You have a gift from God. You are a gift to the church from Jesus. You do the gifts of the Holy Spirit as he chooses.

The Bible describes these varieties of gifts in Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Corinthians 12-14. Ordinarily, when you get gifts, you rip off the paper and discard it.

With God’s gifts, the gift wrapping is as valuable as the gifts themselves, except you don’t have to rip it up to get to what’s inside.

The first time I taught a class on gifts, I pointed out three subjects that also appear prominently in all of these chapters.… Read the rest