Be Filled: Part 5
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Happy Mother’s Day!
Focus: Being aware of the gifts that God wants to invest in you makes you a more useful and fruitful servant of Christ.
You’re so Full of It
Understanding Your Gift
Clinging to the Cross
You’re so Full of It
God’s care for you is present even when you don’t feel it and his gifts are available even when you don’t realize it.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
What better way to enter this month, than being aware of the following:
Isaiah 49:14-22 ESV
“But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me." "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. Your builders make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you. Lift up your eyes around and see; they all gather, they come to you. As I live, declares the Lord, you shall put them all on as an ornament; you shall bind them on as a bride does. "Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land— surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children of your bereavement will yet say in your ears: 'The place is too narrow for me; make room for me to dwell in.' Then you will say in your heart: 'Who has borne me these? I was bereaved and barren, exiled and put away, but who has brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; from where have these come?'" Thus says the Lord God: "Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.”
God wants you to be full of the Spirit so that you can be full of Holy gifts to share.
Can anyone lay hands for the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
Matthew 3:11-12 ESV
“"I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."”
*Jesus is the one who does the baptizing - we merely do the praying.
Therefore everyone is a candidate to pray to the Lord who is the baptizer of men and women.
“As God's children, we are not to be observers; we're to participate actively in the Lord's work. Spectators sit and watch, but we are called to use our spiritual gifts and serve continually.”
-Charles Stanley
Understanding Your Gift
When baptized in the Holy Spirit, everyone has a gift or mix of gifts to bring to the table.
Description of the gifts.
1 Corinthians 12:1-3 ESV
“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit.”
God wants us to be informed about spiritual gifts and understand that the gifts of the Spirit point to the resurrected Jesus as Lord of all.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11 ESV
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”
According to God, each part is indispensable - which means we can’t get where we are going as the body of Christ unless you contribute your invaluable part!
1 Corinthians 12:27-31 ESV
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
How to identify your gifts -
Prophetic revelation and impartation
1 Timothy 4:12-16 ESV
“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”
What do you already operate in?
Galatians 1:1-2 ESV
“Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia:”
In what have people encouraged you?
Galatians 2:6-10 ESV
“And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
What do you desire?
1 Corinthians 14:1 ESV
“Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.”
“When you find your spiritual gift, God will give you an opportunity to use it.”
-John C. Maxwell
Clinging to the Cross
The point of the gifts is to lead people to encounters with Jesus that they might put their faith in his finished work at the cross.
Luke 10:17-20 ESV
“The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."”
Our great joy and confidence should be in the fact that we belong to the Father and that our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
It is out of that security that we follow God into his Kingdom works, as the Father glorifies and draws people to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
“...revivals (or any other spiritual gifts and graces) come only to those who want them badly enough. It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be.”
-Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer
Just as we do not earn salvation, but is it the gift of God as we turn away from our sin to Jesus in repentance and faith in his substationary work at the cross, so we do not earn our right to work in the power of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 3:1-6).
“It is very possible to be proud of the spiritual gifts God has entrusted to us and to strut about ostentatiously, forgetting that we have nothing which we have not received, that grace is a gift, an undeserved favor. We can actually be filled with pride at the eloquence and brilliance of our sermon on humility.”
-J. Oswald Sanders
“God prepares leaders with a specific place and task in mind. Training methods are adapted to the mission, and natural and spiritual gifts are given with clear purpose.”
-J. Oswald Sanders
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher