"My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!"
- Horatio G. Spafford, It Is Well With My Soul
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
any time i enter into a theological discussion on here, i am wary. regardless, i have some thoughts/questions about spiritual gifts for you.
i've noticed in myself and in others that, over time, spiritual gifts seem to "change" and not just via those surveys you can take to tally your giftedness. (i understand that most of those surveys are easy to "fix" or predict because you can answer towards the outcome you think is true about yourself.) but still, we usually believe those answers to be true about ourselves. i used to score more highly in exhortation but now high in prophecy. some other gifts remain as front-runners though. my questions are these:
-do our gifts really change? does the holy spirit really gift us differently at different times of our lives OR do our preferences simply change over time and we tend to do what we like to do?
-have any gifts we find "rising to the top" been with us since conversion but simply rise and fall at different stages of life/ministry?
-does the bible mention this rising and falling of spiritual gifts in our lives?
-if not, how do we justify it?
-can we lose gifts entirely?
-are the gifts we see consistently throughout our lives the true spiritual gifts and the ones we see rising and falling just our human preferences and abilities... (a lost person can take those surveys, too, and score highly in several categories)
-would it be more beneficial to survey OTHERS about our spiritual gifts?! ha
anyway, just some thoughts. we'll be addressing some of this, specifically, at our high school retreat next weekend but i'm wondering these things myself!
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Comments on "are there refunds or exchanges on spiritual gifts?":
2. jeremy
- 01/14/2010 10:14 am CST
great points, molly.
your thinking also reconciles the ideas of "apportioning as He wills" and "some are appointed teachers, some prophets, etc." the latter seeming to be a more concrete designation.
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You pose a good question.
My view on the spiritual gifts has changed a bit in the past year or so. But looking at 1 Cor. 12, it says simply that they are for the "common good", and that He "apportions to each one individually as he wills".
In the past few months, I've thought about this a lot. My past view of spiritual gifts was that everyone is doled out one or two whenever they become a Christian. So, I was always pretty set in my thinking, having "accepted" that my gifts were encouragement and missions, or whatever. So I guess I had more of an idea of it as everyone has a different "duty" within the church, duties not really to be shared, but to be owned. BUT, then I started to hear more about the realm of instantaneous "apportioning" of spiritual gifts, such as the gift of faith or gift of healing whenever it's needed, though not necessarily gifts to have all the time.
So... to boil what I just said down :), right now, what I think is that the gifts that we see on the surveys probably have a lot to do with personality. But this is not to belittle the surveys or say that they aren't actual spiritual gifts; God is the one who gives us our personality, and I believe that when we are born again certain fruits are more natural for some to "produce" than others, and certain spiritual gifts come naturally according to personality (but it's still given by God).
But when it gets more in the realm of the manifestations of the Spirit and gifts used for the edification of the Church (or for the "common good"), I think that He really does just apportion it as He wills, and when He wills it, for however long needed.
I've also pondered on what Paul means when he says to "earnestly desire" the greater gifts, because this implies that these are gifts that we can ask for, which I guess makes sense.
Well, that's my two cents - hopefully I answered the question and didn't just confuse the point!