How Jesus Builds His Church Through You | The Fullness | Luke Humbrecht

Discover how God has equipped every believer with supernatural spiritual gifts and learn to identify your unique role in building up the church. This comprehensive exploration of Ephesians 4 reveals the five equipping gifts that Jesus distributed after His victory: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Learn the difference between spiritual gifts and natural talents, and understand why these supernatural abilities are proof of Christ's ongoing reign and power.

Explore the biblical foundation for spiritual gifts, including the Greek word charis that connects to charisma and charismatic expressions. Understand how Jesus, as the conquering king, distributed the spoils of His victory over sin, death, and darkness to His people. Discover practical ways to identify if you have apostolic instincts for starting new works, prophetic abilities to speak God's truth, evangelistic passion for sharing the gospel, pastoral heart for caring and nurturing others, or teaching gifts for explaining Scripture with clarity.

Learn about the crucial difference between cruise ship and battleship mentality in church participation. Move from passive consumption to active contribution in God's mission. Address common mistakes about spiritual gifts including discounting yourself, jealousy of others, boxing yourself into limitations, and judging others by your own gifting standards.

This teaching covers the full spectrum of New Testament spiritual gifts including wisdom, service, hospitality, prophecy, discernment, healing, miracles, and administration. Understand that your gifts are not your identity but flow from your relationship as God's child. Get practical guidance on spiritual gift assessment, overcoming fears and past wounds, and moving from spectator to active participant in church ministry.

Perfect for anyone seeking to understand their calling, discover their spiritual gifts, learn about church ministry, explore biblical teaching on spiritual gifts, or grow in Christian discipleship and spiritual maturity.

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookout.church. Hey guys, you all made it. You all made it. You didn't blow over. Good job. Come on, give yourself a hand. We made it through the wind. Holy smokes. We are at church. If we haven't met yet, my name is Luke. I'm the lead pastor here. I'm so excited to be able to share with you a little bit here today for the next few minutes together as we share this space together. I just want to say before we get into the message, I realize that some of you here, maybe you don't have a Bible, maybe you're a newer Christian and you just don't have one of these laying around. We have a bunch of Bibles out in the lobby. If you go look at kind of the bookshelf out there, you can see a bunch of these blue Bibles. This is the exact translation that we typically preach from when we read from when we're here at the lookout. So feel free to grab one either now or after the service. And kind of rule of thumb, if you ever see a Bible around here without a name on it, just go ahead and take it, all right? It's yours, all right? It's yours. It's our gift to you. Our gift to you. Also, our gift to you is any prairie dog you find out in the field out there. That's our gift to you today. Take one home with you, give it to your kids for Easter. It's gonna be great. That being said, let's open up to Ephesians chapter four. We are in our long journey through Ephesians. Have you guys enjoyed have been enjoying this journey through Ephesians? And it it's, you know, throughout the year you'll notice that there's sometimes we do walks through the Bible like we're doing now. Sometimes we'll just explore different topics together. Uh, one of the reasons why we like to do the walk through the Bible, like passage by passage, we will read long pieces of scriptures because we want you, when you go home and you're in that pat you're in that book of the Bible later on, that you know what to do with those scriptures, right? So when you read them, like it's not confusing to you. You know where to place that and what that means. And so that's why we're doing that. I hope that's been helpful. We believe that Jesus wants to continue for us to continue to grow into the fullness of his life. Is there anybody with me on that? The fullness of his life is kind of the theme of this series. And uh, and we're gonna get into that today. So read with me in Ephesians chapter 4. Um, I'm gonna read starting in verse 1. Here's what it says. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, When he ascended on high, he led a coast uh a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. And saying he ascended, what does that mean? But that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the measure, unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves carried around by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So we are in the fullness. Here's a little roadmap that we're, you know, just just for today. Um, first we're gonna talk about superpowers and the best scene from all the Marvel Avengers movies. Then a little bit later, we're gonna talk about all of these amazing gifts that Jesus, in his extravagance, pours out to his kids, which are us, sons and daughters of God. And then we're gonna talk about the fundamental difference between cruise ships and battleships, if you didn't know. So, anyways, that's where we're going today. Welcome to church, welcome to the lookout. So we are in the book of Ephesians, and that we've covered a lot of ground in the first several chapters, have we not? It's kind of dense, and we're really just scratching the surface, even though there's a lot going on here. Um, so this in the simplest terms, here's a summary. The summary of Ephesians so far is that we are a counter-cultural new creation community, building each other up in love, called to live as a prophetic display of the eternal purposes of God, and that the church might be a preview of the radiant life that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven under the good and kind reign of King Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. Come on, that was worth a little bit more. And so it's much bigger than I hope the church service is good on this Sunday. It's a huge vision that we open up into, that we are invited into a creative counterculture in this world, which is why we need to first talk about Captain America today. Okay. Now, one of the things that I love the most is any of the Marvel superhero movies. Is anybody with