Acts 1:8 gives us a compelling promise that we will "receive power when the Holy Spirit has come." In this we are assured that we are never alone in fulfilling God's purposes for our lives in our careers, ministry and even our personal relationships.
God has infilled us with His Spirit and enabled us with gifts to carry out His will for our lives. We receive these gifts as a means to build up others and ourselves. But did you know that spiritual gifts can be a stumbling block as well?
Spiritual gifts can be beautiful tools to draw others closer to God, but they can also be walls that we build between us and God. Spiritual gifts can include abilities such as prophecy, service, leadership, tongues, knowledge, exhortation, compassion, hospitality and many others. When we move in these gifts, we can either honour God or move farther away from Him.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
The key to maximizing and stewarding the gift well is to always move in love -- love for God and love for others. The greatest command God has given us is to love Him and love our neighbours (Matthew 22:37-40), and to use the gift for any other purpose is to abuse them.
There are many ways that we can abuse the spiritual gifts. We can use them for our glory instead of God's, we can use them to malign and hurt others instead of build them up or we can even use them to split the church instead of bringing unity. These are not God's commands to us.
Matthew 7:22-23 tells us a sad story of many people who chase after spiritual gifts only to turn them into stumbling blocks: "On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"
God's desire is for us to use the gifts of the Spirit according to the fruit that He has borne through His Spirit in us -- the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
1 Corinthians 13:13 reminds us, "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
