I have to admit, I love gifts. I love giving them and receiving them. Gifts are a great way to express our affection for others. A gift tells someone, "You are important to me and I thought of you when I picked out this particular gift."

God has given us some gifts. In addition to life itself along with the blessings we experience, we have received the gift of forgiveness of sin and eternal life through Jesus. Not only that, God has given us spiritual gifts to use in our daily lives as members of the body of Christ to become giving people.

Spiritual gifts are god’s supernatural enablement to empower Christians for loving service. Spiritual gifts are just various ways we love and serve each other. We need not get confused or contentious about the topic of spiritual gifts. As we follow the flow of thought in Romans 12 we find ourselves responding to God’s mercies in the gospel by offering our bodies as living sacrifices (v. 1). Then as mercy-loving, mercy-dependent people, we are transformed by the renewal of our minds as we saturate our minds with God’s truth and grace and we experience God’s will for our lives (v. 2). As mercy-soaked, Christ-exalting renewed people, we humbly give ourselves to the ministry of the body as members of one another (vv. 3-5).

In verses 6-8 of Romans 12 we find a list of spiritual gifts that represent some of the ways God has uniquely endowed His people with grace gifts to be used in the building up of the body of Christ. What follows is a brief explanation and caution about each of these gifts.

Prophecy: The divine enablement to proclaim God’s truth with power and clarity in a timely and practical manner for correction, repentance, or edification. Danger: Tendency to be proud of their speaking ability or to rely on their ability rather than God. In their desire to make things right they may be insensitive to the feelings of other people.

Service: The divine enablement to attach spiritual value to the accomplishment of physical tasks with the body of Christ. Ability to demonstrate love by the meeting of practical needs. Danger: Can be bitter if their deeds are not recognized. Over emphasis on practical needs to the neglect of spiritual needs.

Teaching: The divine enablement to understand and give detailed explanation of biblical truth. Ability to search out and validate truth which has been presented. Danger: Focus on content at the expense of application.

Exhortation: The divine enablement to come alongside another in need of encouragement to reassure, strengthen, affirm, or challenge those who are discouraged or wavering in their faith. Ability to motivate others to trust and obey God. Danger: Spend too much time with people who are needy but not changing.

Giving: The divine enablement to earn money, manage it well, and wisely contribute to the work of the Lord with cheerfulness and liberality. Danger: Pride in their ability to make and invest money, seek a return on investment, desire recognition, desire to control what they’ve given to, or judge the way others handle their money.

Leadership: The divine enablement to see what needs to be done, set goals, and attract, lead, and motivate a group of people to accomplish the work of the ministry. Ability to coordinate the activity of others for the achievement of common goals. Danger: Use people to meet goals, pushy.

Mercy: The divine enablement to minister cheerfully and appropriately to people who are suffering or undeserving and to spare them the consequences of their choices. Ability to identify with and comfort those in distress. Danger: Hard to be firm, may enable others to live in sin by not allowing them to face the consequences of their choices, can be misunderstood by the opposite sex.

Do you know what your gifting is? Are you using your gifting to minister to God’s people? If not, why not? You the gifting God has given you are needed in the ministry. You also need the gifts of others to be exercised in your life. We have a mutually interdependent relationship to each other as Christians. Ask God to help you know His will and live in it as you dedicate your life to Him in response to all He is for you in Jesus. God delights to not only give spiritual gifts, but for us to unwrap them and use them for His glory and the good of His people.