me on this? Okay. I know I'm gonna come just off the out the gate, I'm gonna completely isolate half of my, you know, half of my audience here today. But uh, I love the Avengers movies. I love all of them. I've watched all of them from start to finish with with my boys. And uh, you know, there's there's this final scene in this movie, Avengers Endgame. If anybody's ever watched Endgame. And if you haven't watched it, I'll catch you up. This final scene, you have Captain America, and he just finished going toe-to-toe with Thanos, who's the supervillain. And he just he gets his butt kicked. Even Captain America can't quite get the job done. And they're missing like most of all of the other superheroes, okay? And so there's this scene where he's standing in front of like the hordes of darkness, like all of the villains from across the universe end up at Earth. And he's he's sitting there, and he's standing there. He's like, I guess I'm just gonna take them all on by myself. And he's standing there facing all these guys, and all of a sudden, um, nobody saw it coming, but like all these like little like swirly portals open up behind him, and then all of like the superheroes that you've come to know and love for the last 15 years that were all like we're all killed or vanished in all these movies, they step out, and he thought that you know he was just by himself, but one by one they all start stepping out and joining forces with them, and then all of a sudden you see one guy who's about to take on everything, and then all of these superheroes show up, and none none of them have the same like a gifting and skill set, some of them are just like crazy strong, some of them can like shrink into the size of an ant, right? Uh some of them can fly. Uh, one guy just has a bow and arrow, hawkeye, because they wanted a normal guy in the mix, too, and uh because those guys count as well. And uh and it's just like this really moving scene because they all show up and then they all like join forces and then fight the bands of darkness together. Now, I don't know if this is what Paul was thinking about in Ephesians 4, because I do have to transition this. I don't know that when he was thinking, when he was writing about the apostles and the prophets and the pastors and the teachers and evangelists, I don't know if he was talking about this like Avengers, like superhero team, but I do know that what he was talking about is the work of the church is not a solo mission. It's not up to a few gifted people to get all of it done. But it's about every person in the body of Christ being awakened to the latent genetic, the power of God, the DNA, the divine DNA of God that He is uniquely wired into every single person, that every person would come awake to every gifting that God has put inside of them. And in this scene, it's awesome because they all show up and you, you know, you see them all just rising to the occasion. And one of the biggest temptations in the church is we tend to think the mission of God really depends on a few visible people up front. Everybody else just watches. But Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no. There's something else happening here. When we come to the new creation community, there's gifts that God gives to his people. They're different gifts, they're different callings, they're different ways that God shows up in our ordinary human lives. And those gifts aren't just to become cool super celebrities, just to be clear here. It's not just about drawing attention to ourselves. They're given for the body of Christ to be built up so the church can become whole, so the world can see Jesus. Thank you, Captain America, for the wonderful metaphor. All right. So in this passage, we we come into Ephesians 4, and Paul is walking us through, like, listen, we have to know that before anything else, that we are one, that our greatest call is into a unity of the faith. And he says, like, listen, just in case you forget, when you're sitting in the room and you're looking out of the room and you're thinking, nobody is like me, I'm different than everybody else, that might be true, but we've all come through the same waters of baptism, which means that we are intimately linked because we all needed the same forgiveness for our sin. We all needed the same weight of grace and mercy in our life, which means you're not that much different than the person you're sitting next to. Now, if you haven't been baptized, by the way, we're gonna be doing baptisms next month. You want to get baptized. That's your first step to just coming into the family of God. But when we, but Paul is saying, like, listen, we only have one spirit and one God and one faith. So that means we all are coming at this from a sense of oneness and unity, like we've been talking about the next couple weeks. But out of this oneness, once we got that solved, that we are one, it says, but grace was given to each one according to the measure of Christ's gift. Grace was given to each one according to the measure of Christ's gift. Well, what does that mean? Well, this grace, this word grace is this word charis. And uh it's it's where we get the word like charisma or charismatic. Sometimes, you know, we refer to the kind of church we are as charismatic. All that means is that we come from a stream or a tradition that believes that when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, when we come into Christ and the Holy Spirit comes upon us, he awakens us to expressions of life in his spirit that are not meant just for the days of old, but they're meant for today, here and now as well. And so we celebrate that that everybody that God gives graces and giftings and expressions to every single person of the body of Christ. They don't look the same, um, but they are all beautiful and it's powerful, and it's the way that God moves out into this world. So we are charismatic because we believe in the measure of Christ's gift and the other gifts that he gives us. And so it says, Grace was given to each one. So grace has been given to you according to the measure of Christ's gift. Now, now Paul takes this a little aside as he does, and this is where the chapter gets chopped up a little bit. He then says in verse 8, therefore it says, When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. You're like, okay, what's going on here? And he continues, in saying he ascended, what does it mean? But he also descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above the heavens that he might fill all things. I mean, you know this is this is like footnotes. I mean, they even use