. 1 Corinthians 1. Starting in verse 4, Paul says, I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:06:54] God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
[00:07:02] I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.
[00:07:21] What I mean is that each of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ.
[00:07:29] Is Christ divided?
[00:07:31] Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
[00:07:37] And if you'll flip with me to chapter three, chapter three, verses one through four, he says, but I, brothers and sisters, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh.
[00:07:56] As infants in Christ I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
[00:08:04] And even now you are not yet ready for you are still of the flesh.
[00:08:11] For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
[00:08:21] For when one says, I follow Paul and another I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?
[00:08:28] So you see what's happening here.
[00:08:31] So Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is writing to a church in the first century in the city of Corinth. That's a very gifted church.
[00:08:41] They're gifted in speech, they're gifted in knowledge, they're gifted in wisdom, they're gifted in prophecy and the speaking of tongues and teaching and all administrating all of these gifts that God had bestowed upon. They're a very gifted church. But they were in absolute chaos and disarray because they were motivated by the wrong things.
[00:09:02] Paul says they were acting and living and doing ministry not by the power of the Spirit, but by the power of the flesh. They were being driven by jealousy and by selfish ambition and a desire to be known and all of these kinds of things. So they were a very competent church, but they were a competent mess.
[00:09:26] So when we get to chapter 12, Paul addresses this idea of spiritual gifts, that they've been gifted with a variety of things from the Spirit of God for a specific reason, but they were motivated by the wrong things. And so let's look at chapter 12.
[00:09:48] We're going to do one through seven, and we're just going to kind of go verse by verse talking about what God's word has to say about the gifts of the Spirit. So why has God gifted the church with the gifts of the Spirit?
[00:10:01] So number one, and this is verses one through three. I'm gonna read the verses. But number one, if you're taking notes, is this, that the gifts of the Spirit are given by God in order to exalt Jesus Christ.
[00:10:13] The gifts of the Spirit are given by God in order to exalt Jesus Christ.
[00:10:20] Verses 1 through 3 says, now, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers or brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
[00:10:31] You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.
[00:10:40] Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says, Jesus is accursed.
[00:10:48] And no one can say Jesus is Lord except Holy Spirit.
[00:10:56] So before Paul gets into the specifics of the spiritual gifts, what they are and how they're to be used and pursued and all of those kinds of things, he addresses a problem within the Corinthian Church and the problem as it pertained to spiritual gifts was this is that the Corinthian church had prioritized experience over content.
[00:11:23] They had prioritized experience over content. Now, let me be really clear about something, because as I said this, I said this in the first week. We have a room full of people.
[00:11:34] Most of you I know, several of you I do not know. So I don't know kind of what your background in church is, what your experience is, whether you're a Christian, you're not a Christian, any of those kinds of things.
[00:11:45] But one thing I do know is I would bet almost anything that this is a pretty diverse room as it pertains to our view of the Holy Spirit and specifically our view of the gifts. Some are coming from a more what would be considered a cessationistic background, where we. You might believe that the gifts are still active in the church and to be pursued in the church. But some of the gifts, specifically the sign gifts, tongues, prophecies, healings, et cetera, ceased at the death of the last apostle. So that's the cessationistic position.
[00:12:16] The continuationist position would say that all of the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, Ephesians 4, and Romans chapter 13, though not comprehensive, all of those gifts listed in Scripture are still active and to be pursued today by the people of God for the glory of God. The does that make sense, the two different positions? So we're all coming from different positions as it pertains to our view of this. The second thing I'll say is that when it comes to experience, Christian experience is a good thing.
[00:12:49] Like, you ought to want to experience God.
[00:12:52] If you don't want to experience more of God. If you're only content by just knowing stuff, then, man, that's concerning, right? Like we're not understanding the Psalms, right? If that's the way we think about the Christian life, what does it mean to pant after God like a deer pants for water?
[00:13:11] What does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness like Jesus talks about in Matthew 5? Those are excruciating, physiological things that are happening in the heart of a Christian by which we're saying, I want more of God.
