Spiritual Gifts: What Am I Supposed To Do With The Gifts - Ephesians 4:7-8, 11-13, 15-16; 1st Peter 4:10-11

A woman joined a health spa and on her first day eagerly joined in an exercise class. However, when it ended, she went to the front desk and requested cancellation of her membership.

When asked why, she replied, "Your floors are so low that I can't touch my toes!"

A gym or exercise class might not be our thing.  I mean some of us really don’t want to work out in front of others, we don’t want them to see that we can’t touch our toes.  With that in mind, I came across this wonderful bodybuilding exercise program to build muscle strength in the arms and shoulders. It seems so easy that I thought I would offer it for your consideration.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-lb. potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, then relax. Each day, you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb. potato sacks, then 50-lb. potato sacks, and eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb. potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks; but be careful!

We’re talking about Spiritual Gifts.  The first week of our series we asked the question “What are Spiritual Gifts?” and realized that they are gifts given by God to direct us in our efforts to serve Him faithfully.  Next, we asked, “Who Gets The Gifts?” and we came to understand that everyone gets the gifts.  That like a modern-day children’s party where everyone goes home with a gift or gift bag, that everyone whom comes to Christ and surrenders their life will find that they have received one or more Spiritual Gifts.  While we have not gone into detail about what each of those Spiritual Gifts are during the sermon series, we offered a listing and description of the gifts as well as the opportunity to take a gifts discernment survey.  Last week, we asked the question, “Are My Gifts Any Good?”  We concluded, that like a football team with a variety of players in different roles, and like our bodies with various body parts, that we, as the Body of Christ, with our gifts, are all important parts of the body…one part is not more or less important than the other parts.  So today we come to the question, “What Am I Supposed To Do With The Gifts?”  In other words, “How do I use the gifts?”

As we have alluded to during these last few weeks, God pours these gifts into our lives not for our own self-centered, self-focused lives, but in order that they might be used for the building of His Kingdom.  If we are using the gifts as God intended, we will be find God using us to reveal His Kingdom through the building up of the Body of Christ.  If we are asking the question “What are we supposed to do with the gifts?”, as our opening illustrations suggest, Spiritual Gifts are for body building.  No, not physical exercise, unless perhaps you have the gift of teaching and are considering leading an exercise class at the church…they are, as Paul puts it, “for building up the body of Christ.”

Paul says, “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

My brothers and sisters, we have the Spiritual Gifts so that we may strengthen the Church…beginning with God’s congregation here at Harkers Island UMC and stretching into God’s Church Universal.  God gives us the gifts, not for us to sit around our homes and churches like pew potatoes, but to equip us, as his children for the work of ministry, and that work of ministry is Body Building…building up the Body of Christ.  That is what we are supposed to do with the Spiritual Gifts that God has given us.

Peter pushes us further in this understanding and fleshes out just how it is to happen: “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”

What does Peter highlight?  He offers us a Body building regimen. 

1.       We remember we are stewards of the grace God has given us.

2.       We are to use the gifts to serve one another.

3.       What we do we are doing on behalf of God.

4.       We serve with the strength of God.

First, we are stewards of the grace God has given us. 

What is a steward?  A steward is (1) someone who attends to passengers on an aircraft or ship, or guests in a hotel and club and manages provisions and/or lodging, or (2) someone who manages someone else’s property, finances, or household….  Either of these definitions would be suitable to understand what it means to be a steward of the grace that God has given us.  The Spiritual Gifts are acts of grace, they are freely given by God for us to use on God’s behalf. 

While God gives us the gifts, like all that we are and all that we have, they truly belong to God…we are using them for God to reach to and attend to His Creation and His children.  And as Jesus would relate to us in one of His parables, God expects us to use these gifts.  Jesus, many will recall, told the Parable of the Talents…where two of a master’s servants took the talents, money in this sense of the word, and invested them and used them, and increased what belonged to their master, while the third servant took and buried his talents.  Those who used the talents they were given in trust, found themselves fruitful, and upon the master’s return, found themselves rewarded.  The one who had hidden what had been given him, found himself chastised, the talents taken away, and then cast out.  God gives us these Spiritual Gifts in trust.  They are gifts to us but belong to God.  God expects us to use them on his behalf for building up the Body of Christ.

Secondly, we use the gifts to serve one another.  As I have mentioned earlier, the gifts are not meant to be self-serving…they are not used to build up ourselves, our bank accounts, our retirement savings, our houses, or even our fame or status.  They are used to build up the Body of Christ and we do that by serving one another…we look at how our gifts can be used to help those who are in need…and we serve in that capacity…either meeting the physical, emotional, administrative, or spiritual needs of those who are around us.  Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, reminds us when we reach out to those who are in need, we are reaching out to him…when we touch the lives of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, and so forth, we touch Him.  In serving one another, we serve God.

Peter reminds us that after we recognize our gifts and decide to use them, it matters how we use them.  Peter says, “whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God.”  Not only do we serve God with these gifts, but we serve as God’s representatives, as Paul would put it, as the ambassadors of Christ, to the world.  We need to watch how we interact with one another…it is not simply a question of “what would Jesus do” but “how would God act?”.  Think about that my friends, when we are talking to a brother or sister in Christ, we are to talk to them in the same manner that God would…and as we do, we remember that God is Love.  When we serve them, we serve with the same humility that we see in Christ.  The same goes for how we use any of our gifts…we are to use them in the way that God would use them with His people and His creation…in self-sacrificing and redeeming acts of love.

Finally, when we use our Spiritual Gifts, when we put them into action, we are to do so with the strength that God provides.  Too often we may look at a task or something we are asked to do and think to ourselves, there is no way that I am strong enough or smart enough or skilled enough to accomplish that.  If we think that, we are right.  When it comes to serving God, if left to our own devices, there is no way we would be able to accomplish all that God set before us…but remember we are using gifts God gave us to serve Him in the way He wants us to serve, and so we must have faith and rely  upon the fact that God will give us the strength to do what He wants done…for nothing will thwart the plans of God and God has involved us in those plans and He will provide us with what we need.  For man, yes it would be impossible to do all that God sets before us, but with God, all things are possible…let us not rely upon ourselves, but rely upon Christ…which also means to rely upon the Body of Christ…as we serve one another, we also serve as the strength of God to help one another…none of us is a solo act…we are the living Body of Christ, working together, with the strength of God, to accomplish God’s Will in this world.

Some workout routines out there are fourteen days, thirty days, or 90 days.  So how long are we to use our gifts for God’s body building program?  For that we move from Peter back to Paul.  Paul says that we are to be about using our gifts in this way “until all of us come to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

This body building program is a lengthy program.  It is one that goes on until all of creation comes to a unity of faith…it continues until that day when “every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”  It continues until all of God’s people reflect Christ in every aspect of their lives…until we are so Christ-like that we measure up to the full stature of Christ…and we are to be constantly, slowly, striving for that perfection that will not occur until Christ returns.  That gives us the date that we will know that our exercise program will be complete…the day that Christ returns to call all of us before the Throne.

My brothers and sisters, God has given us all gifts…may we faithfully use them to build up the Body of Christ until that day we see our Body perfected.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.