parentheses in the text. It's like, you know what else? I mean, you don't you don't find a lot of parentheses in the scripture. I don't think that was in the original Greek, but the translator said, we need like parentheses here, because this is all kind of complex. And so let me just unpack this for you for a second. Grace was given to each one according to Christ's gift. And it says, then Paul starts really what he's doing. He's quoting Psalm 68. He says, He said, Let me help you understand. Psalm 68, 18 says this you ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train, and receiving gifts among men and even among the rebellious that God may dwell there. No, what does that mean? This passage, it's about Jesus being enthroned on Mount Zion. It's about Jesus being enthroned, but that's also echoes of Moses on Mount Sinai after the people were liberated from captivity. So what Paul is doing, he's drawing on this royal victorious language similar to how a conquering king rises in triumph and then distributes the spoils of his victory to his people. So that didn't connect yet. Let me just keep going. Let me do just the summary here. Jesus won the victory over every power that held people captive. You guys alive? Can we get excited about that for a second? Here, let me say it again. Jesus won the victory over every power that held people captive. Okay. He did that in Egypt with his people, and he did it again through Jesus Christ. Over every ruler and all the dark things that hold us captive. Has anybody ever felt that you've been held captive? Yeah. And he liberates us. So Jesus won the victory over every power that held us captive, and because of that victory, he now gives grace, gifts, he now gives gifts and graces to his people. These gifts are different person to person, but they are given for one purpose to build up one unified church that is filled with God's glory and joins God in new creation. Come on. And it says that this passage says that you know the one who descended, then ascended, and then gave gifts. It's just kind of like ascending, descending, ascending, descending. What does it have to do with anything? Basically, the way I think the way to work through the movement of this passage, we have to remember that Jesus came down to earth. He defeated death. Then after defeating death, he rose again from the grave. That's how he defeated death. He rose again from the grave. Then he ascended into heaven. But he didn't ascend to just disappear or become irrelevant for all of time, just to be honored as some great teacher that once did something. He ascended to maintain to sit on his throne, and the way that he shows us that he's still reigning on his throne is he sends his Holy Spirit back down to us and he distributes and he fills the church and the people of God with gifts to prove to the world that he's still on his throne. Come on, you guys are waking up. I know you're getting this. Jesus is showing off. Do you guys see this? He's like, can I just show off for a second? I want you, I want to convince you of how thorough this victory is that I have won on your behalf. That I'm gonna take all of the spoils of my victory and I'm just gonna distribute them and lavish them on anybody who calls on my name. You have access to the victory and the gifts and the graces of Jesus Christ. So that takes us back to Ephesians 1. You have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. So you have to know that you are blessed. This is not the blessings and giftings and graces are not for that good-looking dude down the row or that person who looks like they have everything together. That's not what the passage is saying. God has given his power and his strength in you. Spiritual gifts are not just talents, they are signs that the risen king is now reigning. Which means that you gotta take them seriously. Oh. So it's not just about me just kind of, you know, taking a personality test and trying to become a little better. No. Your gifts, the things that God has put in you, he's given to you to prove to the world that he is still reigning on high and he has power. So that's really good news. So Christ gives gifts to his body. When you come into Christ, those gifts start to awaken in a new way. Now, in this particular passage, he highlights five apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. We can go way deep into all of these things. I'm just gonna give you a little more of an overview today. And just so you know, if this is kind of the first time you're hearing about giftings of God that he's given to you, there's a couple other passages that are really important as well. Um, you read about some gift things in Romans 12, you read about giftings in 1 Corinthians 12, and these are giftings that um just lists of like what happens when the Holy Spirit starts to awaken us from the inside out. We are catalyzed into into gifts we didn't even know were there. But God just out of the abundance of his grace starts to awaken things in us for the common good, it says in 1 Corinthians 12, or for the building up of the body, as it says here. Um, now in some of these gifts, and when you start reading about all of these gifts given to the body, given to you, you start to read about other things such as wisdom, service, hospitality, prophecy, discernment, healing, miracles, administration, just a whole slew of things. Now, are these the only gifts? You know, as we like read through these gifts, sometimes we can look like, okay, this is the definitive list of gifts. I don't think that's what Paul was doing. I think if you read any of Paul, you know he's always scrambling for a language to just kind of build upon what he's saying. He's just trying to find more and more words to say, this is how expansive, this is how wide the color palette is in the kingdom of God. I think the gifts are varied and many. I think they even go beyond what we see on the passage, but it's at least these things that we read in the scripture. The list starts, this is the start of the list, but it's not the end of the list because the Holy Spirit is multifaceted, and you never come to the end of the expressions of God and the way he expresses himself in our lives. You guys are making me work today. Come on. This is about you. This is incredibly good news. Because your life is not meaningless, your life is not boring, your life is full of wonder and imagination and the multi-layered expressions of the kingdom of God. This is why coming to the kingdom is so beautiful. And this is why I like even in this church, I just love looking around and just like they're