[00:13:26] Like, I'm not content to just have what I have. I'm not content to just show up on Sunday and listen to a sermon and go off and live however I want to live, like I want more of God. You ought to want that if you're a Christian.
[00:13:39] Okay, so experience is a good thing. But when experience becomes the supreme thing, when it's I can't know God if I don't have an experience, or I'm less spiritual if I don't have some kind of experience, whatever that experience is, then we've missed the Mark. Like the Corinthians missed the Mark. They were prioritizing experience, a good thing, but prioritizing it over the content of the Gospel, specifically the content of the lordship of Jesus Christ. When I first became a Christian in college, I was a senior in college.
[00:14:17] I was asked by a classmate because I was very impressionable and I didn't know anything about Christianity really other than Jesus. Life, death, resurrection.
[00:14:27] That's what I knew. And so I was asked by a friend in class to go to attend his church. And he went to a place that was called an Apostolic Training Center. And I did not know. I didn't know what that meant. It sounded right. So I went with my friend to this Apostolic Training center.
[00:14:44] And, man, I just. We got there, we met together, we prayed. It was a really intense kind of prayer gathering.
[00:14:52] Words are being used I'd never heard before. It was just. I was just like, man, this is. I did not know. I didn't just know. I didn't really know what was going on, honestly. And then we all got in the car and we drove off to do some homeless ministry.
[00:15:03] And so while we're doing this homeless ministry and we're talking to folks who are experiencing homelessness, one thing I noticed after the fact was I was like, man, the life, death, resurrection of Jesus was not shared once.
[00:15:16] What was emphasized was, where are you hurting physically? And how can we pray for healing? Not a bad thing to pray for. We should pray for healing.
[00:15:24] But when those. This is what I'm saying. When those experiences become the preeminent message, physical healing. And we're not talking about the greatest need of humanity, which is reconciliation to God, forgiveness of sins.
[00:15:39] That's what we need more than anything else in the world. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, we're so glad you're here. That's what you need.
[00:15:46] You need reconciliation with God. The reason that you can't find satisfaction in creation is because you weren't designed to.
[00:15:52] You were designed to find satisfaction in your creator, God. And that's what he sent his only begotten son for, was to live the life you couldn't live and to die on the cross in your place and to rise from the grave three days later, defeating sin, death, Satan and hell once for all, to invite you to repent and believe upon him and have eternal life. That's the message.
[00:16:10] And when we emphasize all the other stuff in expense of that message, we've missed the point. And it always leads to chaos and disarray.
[00:16:21] And so the first and preeminent reason behind the gifts, the reason that God has given you whatever gift or gifts which I believe he can give you more than one. He can do whatever he wants to do.
[00:16:31] The reason he's given you those gifts, one of the reasons, the preeminent one I would say, is to exalt Christ.
[00:16:40] To exalt who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. The lordship of Jesus Christ.
[00:16:49] And I love what he says when he talks about.
[00:16:53] Nobody can say Jesus is accursed by the Spirit. The Spirit would never do that because the Spirit is all about Jesus.
[00:16:59] Just like when Jesus was on earth, he was all about the Father by the Spirit. This is who God is. And it's wonderful. It's awesome.
[00:17:07] And so the Spirit is not going to lead somebody to say Jesus is accursed. What the Spirit's going to do is he's going to animate your heart to say Jesus is amazing.
[00:17:15] The reason you think Jesus is amazing is because of the Spirit. It's one of the surest signs of your adoption as a child of God is to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.
[00:17:27] You can't say that and mean it apart from the Spirit of God. And if the Spirit of God lives in you, you're safe, man.
[00:17:35] Nothing can touch you. They can touch your body. They can't touch your soul.
[00:17:39] So that's the first part. The first point is that the reason God gives gifts, the first reason, is to exalt Christ.
[00:17:49] The second reason, and this is verses four through six, the second reason is God gives gifts because they reflect the gifts reflect the diversity and, and unity of the God who gives them.
