Get Doing

We just started a new study at our church that is designed to help people identify their GOD given gifts and personality flavors so we can really identify where they will thrive best in the work of the church. Me, I have a pretty good idea who I am and how GOD has been using me, but I am still excited to go through this study. So, I admit, I peeked ahead.

I have read and been taught about GOD's gifts before, but I never saw them all organized into three groups before - listening/hearing gifts, speaking gifts, and doing gifts. Being in a Pentecostal church, I often see the listening and speaking gifts in use and see how powerfully they touch the lives of the ones who use these gifts and the ones who they are used for. But I haven't often seen the doing gifts in church - and I started wondering why this should be so. Are we just afraid? Do we think GOD can't do things like that anymore?

I think I am comfortable with the listening and speaking gifts because I'm a verbal person anyway. We all use words every day, we use our ears to hear every day, so these gifts are so natural to us we don't really think twice about GOD using us and gifting us in these ways. But to do miracles, to see healings happen, that is so much more involved than simple communication. And I think it's a little scarier to even try because if there isn't an actual something that happens, then we consider it a failure.

I've come to a conclusion about that - something can only happen if we walk out on that limb and at least try. If GOD gives me a word of knowledge (a hearing gift) to speak prophetically to someone (a speaking gift), then I do it. I hear and I speak and that is the extent of my obedience. If the person I am speaking to doesn't receive the words and there is no fruit from the transfer of communication, there is no blame on me - I did what I needed to do for GOD. So if I think GOD wants me to pray so someone can be healed, the same thing applies. My obedience is to pray in all the faith I have for that healing. But because there is a partnership between me and the person I am praying for, the results of that prayer are not completely on me. Whether or not the healing occurs is beside the point. I think the point of the gift of healing is simply knowing that GOD can do it and wants to do it and praying with confidence that HE will do it. The results, as with any gift, are up to HIM. All I can do is be faithful to pray.

So I guess I need to get doing.