almost like superhuman powers. Like, I love my wife because she has the gifts and graces that I do not have. Thank God. If you need a party planned, look no further. She can plan a party like a wizard, right? She has a gift of hospitality. She knows how to make everyone feel completely special and singled out. She will make you a custom meal for all of your varied dietary restrictions. She is amazing when it comes to dream interpretation, just learning the biblical form of dream interpretation. And she's been growing. Like great giftings and graces are growing up, they're both continuing to grow, and they're rooted in discernment and prophetic and all these things and stuff that so you know. It's just good to know that you got a few people in a community who can interpret a dream. That's all I'm saying. Not everybody's gonna do it, but it's available, right? You have other people, you got Bob down here. It's like he's got a superhuman gift for storytelling, okay? He's he's gifted with business, he's gifted with wisdom in the marketplace, he's gifted with, I mean, just the the the many folds of wisdom. When you sit with Bob, you feel the father heart of God, and he and and and he has a way of of helping you make sense of life. The amount of times I've sat before Bob and said, I don't know what's going on, and he tells me a story, and then I just feel better. It's a gift, man. It's a gift. You got Shannon Capel, which she's not here today, but man, intercessory prayer. Who's thankful for people with a gift of intercessory prayer? Okay, now there's a level, all by the way, there's a level like all of us get to participate in these things, right? It's not just these are the people who pray. That's not, but some people have just wow, that's you're really good at that. So you just need to know when you need an intercessor on your team, when you need somebody who who is like you can bring a prayer request to, and they will go into the secret place and cry out to God on your behalf. You need some of those people on your team, right? Um, you got Travis, you I mean, who's thankful for the musicians, the vocalists? Um, he also plays pickleball. And and if you need anybody, the spiritual gift of 90s music, like just like if you need if like a 90s song comes to mind, you need somebody to play it live in front of you. Travis is your guy. Thanks be to God. You got Jesse with the spiritual gift of charts and chart making, and it's great. The teachers, I love it. Anyways, bottom line, listen, listen, listen. When you surrender your life to Jesus, he has a lot of different kinds of gifts that he wants to share with you. And if you if you if that's shocking news to you, I'm just saying that is the best thing you could hear today. Because God is not empty-handed. And he's not empty-handed towards you, not his sons and daughters. And so it's important that we understand what these gifts are used for. Now, in this passage, it says this passage that we just read, these five things, apostles, prophets, evangelists, so on and so forth, one way to look at these are these are called the equipping gifts, you know, because the reason that they're given to the body, it says, is to help others grow into who they are in Christ and to give them the equipment. It's like God gives us people that actually, their main job is to equip others, to give you and us and the rest of us equipment so we can grow up, stand firm, and do the ministry. And that's really the whole point is that all of us get the equipment we need to go do the work. That's for all of us. It's not just these five people. These five people are just making sure that these things are happening. And in some level, these five things, I think, are the seeds of these things, even though there's levels of development, I think all of us have these things. We've all been given certain graces to actually pour into others and equip others for who God has made them to be too. That's true. So let me just talk about these five things, these five equipping gifts. We're gonna, this is gonna be the run-through, okay? So an apostle, apostle is someone who's sent out to start new works, lay foundations, help the church move forward in mission. Apostles help the church go where it has not gone yet. I'm thankful for apostles. I'm thankful for those who think about what could be that has not yet been accessed. And some of you are maybe more entrepreneurial in mind. You're thinking about where the kingdom needs to be planted, where the expressions of the kingdom, not even just church plants, but marketplace stuff, stuff around the world. You're always thinking about where the kingdom needs to land. I mean, that's a hint of an apostolic kind of instinct. They often pioneer, plant, build, and ask, what is God calling us into next? It's a really good, it's a really important grace in the body. So, but then you have a prophet. Prophet is someone who hears from God, speaks truth, that helps the church stay faithful, awake, and aligned with God's heart. It's always about calling the church back into the covenant heart of God, where we've strayed. It's not just about telling the future, it's about alignment with the heart of God. Prophets help the church hear what God is saying. That's not that's often encouraging. Sometimes it doesn't seem encouraging. Sometimes it's massively convicting when we've gone astray. But prophets are very important. They often bring clarity, conviction, encouragement, and spiritual perspective. Okay. Evangelists is somebody who is especially gifted at sharing the good news of Jesus and helping others come to faith. Um, evangelists help the church reach people who do not yet know Jesus. And you're always thinking about, but what about this person? What about this person? What about this person? That's a grace to the body. They can't they carry a natural passion to make Jesus known. A pastor or shepherd, as it says in the scripture, is somebody who cares for, protects, guides, and nurtures people in the spiritual life. An easy way to say it would be pastors help the church feel seen, loved, and cared for. They shepherd people through joy, pain, growth, and struggle. The word pastor, just in context, churches across the board just end up have ended up adopting this word pastor for anybody in leadership. If you're in leadership, you're a pastor. And that's true, but also not everybody who leads in the church is a pastor and is really good at caring for the flock in that particular way. They may actually be more prophetic or more of an evangelist or that kind of thing. But we're grateful that in the church, in