The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1359, titled "How to Function in the Body" A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.
Question
I was wondering, are there conflicts between the different spiritual gifts? I mean, like do you have problems, like if you have an exhorter and a teacher?
Answer
Well you may have problems. You have problems wherever you have people, you know. Wherever we are, there are problems. But the idea of the spiritual gifts is simply that the Lord uses that gift in a unity, in a unifying way. For example, your spiritual gift can be operated carnally in the flesh, then you'll have problems. But if you're walking in the Spirit and the Spirit is ministering through you and the Spirit is also ministering through everybody else, then there will be a unity that the same Spirit will create. But there will come discord.
For example, we find often that a person will have a problem and you'll get three different people trying to tell that person what to do and they'll have three different perspectives on things and everything gets confused. We've had this occur many times. And we realized that then somebody's out of whack with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit isn't the author of confusion. So it may be that if you would use your gift in a fleshly way, not really walking in the Spirit, that there could be confusion. But if the Holy Spirit is really working through these gifts and we're yielded to Him, then there's going to be unity and unifying is going to take place.
The thing you need to do is not worry about what your gift is, just worry about walking in the Spirit, living a Spirit-controlled life, confessing your sin and yielding to Him and the Holy Spirit will operate the gift through you whether you know it or not. And then as you begin to recognize it, you can kind of get in on the blessing.
Question (continued)
There is one other question on this that I'm interested in
and that is if you do have more than one would one be more
predominant?
Answer (continued)
It is possible that it could be. We don't know from the
Scripture. The Scripture doesn't give us all information about
spiritual gifts but it can be that one gift is more predominant.
But it's hard to measure what we mean by predominant. For
example, a speaking gift appears to be a more dominant gift than
one that isn't a speaking gift, like showing mercy or something
like that. But it isn't more important. And it may not be used
in terms of opportunity and time, it may not be used anymore. It
just appears to be more dominant because of its nature. For
example, I have the gift that is obviously a dominant type of
gift. In other words, I stand up and I tell everybody these
things and so that tends to dominate where there may be a whole
lot of you here this morning who have other gifts and I can't
even see those gifts because they're just ministry gifts rather
than vocal gifts. That doesn't make any difference between them
in terms of usefulness or in terms of frequency. Now in the life
of a single individual there may be variation. There may be a
certain time in my life that I am more useful to God in the gift
of teaching and other times I am more useful to God with the gift
of administration. So it's hard to be analytical about it. One
may seem to dominate for a time and another one may come to the
fore. But God uses them by His Spirit as He wills. I don't
think you need to worry about that.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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