Understanding The Gifts Of The Spirit - Spiritual Maturity & Sensitivity (Daily Devotional)

Hello and welcome, you're watching Living Supernaturally, the daily devotion of All People's church. We're so glad that you could join us today even as we study God's word together and even as we choose to apply what we have learned daily in whatever area of life we could be. Today, even as we've been studying this week about the gifts of the Spirit, we are looking at this difference or one truth that we need to understand that it is about spiritual maturity and spiritual sensitivity. In other words, character and gifting. Now, there's so much confusion in the body of Christ because of not knowing this difference between character and gifting. The gifts of the Spirit in a person or the expression of the Holy Spirit through a person is no indication of spiritual maturity. When we talk about spiritual maturity, we are talking about character, we are talking about Christlikeness. A person or a believer on that journey maturing to be more and more like Jesus, Christ likeness. So, just because a person moves in the gifts of the Spirit does not mean that that person is Christlike. Well, the person could be and that is what ideally is desired, that is the exhortation in scripture. But the gifts of the Spirit, a person flowing in the gifts of the Spirit that does not necessarily mean that the person is also spiritually mature to the degree that we might expect. The example that we see in scripture is in the Corinthian church itself where Paul writes to them. Now, we've been studying the gifts of the Spirit and that is found in Paul's epistle to the Corinthian church. And so, he writes down, he puts down these instructions because this church was a church buzzing and really full of the gifts of the Spirit. So, he writes to them and he tells them, you come short in no gift. So, all these gifts are there and you are spiritually gifted. you're moving in these gifts and to the same church Paul had to write and he literally had to rebuke them and correct them and say that you are being carnal. Meaning you are being fleshly, all your choices, the way you behave, it is like mere children, like you are being carnal. He had to do that. Now what does that mean? That means that this church which was very gifted in the gifts of the Holy Spirit was not mature enough to be Christlike but they were fleshly, they were carnal. Paul writes and he tells them there is strife, there is division and so on. So, we understand that there is a difference between spiritual sensitivity and spiritual maturity. So, you and I can be very spiritually sensitive and keen on the gifts of the Spirit and to receive the things and pick up things that the Spirit of God is revealing, we can be very sensitive and sharp in that. At the same time, we could be spiritually immature or carnal. And that is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 1, he's saying, "Pursue love." He's using the word ‘agape’ which is the love of God, which has to do with character. So, go after love, pursue love and in the same verse is the instruction to desire spiritual gifts. So, it's not one without the other but it's both together and that is how we can represent the king of kings, the Lord Jesus rightly in the world that we live in, to the people whom God sends us to or the people whom we interact with. Now that is the only way to do it: to pursue love and desire spiritual gifts. So, let both be found in us, let both be developed in us to a great degree. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you Lord, it is your desire that we move and we receive your love and we grow in your love. But it's also your desire that we earnestly go

after, intensely desire the gifts of the Spirit. Lord, we pray that we will not lose focus or lose sight of either of these in our life, in our journey as believers, may we go after both. Lord, we pray today that you will build us up in the spirit, that you will build us up to be Christlike, in our choices, in our words, in our actions. Lord, we pray that this will be a constant desire burning in us, God, we thank you, in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Thank you for tuning in to Living Supernaturally, for more resources to strengthen your spiritual walk, please visit apcwo.org.

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