The other day my daughter asked me about spiritual gifts. It happened after I had told her that from a very early age I had prayed for her and her sister to be prophetesses.
“What’s a ‘prophetess,’” she asked.
“It’s a person who can sense God’s word over a person or situation and share it with others to encourage them in the faith. It’s one of the spiritual gifts,” I added.
“What’s a ‘spiritual gift?’”
Here’s a kid, raised in the church her whole life – involved in worship leading, Bible study, and other spiritual leadership and she asks, “‘’What’s a spiritual gift?” Her friend was with her. She didn’t know what a ‘spiritual gift’ was either.
So I’m stepping out. Of course you have access to deeper discussions than this. (Can you say, “Google?”) For our purposes, I’m going to spend a bit of time just talking through the gifts, making random comments here and there. The intent, of course is that, once discovered, they will be used.
That being said, let’s talk about spiritual gifts. Every Christian has at least one spiritual gift. A spiritual gift is an accolade, given to the the followers of Jesus for edification and evangelization.
I have come to believe that every Christian has access to ALL the spiritual gifts (we’ll talk about that later on down the line) because every Christian has the Holy Spirit residing in them. The Holy Spirit is the big gift and He has all the gifts residing within Him. He can distribute all known spiritual gifts to any one person - or, at least has the potential to do so. Usually, however, people find themselves majoring in just a few gifts.
Spiritual gifts don’t happen once you’ve attained a certain age, or a rite of passage – like a spiritual puberty or something. They are bestowed on any person – young or old – who has given him or herself to Christ and entered into the life-long journey of following Jesus. That means if a elementary student, teen, young adult, or old guy accepts Christ they enter into a new birth which includes the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Age has no bearing here. And no ministry of Christ happens without the empowerment and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Ministry happens when a person employs his or her gift. I’ve seen elementary kids speaking in tongues and grandma’s healing the sick. It’s not about age; it's about who lives in you.
So that’s the word for this chapter: everyone (young or old) who follows Jesus and has been born into his spiritual reign has spiritual gifts. They differ from skills, hobbies, interests, or things you learn in that they are given from God to build up other Christians and grow the church. If you are a Christian, you have at least one – probably more. And if you have the Holy Spirit abiding within you – which all Christians do – you have potential access to all the gifts, from prophecy to teaching, mercy to administration, or tongues to hospitality.
And he has given your spiritual gift(s) according with the desire of his heart, not yours.