the body, that there's pastors and shepherds who do are there to nurture the people of God. And then you have teachers. A teacher is someone who explains God's words clearly, God's word clearly, so people can understand it, trust it, and live it out. Teachers help the church understand the scriptures, right? They bring clarity, depth, and wisdom and charts, right? That's what they do. And uh and they help ground us in reality. That's what teachers do. It's like, let's take these big ideas and let's talk about how to live these out. Can you guys see how you need all of these in a healthy body? You need all these inputs to move in health for the whole church to be built up. That doesn't mean every church has this like full-blown extension of all of these things. Sometimes God gives these people to hold multiple churches. Um, but the reality is, I believe, a good question to ask is like, what are the seeds of even these equipping gifts that might be even in this room today? Um, it might be hard to even look at that and and know, but here's uh here's how Danny Silk he had this brilliant word picture to describe how the five-fold ministry, that's what we're talking about, the equipping gifts, what happens when they show up to a scene of a car accident? Here's what this might look like. So the scene of a car accident on the road, uh five people get out of the car to examine it. The pastor applies first aid, dispenses blankets and water. He gathers vital signs, information, talks to everyone about their emergency contact details, and brings a sense of calm to the situation. A teacher studies the scene to see what caused the accidents and what might be done to ensure accidents like this don't happen again. The teacher concludes that the driver would benefit from more training and continuing education requirements. The evangelist asks everybody, if you were to die as a result of your injuries, would you go to heaven or hell? He speaks to the crowd of onlookers. There are no guarantees that you will make it home safely. Do you know where you would go? He then leads people to Christ and trains them to lead others. The prophet knew that there was going to be an accident because he had a dream about it the previous night. He walks around the crash rebuking the spirit of death and calling out the destiny in various peoples. He discovers who's in charge of the crash scene and determines whether this is God's chosen leader or not. And he finds one uh if if if he finds no one in charge, he will appoint a leader. The apostle releases the healing touch of God into the scene. He tells the testimonies of how he has witnessed the power of God at other accident sites, the faith of the listeners arrives and they do two begin to pray for healing. The apostle starts a school for those who arrive at the car accident scenes and sends them all over the world to do signs and wonders, all right? Something like that. Something like that. Now, when we kind of read about these five things, you know, as you're listening to that, it may not be immediately clear, like, well, which one of those would I be? All right. It may take time. Something it takes time to unfold. But the bottom line is this we are all called to build up the body. We are all called. So don't overcomplicate it. Don't go crazy. The church gets crazy with these kinds of things. Well, which one am I? And we get we get really weighed down trying to assess everything. Just hold on, just park that there. Bottom line, we are all called to build up the body of Christ. Okay? Spiritual gifts are more than self-discovery. They are about building up of the body. Okay? So this isn't just another Enneagram, this isn't just another disc task, Myers-Briggs. This is about your responsibility to the body that you belong to. So the church is at its best when not when there are a few really gifted people who everybody else watches, but when every person knows what they were made for and equipped to be, and equipped for who God made them to be, right? So it really challenges our vision of the church. A place, is it a place to come and sit and watch, or is it something I lightly just participate in enough to where I don't get an email or call, somebody doesn't ask me, you know, or bug me during the week? Or do you see the church as a family on mission to love, serve, a disciple, and to reach the lost? Is that your working definition of the church? So this this is this is where it starts to conflict with our modern American view of what we're actually doing. You guys with me? Okay. So this is where there's the fundamental difference between a cruise ship and a battleship, all right? Nobody vacations on a battleship. Um, you don't go on a cruise ship to, you know, uh to take orders from people. But they are two different things. A cruise liner is built around comfort, consumption, and being served. There's nothing wrong with that when you're taking a vacation. But a battleship is built around mission, contribution, and shared responsibility. So a cruise ship, on a cruise ship, a few people work and everybody else enjoys the ride. On a battleship, everybody has a station, everybody has a part to play. On a cruise liner, people ask, am I being fed? Do I like the experience? Are my preferences being met? Where are the comment cards, right? A few people perform and everybody else observes. On a battleship, people primarily, if you're on a battleship, you're primarily asking, what's my assignment? How do I add strength to others? Where are the gaps? What must I do for the mission at hand? Everybody understands that they are needed on a battleship. If you're not needed on a battleship, that's you're they're throwing you overboard, right? I don't know if that's how it works, but I think that they would you you wouldn't be needed if you it doesn't make sense. Like everybody on a battleship is serving a purpose. And so I say this. Here's why do I say this? For a few different reasons. Number one, some of us here have minimized our contribution in the body. We don't think that our grace and gifts is real giftings really matter. Like, what? Like, as long as I'm just like giving during offering, right? Like that counts for something. Yeah, it does count for something, but the giftings and grace go so much further beyond kind of a light participation that we settle for sometimes. This is this is really important. This is for the youth, for high school, middle school, high schoolers. It's your responsibility starting now is to start to ask the question, God, what have you deposited in me for the sake of this body? This is not just for