[00:18:04] The gifts reflect the diversity and the unity of the God who gives them. Look at verses four through six.
[00:18:13] Now, there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.
[00:18:18] And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord.
[00:18:24] And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all and everyone.
[00:18:32] Same and varieties are the key words in that passage. There are varieties and there's the same varieties of gifts, service and ministry. The same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. That's a trinitarian statement, by the way, that Paul's making Spirit, Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father.
[00:18:52] And so God gives gifts that we might reflect.
[00:18:58] That we might reflect who he is.
[00:19:02] The third thing I'm just gonna move a little bit faster. Cause we got halfway to go still.
[00:19:09] Verse 7.
[00:19:11] God gives gifts to every individual member of his body. Okay, so this is what I wanna do with verse seven. I'm gonna draw like four points out of verse seven.
[00:19:21] Verse seven is an amazing text, and there's a lot in here. God intends to teach us about why he's given gifts to his people. Okay, so let's look at the first two words of verse seven. Okay. He gives gifts to each. That means this. Friends, if you're a Christian in the room, the Spirit of God has given you a gift or gifts, each one individually.
[00:19:50] Every single person in the room has a part to play.
[00:19:55] Christianity, we say this all the time, but it's worth saying again.
[00:19:59] Christianity is not a spectator thing.
[00:20:02] Christianity is not. We show up to a gathering and we sit through a sermon. And then you go off and assume that 35 to 40 minutes of this is going to be enough for you.
[00:20:14] This is a necessary part of the Christian life.
[00:20:17] You take the gathering away, you take the preaching away, you take the communion away. Singing all of those are necessary components of Christian discipleship, but it's not the totality of it.
[00:20:29] He gives gifts to each.
[00:20:35] First Peter 2, 9 says this of us, of God. But you, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. The gifts are given to each other and individually.
[00:21:08] This is not a spectator thing.
[00:21:12] Number four.
[00:21:14] The gifts of the Spirit are gifts and not rewards.
[00:21:20] He says to each. This is verse seven. To each is given.
[00:21:25] It's something that's given to you. This sounds redundant, but I think it's worth again noting and really considering for a moment.
[00:21:32] Each one of you has a gift from God. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, that's amazing in and of itself.
[00:21:40] And that gift or those gifts are just that, friends. They're gifts, not rewards because of something you've done.
[00:21:49] It's not rewards for something that you've earned because you've tried hard enough or you've lived a pretty good life, or you haven't done these things over here, but you have done these things over here. These are the gifts of the Spirit in this way, are like salvation, okay? Like salvation is not something that you earn.
[00:22:11] No matter how hard you try, how hard you work, you cannot earn the love and favor and affection of God.
[00:22:18] God gives salvation as a gift. It's a gift of grace. And in a similar way, he gives gifts as an act of.
[00:22:30] These are gifts and not rewards. And because the spiritual gifts are gifts and not rewards, you can talk about them and seek to exercise them or practice them as we'll talk about in just a moment, with humble confidence.
[00:22:44] Anybody ever feel awkward talking to other people about your gifts?
[00:22:50] Maybe. Okay, yeah. Like, if somebody asks like, hey, what's your spiritual gift? And you kind of get shy about it.
[00:22:56] The reason we get shy about it is because we don't think of them as gifts.
[00:23:00] Like, we think of them as something we've earned or something that we. You know what I mean? That's why if we thought about it as a gift, we wouldn't be shy about it. We also wouldn't be braggadocious about it.
[00:23:13] You know how good of a whatever I am. Like, you don't talk that way about a gift because you didn't purchase was purchased for you.
[00:23:23] We don't brag about our salvation because we didn't do anything. Like, we just all. The only thing we contributed to our salvation was our sin.
[00:23:31] Right? It's the only thing that we bring to the table is our brokenness and our sin and our suffering. We just bring it to the table and we're like, I need a Savior. Jesus is our Savior.
