God’s Call Using Spiritual Gifts

We should be aware that God is calling us into ministry through the numerous ways that the Spirit of God is revealed in and through us. Yes, we can see evidence of God's calling of others in the Bible, but also we can see evidence of God's call of our fellow members of God's family through the spiritual gifts that they exhibit. There are many kinds of spiritual gifts expressed in many ways because God has made us to be the conduits of the various spiritual gifts that God gives for the building up of God's people.

However, when we are drawn to the spiritual gifts that we have seen, read, and heard in others, we often allow those gifts to become a barrier to maintaining cohesiveness within our church family. Those precious gifts from God can be the beginning of discord, uneasiness, and even seen as a threat to members of our Godly family. Often, because too much attention is given to the gifts themselves and that misguided focus becomes a source of division, instead of focusing on God who is the giver of every spiritual gift we have ever had or seen in others.

On the other hand, when we read, hear, and witness the spiritual gifts that come from God, we feel the pull of those words and actions that give us strength, carry us through hardships, and give us insight and wisdom to nourish and heal our hearts, minds, and souls. Whether we have read them in a book, heard them in person, or felt the presence of God immediately connecting to us through those divine spiritual gifts, especially those that we had already witnessed or heard growing up, then suddenly those gifts from God awakened us to God's call to service for the good of the body of Christ and for those in greatest need in a way that had we had not recognized before.

There is a major obstacle to understanding the spiritual gifts that genuinely come from God. If you read 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 in the Bible, and go further to complete the entire chapter, you will find out the barrier that the Apostle Paul addressed when he wrote that letter to the believers in God living in the ancient city of Corinth that led many of them astray from the true meaning and purpose of the spiritual gifts that God gives to us.

The knowledge that Paul gave in his letter to God's people in ancient Corinth hopefully will connect the dots of what the spiritual gifts from God are for and what they should produce so they can be better understood. After you learn about the spiritual gifts, and what caused the misunderstanding of the members of that church see if you can draw any parallels between the answers that Paul gave in his first letter to the Corinthians and how we believers in the present day suffer from some of the same issues regarding spiritual gifts and divisions within the church. You may hear, more distinctly, what God is calling us into ministry to accomplish.