the adults, it's not for somebody else. What are the gift things that God has put in you that He wants to start unfolding? I remember when I was in high school and I had a chance to teach for the first time, a group of junior hires, and the youth pastor had asked me, because I was just a youth leader at the time, he asked me to teach. And I was like, ah, okay, whatever. Something came alive in me. I loved it. I drew all these, we had like we had a an overhead projector, and I drew all these cartoons and all these things of Moses leading all these people. I was like, where did this come from? Like I something started to come alive, and I just realized, like, oh, I love this. I could do this. And it was just early seeds of just paying attention. Oh, I feel the life of God when I'm doing these kinds of things. That's a good thing to pay attention to. And it's something we have to take seriously because when God called Moses, um, Moses responded, he resisted the call on Moses because Moses didn't feel like he could talk well enough. But God didn't applaud him for his humility. He actually responded, Who made man's mouth? And uh Moses pleads with him like God sends somebody else. And then it said at this point the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. So Moses tried to play the humility card, like, oh, I just, I don't know if that's my gift, you know, send somebody else. And God said, No, this is what I've asked you to do, and I've made your mouth, and I'm gonna fill it with words. You go do what I asked you to do. And so sometimes this humility card, like, oh, I just like to kind of sit, I like to let everybody else kind of do that. That doesn't work in the kingdom of God. Because God wants his life to be expressed through you, whether you think it's your gifting or not. Okay? Everybody smile at me. It's the same thing happened when the spies went into the promised land. They came back with their report, and it was a negative report. They said, We don't think we can do this. We don't think we can go actually go. We don't think we have what it takes to go into the promised land. And because of it, they were punished for several more years in the wilderness. And he said, and not only that, you're not gonna be, you're gonna die before you get to the promised land because you did not have enough faith to believe that I've given you what you need to go where I've called you to go. All right. That's good. The church cannot become what God intended without every person playing their part. I want you to hear me on this. The church cannot become what God intended without every person playing their part. Sometimes we just ask God to do all these things. God, could you just God designed us to be interdependent? God designed us to things are not going to happen unless the people rise up to do the things, to do the work of ministry. You can't pray for God to do more ministry. That's not how it works. We become the answer to God's design and his vision. It's it's he calls us and we respond. So sometimes we want God to do all the things. He said, I'm waiting for you to do the things. Who's actually gonna rise up in courage and faith to do what I've asked you to do? And if you don't know what that is, it's okay. We can help you get there. Okay, we have ways to help you identify what God is doing. I'll talk about that in a second. Um you can also serve without knowing what your spiritual gifts are. That's also it's that's also okay. You don't have to have this well-designed plan. You know, I'm a prophet, I'm an evangelist. No, you can be a part without knowing what that is. And the truth is, if you're not using your spiritual gifts for the good of your church family, then they are crippled. Okay. Whether big or small, every part of the body, and this is this whole thing is is seated within the picture of a body that's working. Every part, every joint and ligament, every pinky and ear and nostril or whatever, doing their part. Um whether big or small, every part of the body has an essential function. And what do you call a body where only 20% is operating properly? Lame. That's a lame church. Literally. When you have a body that's not fully functioning, it's called a lame church. Who wants to join a lame church? And it's not even just who wants to join a lame church. It's is is the church functioning in such a way that it's bringing glory to the one who distributes his gifts. Are you guys hearing me today? I'm telling you the truth because you deserve to hear it. Because we deserve to hear it. And some of you guys, I just want to uh celebrate you and commend you because you just give and give and give and give. You don't care what it is, you're just looking for opportunities to use your gifts. And it's not even just about filling volunteer spots, it's just about participating and just like, where can I bring life here? Thank you. That is when we're at our best. And so this is life in God. And that's what I love about this. There's so many people who just you give and you give, and it's it's amazing. And I'm I am deeply thankful. I know this is I kind of brought you know, a little bit of this is what will cut us in a certain way, but I'm just saying it's both something to celebrate and something we need to become aware of. But the last thing I'll say this is spiritual gifts are not about spiritual status. Sometimes we can get so about obsessed about the gifts that God's given us and who we are that we confuse our gifts with our identity. Your gifts are not your identity. Okay? Like I'm a I'm I'm teaching up here. That's part of my gifts. But when I go home, my kids don't relate to me as a teacher. That's not what they're doing. Like it when I'm before God, he doesn't address me as a teacher or a pastor. I'm a son, right? I'm a son of God. You're a son, you're a daughter of God. And that's who you that's your identity. And because you're a son or daughter, then you have gifts. Because God loves you. And so your gifts are not your identity, they're for unity and maturity because God loves his church and he loves us to be built up. So here's a few just kind of quick things about the gifts. Number one, don't discount yourself. Nobody is more important than you, even if you don't feel like you're as good at something as somebody down the row from you. Or you're like, man, I'm just pretty new with this. Like, that's okay. Don't discount yourself. You are awesome. Two, don't get jealous of others. Everybody's gifts are different. And uh and sometimes we feel like we look at somebody else, and uh, and there's there can be this kind of jealousy, this