How to Use Spiritual Gifts

Before you start todays devotional, ask the Lord to use it to grow you up in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

When you were saved, the Spirit gave you the ability to serve the body of Christ through spiritual gifts. Do you know yours? We return to this topic to explore further how to use what God has given us. As a whole, the body was given a huge variety of gifts, all intended to serve the many needs and to unify the many members of the body.

God puts us into the body of Christ through the Holy Spirit to show His love, which is even better than the best gift. When the Spirit controls your life, you express God’s character—His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

As good as it is to pursue spiritual gifts, Paul wrote that it’s also better to clearly give out the Word of God. The Corinthians were preoccupied with speaking in tongues. Paul pleaded with them to hold all gifts in their right proportion.

When Paul spoke of tongues, he meant languages. Remember on the Day of Pentecost when every person heard the gospel in their own language? Tongues are not a rapturous, ecstatic, mysterious language—they are known languages. Nowhere in the Bible does it speak of teaching God’s Word in an unknown language.

Communication happens when two people speak the same language. If you speak in a language no one understands, how can this edify the church? Building each other up is the goal. In other words, say something useful so a brother can say “amen” to it.

Paul says, “When I teach the Word, I’m going to speak to people in their tongue. When I go out to the mission field [let’s say Antioch in Pisidia], they speak a different language, so I speak to them in their own tongue (even when I don’t understand it). When they hear the gospel in their own language, they believe. They understand what I said, even when I didn’t. When I speak to people in Israel, I speak in the language we all know, and no one needs it interpreted. That’s how I teach the Word of God to them.”

People today are smart, scientific, and sophisticated. They want a message they can understand—a logical, meaningful presentation of the Word of God. Teach in the language everyone understands. Preach the Word, and if an unbeliever comes to your church, pray they will understand the gospel, come under the Spirit’s conviction, and be rescued by God’s grace.

A church service is to be orderly. There are to be interpreters if there is speaking in tongues. The point is, God is not a God of confusion but of peace. The best way to serve each other is to teach each other well and listen to each other. And do it decently and in order.

Gratefully use the gifts of the Spirit but above all, keep loving each other and speak God’s Word the clearest way you know to build people’s faith and to encourage and comfort them.

1. How does the idea that using your spiritual gifts as a way for you to express God’s love change the way you think about yourself and your gifts?

2. All of the spiritual gifts were given by God to encourage and build up the body of Christ. How could focusing on that change how you view fellow believers?

3. There is tremendous diversity in the gifts given by the Holy Spirit, so why did Paul believe that exercising them in love will lead to unity?

Additional Resources

Listen to Dr. J. Vernon McGee’s complete teachings on 1 Corinthians 14.