[00:23:40] All glory goes to him. All of our boasting is in him. And the same is true with the gifts.
[00:23:46] You didn't earn the gifts. It's not just something you're good at because you've practiced it a lot. Okay? The gifts are given as a gift. And so we can talk. We should talk about them as a gift in humble confidence.
[00:23:59] That's like, we have to have that starting place if we're ever going to talk about practicing them or using them. Is recognizing this isn't something you've earned, friends. This is given to you by God.
[00:24:09] God was the one who gave you this gift or these.
[00:24:14] These gifts.
[00:24:16] Number five.
[00:24:19] We're still in verse seven.
[00:24:21] Number five. The gifts, when practiced rightly, make the invisible gods seen and known more intimately.
[00:24:30] So in verse seven. So let me read that again. The gifts, when practiced rightly, make the invisible God seen and known more intimately.
[00:24:39] He says to each. So each of you who are followers of Jesus have a gift is given. It's a gift and not a reward.
[00:24:47] The manifestation of the spirit.
[00:24:50] Okay? The manifestation of the Spirit means the evidencing of the Spirit. The invisible God becomes temporarily visible through the empowerment that he's given his people. When they use their gifts.
[00:25:05] When the people of God, by the Spirit of God use the gifts God's given, something about the power and person of God is made evident to the people of God around.
[00:25:19] It's making the visible God seen and known more intimately. I want you to try to think about a time that you were built up or encouraged or edified by somebody else's gift.
[00:25:35] Try to think about a time in your life that God used another Christian or Christians to encourage or edify or build you up through the use of their gifts.
[00:25:49] I think it's easy to think about teaching when we think about this question, right? Like, teaching is a very public gift. It's a wonderful gift. I love teaching. It is one of my favorite things in the world to do is teach.
[00:26:02] But it's not the only gift.
[00:26:04] It's not the only gift listed in the New Testament. And I think if we're not careful, it can be one of the ones that's most coveted because it's so public.
[00:26:12] But I could give example after example after example of ways that the Spirit of God has led and empowered and used somebody like Elizabeth Davis to show me mercy by which I'm just like built up by that gift in a supernatural way.
[00:26:37] I can think of example after example after example which a host of you have been used by God through shepherding, discernment administration helps behind the scenes. Think about Chris Thames. Like, shows up at a setup consistently, doesn't ever ask for anything. He just does it. He just loves behind the scenes stuff. It's the gift of helps.
[00:27:07] Like all, all of those kinds of things. The Spirit of God uses in us to show his power and his glory and his grace.
[00:27:18] Manifestations of the Spirit to each one of us has been given as a gift manifestations of the Spirit that we might see something of who God is through one another.
[00:27:30] It's making the invisible God visible through the people of God in the ways that he's empowered us with these gifts.
[00:27:40] And then the final one, and then we'll get to our application here.
[00:27:46] Number 6.
[00:27:49] Gifts are given to individuals for the good of the whole.
[00:27:54] Gifts are given to individual Christians for the good of the whole.
[00:28:00] To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit. Why? This is our ultimate why.
[00:28:05] For the common good.
[00:28:08] For the common good.
[00:28:11] If every individual Christian thinks preeminently, functionally lives like this is all about them, then the common good suffers.
[00:28:26] But when Christians recognize that, guys, we've been not only reconciled to God through faith in Jesus, for those of us who are Christians, but we've been reconciled to one another.
[00:28:35] This is Ephesians 2, if you want reference to this. Ephesians 214 says that we were dead in sin, but God, being rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ through faith in Jesus. And then 11 through 22 talks about how not only has he made us alive and reconciled us to God, but he's actually brought us into a family. And that family is the church.
[00:28:56] And the gifts we've been given have been given by God for the purpose of using, by the spirit of God in order to build up one another. They're not primarily about you. It's not primarily about me. This is about us to the glory of God.
[00:29:10] When I played football in college for a couple of years, I was a place kicker. And I looking back at it now, one of my deepest regrets playing football, and I have many, but one of my deepest regrets playing football was I don't think I cared enough about my teammates to really work on my craft.
