The Thing About the Spiritual Gifts…
…is they are spiritual.
There. I said it.
Why is this important, you ask? Because most of the time when people start looking at the gifts of the Spirit, they start looking at their natural talents. Someone who is wise will quickly argue that they have a gift of wisdom. Someone who likes to make people feel good will say they have the gift of encouragement. This isn’t how things work.
The gifts of the Spirit are radically different than our own human abilities. They are gifts that can only be achieved by the Spirit. So if an unbeliever with no presence of the Holy Spirit can do what you do, it’s probably not a gift from the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is also known as the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11). Think about how incredibly unable you are to raise someone from the dead on your own. You know unless the Holy Spirit works through you, there is no way you can raise the next dead person you come across. The same is true with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Every time you manifest one, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is operating through you. Every gift is miraculous.
I’m not trying to discourage you. I want to encourage you to turn to Jesus and ask Him to truly allow the Holy Spirit to flow through you, beyond what you are capable of on your own. Don’t look to your abilities to do what only God can do. Instead, allow the Holy Spirit to do the heavy lifting and transform the world around you. One of these gifts operating in your life could change you, your church, or the world around you.
“To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.“
-1 Corinthians 12:8-10
One response to “The Thing About the Spiritual Gifts…”
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Pursuing Glory 
You are absolutely right. Teaching for example is not necessarily a spiritual gift. Many people teach without aid from the Holy Spirit. But a person with the gift of teaching will find nuggets of truth from the scriptures that others do not see. They have a compulsion for absolute truth of the scriptures. To them the knowledge of God’s word and will must get out to the world.