The spiritual gift of faith…
Aug 5th, 2010 by ljkim
Just the way every Jesus-person ought to be wise, and yet some people have a spiritual gift of “wisdom” – everyone following Jesus needs faith, but some people have a particular gift. Using the body metaphor, I can actually pick up a pen from the ground with my toes, I can even write (or make marks) with it… But my hand is particularly good at this in a way my toes are not. There are some people who have a particular spiritual gift of “faith.” So what is that exactly? Continue Reading »
You can be born smart, be born with a high IQ, but no one is born wise. Also, one can be highly educated and smart, and still not be wise or know how to put real knowledge to use. So when we’re talking about the spiritual gifts (SGs) of wisdom and knowledge, this isn’t talking about book-smart or school-smart, it’s talking about deeper more practical knowledge and wisdom. 
Most people don’t learn the important things in life through a class or a book…instead you get it through what I’m going to call “gossip.” So when did you first learn about kissing? In a class? How about dating or what kind of person you should want to marry? How about things like: how to spend your free time? Or even (slightly) more important things, like who to vote for in the next election? Whether you should bother to vote at all? Most people don’t learn these things through books or lectures – you get it through the stuff your friends say. They don’t sit down and try to convince you of something, they just say stuff and you hear them – sometimes you totally disagree… but it adds up over time to create a culture, a life, a worldview… 
Spiritual gifts are the abilities and aptitudes that come out as you change for God and grow in Him. It’s like a unique genius that you have that most other people do not. And although any one gift (whether spiritual or natural) may not be unique, the combination of gifts and aptitudes you have are unique. No one is good at the things you’re good at the way you are good at them. So people point out that Albert Einstein wasn’t particularly good at arithmetic. There are people who can add up a hundred numbers in their head and divide by twelve; but Einstein couldn’t. Nevertheless he was good with numbers in a different way, and it had value. It’s not any different with your gifts (whether spiritual or natural)… 
I think one of the main things that discourages people from growing is a secret belief that they can’t. You admit you need change, you try, you pray about it, and it doesn’t work. How discouraging! ”To fail at this means hopelessness; true failure” you think to yourself…so you forget about it and secretly stop caring. Ask any 4 foot tall child if he/she would like to grow and they would… Ask a thirty year old who’s below average height, and has no hopes of a growth spurt, if he or she would like to grow and they’ll tell you they’re fine the way they are. That’s like a lot of us – a lot of the time! You think you’re fine the way you are – spiritually – but only because you don’t really think you CAN grow… If you really thought you could change and grow – you would. Well you CAN. There’s a bit of a trick to it. It’s in Ephesians 4:16… 
How would I know if I needed to do some growing up? Let’s say: “I’m smart, I’m good at things, I’m talented, I have friends and people like me, some people even look up to me…” The question I’d need to ask myself is how back and forth am I? There’s a part in Ephesians 4:14 that talks about spiritual immaturity as being “tossed to and fro…” back and forth. Are you hot one day and cold the next? Are you driven in your work, proud one day and depressed another? Or are you steady?
Here’s a picture of Billy (I’m just making up a name). He has a number of problems other than his unfortunate choice of wardrobe and hiding place. For one he poops his pants. A lot. Almost every time. I guess the word is incontinence. He slurs his speech and can’t walk too well either. So…doctor, what’s his problem? Do you recommend speech therapy? Pooping therapy? Special braces to help him walk? I guess theoretically those things could help, but you know what would help even more? Growing up. Billy’s problem isn’t his potty training or slurred speech, because you see he’s a baby. And baby’s tend to poop themselves. The Bible’s diagnosis of what’s wrong with the church is not ‘a problem with politics’ or ‘being judgmental’ or ‘poor theology’ or any other true observations about the church in history… The problem with the church is that it’s a baby. How can it be a baby after all this time? See previous post! As a baby it is prone to crappy things sometimes… But the solution isn’t crap-therapy, the solution is to grow up. The “church” as a whole, needs to grow up and start to resemble Jesus. And it needs you to do it.
A popular meme from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers is that people who become experts in something had around 10,000 hours of practice in it. That sounds right because in our daily experience, it would be hard to do something for 10,000 hours and NOT get better at it. The first few days of a job can be difficult – even just remembering all the names of coworkers and where the post-its go, or learning the buttons on a cash register – but after around three and half (roughly 10,000 hours) of doing the exact same job, there might be something wrong if you did NOT get the hang of it. In fact if you weren’t capable of training other people to do your job after all that time, it would be strange… But a strange fact about spiritual growth is, it’s possible (perhaps because of sin) to spend years and years supposedly following Jesus, or having grown up an altar boy and Sunday schools – to know almost nothing… 
With all this talk of “following your heart,” very few people do. Most people live like everyone else even when their “hearts” tell them to do something extraordinary. With all this talk of “being radical for God,” very few people do that either. Because these things takes courage. I don’t think real courage looks the way it does in the movies. We see the action hero jumping off a building onto a helicopter or thwarting nuclear disaster… That’s not the courageous part. The courageous part is taking all your selfish hopes and dreams and throwing them to the wind to do what you know you need to do. To say goodbye to comfort and home and middle class ambition, to life and limb, to say goodbye to “happiness”; that’s the thing that would cripple most of us. And of course the paradox is, in any action movie, if the hero doesn’t do this then no one will be happy ever again – but if he succeeds, by giving up his/her right to happiness she finds a lasting one she never dreamed of. Jesus says follow me: throw all your dreams away and consider yourself dead for my sake. That’s when your new life, the Jesus life begins.
You can’t be accepted by Jesus the same way you’re accepted by your friends. ”Eh” you say? Your friends actually like you because you’re fun (to them), useful from time to time, and they can lean on you. Not so bad. But these are qualifications that the majority of the world do not have, yet you do. Just as much as a snooty country club, your friends are snobs with exacting standards of membership. Jesus, on the other hand, does not have these kinds of requirements. His only requirement is that you not be a snob. In the Jesus life: Politics junkies will have to hang with fishermen. Those with cultural pride (Simon the zealot) will have to hang with those who have none (Philip – a Jewish guy who goes by a very-Greek name). Those with faith will have to be patient with those who are skeptical (and vice versa). The only requirement seems to be no snobs allowed – anyone who will accept Jesus is accepted, and no one is left out (unless they refuse to accept Jesus’ lack of snobishness). And Jesus pushed the boundaries of this by spending time with social outcasts and accepting “unacceptable” people from other cultures…