[00:29:32] I partied a lot. I made really stupid decisions a lot of the time when I was in college and not walking with Jesus. And I look back at that time and I remember a specific game where I go in to kick a game winning field goal, 17 seconds on the clock, and I missed it and I walked off to the sideline and my roommate, who was a linebacker, big guy, came up and just kind of put his arm around me and basically was like, hey, it's okay, man. Just like, never do that again kind of a thing.
[00:29:59] If you get another chance, you have to make it kind of a thing. And so I'm sitting there, we go into overtime, and the first overtime, the other team scores and they kick their extra point. And then we get the ball and we score and we go down. And if I miss the extra point, we lose the game. Okay? So I've never experienced an extra point situation like that where I'm looking at a field goal post and seeing it so far away than what it actually was. It looked like an impossible kick. And our tight end at the time ended up looking back at me and just kind of gave me the look like, we need you right now.
[00:30:29] Like, we need you right now to come through for our team.
[00:30:33] And I think back at that and just want to reiterate to you, friends, the question is not, do you have a role to play here at Redemption Hill?
[00:30:43] Okay? The question is not, do you have a role to play? Will you play it?
[00:30:49] Will you play the role that God has graciously called you into?
[00:30:55] Will you use the gifts that God has graciously bestowed upon you for the building up of all of us to the glory of God. And so the final thing I want to say, and then we're going to pray is Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 14 about this idea of how we're to practice the gifts. And here's like the biggest thing, okay? We're to earnestly desire them.
[00:31:18] Okay? So I want to encourage you to ask yourself this question too. Do you, do you earnestly desire the spiritual gifts or is it just kind of like a taboo topic over here that you think is like only theoretical? The church suffers when you don't.
[00:31:35] And I want you to, like, I lovingly want you to feel the weight of that a little bit like the church suffers when you don't.
[00:31:45] But when you do, by the grace of God, use the gifts that the Spirit's given you. That we'll talk about next week, but you can read ahead this week if you want to, into what they are. You should do that.
[00:31:55] Then the church flourishes to the glory of God.
[00:32:00] And so we ought to earnestly desire them. How do we do that? There are first two things that we have to do before we get into talking about what the gifts are and how to specifically practice them.
[00:32:09] The two things are pray and fast.
[00:32:13] Pray and fast.
[00:32:16] If we're going to know how the Spirit of God has gifted us, we have to open the word of God first of all and then we have to pray like God. I want to be used for the good of others to the glory of your name.
[00:32:34] God, I don't want my life to be about me.
[00:32:39] I don't want it to just be centered on me.
[00:32:42] God, I don't want to have a self centered attitude when I come into church on Sunday. I want to be about the collective. Like God loves that kind of prayer and he loves you.
[00:32:53] And one of the most joyous ways that you and I experience life is remembering that Christ died. This is 2 Corinthians 5. Christ died so that we would no longer live for ourself, but for him who for our sake died and was raised.
[00:33:11] The cross liberates you and I from the thing that we need to be liberated more than maybe anything else ourself.
[00:33:18] And so we start by praying.
[00:33:21] God, would you reveal to me what, how you've gifted me? Would you empower me to use this gift for the good of others and the glory of your name? And then the second thing is fast.
[00:33:33] Fast.
[00:33:34] Fasting is a whole nother sermon for a different day.
[00:33:38] Okay. There's a lot to say about fasting. If you're concerned about the physicality of it, you should talk to a doctor before you do it. So nobody's suggesting you do an unhealthy fast of any kind. Fast from social media, fast from the Internet, fast from the news.
[00:33:51] Whatever it is that has your heart captivated this week, try to fast from that for a day.
[00:33:58] Set it aside for a day. And during that day, pray earnestly seeking God, that he revealed to you what your gifts are that you might practice them to the glory of God. Does this make sense? All right, let's pray together.
[00:34:23] Sam, it.
