Understanding and Using Our Spiritual Gifts
By Ty Blackburn
Preached on:
March 29, 2023 – May 24, 2023
Providence Church
2146 Buford Hwy
Buford Hwy, Duluth, GA 30097
This series discusses a very important area of church life and doctrine. This is a key part of ecclesiology, that is the study of the church, how God has composed the church. And one of the things we see in scripture is spiritual gifts.
We’re going to begin with “Understanding and Using Spiritual Gifts”, talking about gifts in general; introducing and understanding this concept. In the first two weeks, we’ll view the big picture of spiritual gifts. And then we’ll dig into the particular during weeks three and four, and possibly in week seven when we talk about using your gifts. In sessions five and six, we’ll talk about cessationism.
There are a number of questions regarding these gifts. The area of “Spiritual Gifts” is not taught a lot in the church. While we’ve had studies in 1 Corinthians, Romans touching on spiritual gifts, and we’ll come to another passage in 1 Peter. But as a church-wide doctrinal teaching this is the first of our studies. We may have questions about these gifts relating to topics such as the gift of tongues, prophecy, miracles, healing, and even the less sensational gifts like administration, service, teaching, and patience.
How do you know what your gift is?
How do you find out your spiritual gift?
So, there are a lot of questions we need to answer from the texts of scripture. The goal of this study is that we will have a sound theology of spiritual gifts.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:1, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I don’t want you to be unaware.” Then, he begins to expound on this. It’s one of the key passages.
Rather than jump into questions that may be the most intriguing or interesting to us, it’s important for us when we’re trying to build sound theology and understanding to really step back and let scripture as a whole speak to the issue. A biblical understanding of any doctrine requires we look at everything the bible says about it, every single biblical passage.
So we want to hear from all the passages of scripture and not just jump into a particular verse, questioning what this particular word means. But we should hear from everything said, including from the Old Testament, how this informs our understanding of what spiritual gifts are and what their purpose is.