comparison thing that will kill a church so fast when we start comparing ourselves to each other. Three, don't box yourself in. Um, just because you have certain gifts doesn't mean that's the those are the only gifts that God wants to flow through you, okay? So some of you are servants and you love be being behind the scenes. You love just kind of helping and just, you know, doing what's asked of you and stacking chairs and doing kids' check-in and taking out the trash. That's awesome. There could come a time that God gives you a prophetic word. That God asks you to come share your testimony, that God gives you the gift of faith for somebody across the room. Don't trap yourself in to one thing or another. God loves to surprise us with the gifts that He's put inside of us. You guys with me? So don't hide behind your gifts. Because that will limit you and limit this body. And the last one is don't judge others. Have you guys ever noticed that people who have certain gifts tend to judge everybody else by their measurement of those gifts? So intercessors tend to get frustrated when people don't pray enough. Servants tend to overwork and then resent others for not serving as much. Prophetic people can sometimes feel like nobody else is as perceptive and discerning as they are. Right? Something like that? Listen, there's certain things we should all be doing. We should all be giving. We should all be serving. We should, the scripture says you should all desire to prophesy. I mean, there's certain things. You should desire this. Some of us will have more grace for some of those things than others. But I think the bottom line again is the beautiful life of God is wanting to explode through us, and it's going to happen in a variety of multifaceted ways. And what I'm excited for is in the life of this body, as we lean into that, we see it as not just as an optional add-on to our spiritual life, but part of our responsibility for showing off the glory of Christ, then it changes everything. Yes? Final word. Here's the final word. And then we're gonna pray. Um and the worship team can come up, but final word here. Spiritual gifts are the risen Jesus sharing his victory with his people so his body can become mature, united, and full of his glory. Mature, united, and full of his glory. Youth, this is for you guys. I'm just telling you, if you look at me, this is for you guys. God has put gifts inside of you that this body needs. Okay? If you're newer in Christ here, this is for you too. This is not for the advanced master class of Christians. You, if you confess Jesus as your Lord and you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, I'm just telling you, man, you are gonna be shocked what comes out. Shocked of what God has put inside of you. For the building up of others. And that's what I'm saying. If you haven't yet accepted Jesus, man, today's your day. Just do it. There's so much waiting for you. So much waiting for you. For the rest of us, man, this is a lifetime of exploration. We just have never come to the end of it. I am I'm always astounded and surprised by how much more God has to give to his people. We started the service with the scripture. No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has prepared for the hearts of those who love him. You guys believe that today? Okay, no, I'm I want to address a couple things before we just pray together. Couple things. The obvious question is, you know, what has God given you for the sake of others? Now, if you want help with that, we we do want to help you with that. In fact, one of the things you can do, this is just an easy entryway step, stepping point. If you've never taken a spiritual gifts survey, there's some really helpful tests you can take. And it just walks you through some questions and helps you identify places where, oh, those are those that might be a gift of God, you know. Um, no, it's the kind of thing you take a test like that. That's not the only way. Sometimes they're, you know, sometimes just a snapshot of where you're at right now, and it's good to get in community with others. But if you go to that QR code on the seat back in front of you and or you just type in the lookout.church slash connect, you're going to see a link that says spiritual gift survey. You can go home, you can print this thing out, and then you can take this survey. And here's what I want you to do. If this is the first time you're doing it, go do that, go home and do that after the service. Bring it with you to the welcome to the lookout class on March 29th in a couple weeks. Bring it with you, print out, and we're going to help you understand what it means and how you can best uh be a part of this body here. Okay? Number two, in a couple weeks, you're gonna start hearing about this new campaign that we have. There's just so many needs, there's so many opportunities to be a part of what God's doing here. We're gonna be rolling out some amazing opportunities just to increase engagement. For some of you, you have so much to offer, and we want to help you find the right places with all of the different places of ministry that are happening. And we're gonna invite you to say yes to what God is doing. That's gonna be coming in the next couple weeks. So just kind of flag that there's gonna be so many things, ways to participate. And some of you are like, oh, I did that, used to do that. But how are you doing it now? Because the life of God is still flowing through. If it's coming in, it flows out. So though that's a couple practical things, real quick. Spiritual gift survey, come to the welcome to the lookout class, and we're gonna accompany you through that. But here's a couple things just for this morning, okay? Is there anything? Let's just do it like this. Just close your eyes around the room. I want you just to become present with Jesus. He's here with the Holy Spirit. Is there anything that is stopping you from walking fully in your gifts? The graces that God has given you. It could just be as simple as like, I just don't know where to start. That's okay. But maybe you've discounted yourself. Maybe there's some fear. You need courage. You need faith to believe that God actually wants to move through you. So just hold that question before the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, is there anything that's stopping me from growing up and the gifts and graces you've given me? The second thing, you may have been through a season in your life where you tried to step out. And the other people in your life at that period of time, or maybe even in the church, or whatever church you were a part of, communicated to you that it wasn't wanted. That whatever whatever you have to offer is not wanted. I just want to tell you that the Father loves you and he loves how he made you. And there could be a wound from times past that ever since then you've shut yourself down from offering yourself again. And I just want to just today, I just want to speak to your heart and say, be healed in Jesus' name. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if that was ever communicated here or communicated somewhere else. Certainly there's always timing and spaces, and there's you know, trying to find ways to work together. And sometimes it's unintentionally communicated that what you have is not valuable or it's not wanted. But I'm saying from the perspective of the Father, you have been created in Christ Jesus for good works. You are his workmanship, and he's proud of how he made you. So just keep showing up, keep showing up. Some of you, you've let your gifts go dormant because you've been distracted by other pursuits in your life. Maybe those other pursuits have to do with using your gifts in other places, but I'm saying, are your gifts being used for the building up of the of the body? And if you're in a season where your thoughts your stuff has gone dormant, you don't even know. It's just been a while since you've even thought about how do my gifts come to bear. I'm just saying, I believe the Lord wants to reactivate you and get you back in the game. Nobody's there's no bench players in the kingdom of God. There's no bench players. There's seasons where we rest in God. There's there's times of seasons of healing, and that's totally true. But it's always for the purpose of restoration and rehabilitation. So I want to do this. I just want to sing together before we just we we pray. And I want all we're gonna have a chance to pray over all of us, but let's do this, let's stand to our feet today. All of this is rooted in the beautiful reality that our Jesus is risen and reigning. Come on, Jesus is king and he is alive today. He has defeated death, he has robbed the powers of darkness, and he's taken the spoils of his victory, and then he just scatters them over his people. That's you, and that's me. So, can we just take a moment, just reminded, that death has been defeated? Where death, where is your thing? We are a new people, and we are alive in Christ. He's the name that we call on, his name has power over life and death. Let's start there today, and then we're gonna pray over us here today. So, here let's do this together. Just as I was talking and just talking about the gifts and the things coming alive inside of us. And maybe again, maybe there's there's things in your life, graces and gift things God's given you that you've set down that need to be come back to life. Maybe they've maybe they've gone dormant, maybe you've been distracted, and they just have not been front and center for you. Um, maybe uh maybe there, maybe you just it's just a new thing. You're like, man, I'd love for something to come alive, and I'd love prayer for that. Here's what we're gonna do. If if you're here today and you're in a spirit as I'm talking, you know, like I want there's a desire in you, I want the gifts and graces of God to come alive in a new way in this season, whether for the first time or again after a long time. I just want you to raise your hand in the air, okay? Raise your hand way up in the air. If you're not standing, stand up, raise your hand in the air. Okay, this is good. This is good. Here's what I want you to do. There's something in the scripture that talks about how sometimes the gifts of God come awake even through as we pray for each other through the laying on of hands. So if keep your hand way up. Listen, this is good, this is a good day for you if your hands up, all right? So across the room, if you see somebody with their hand up, I want you, if you're willing to pray, I want you to go next to them, put your hand on their shoulders, and we're gonna pray for a new activation in the Holy Spirit today. This is what God has for us today. Come on, around the room. There's people with their hands up. Just look for somebody with their hand up. This is awesome. This is good. Thank you, God. Hey, and if you're raising your hand, good job. Thank you for being bold and just confessing that in front of your church family here. I believe God is going to reward this. So if you're praying for them, just use your own words and you can pray for them, and then I'll wrap it up here in a second. But use your own words, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit over your friends here today. Thank you, God. God, I thank you for this church family. I thank you that we are the church, we are the people of God, and you've given us your very spirit. I just join my prayers with the prayers happening in this room right now, and I thank you, God, to reawaken every grace and gifting that you have put in the hearts of your people, Lord God, that nothing would be diminished, nothing would be unnoticed, nothing would go under the radar, God. But we thank you for new life in this body for the building up of your body. We thank you for the fullness of life and the glory in your church, Lord Jesus. So we say yes and amen to your life being made manifest here in us today. In Jesus' name we pray. Come on, somebody thank Jesus here today. Thank Jesus, God. God, we bless every prayer and every prayer that was just prayed, that it would not end here, but it would unfold in Jesus' name. Let's pray. Let's sing. I turn off. Okay, we're good. Come on, one more. Jesus, thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Well, my prayer as we leave this morning is that we remember he is risen, he is reigning, and his Holy Spirit has been given to you as proof of that. So you're not going empty-handed. As you leave these doors, you are going into the world and the mission that God has made you for and created you for. Go with wide eyes, open hearts to everything that God has given you. If you're new here today with us, I'd love to meet you in the back at the Connect with the Sun. We'd love to get to know you. And then after and also we're gonna have our ministry team on the sides of the room. If you need prayer for anything today, you're gonna see people with purple badges around their necks. If you're on a ministry team, I just want to encourage you to go to the sides of the room so we can have you guys ready. But if you need prayer for anything, go to these guys. With that said, I love you guys, be filled with the fullness of God.