Touré Roberts - The Gift - Part 3

For the past few times we’ve gotten together, we’ve been discussing the gift, and we now know that we’ve learned that the gift is the Holy Spirit. One of the things I mentioned on Sunday was that maximizing the gift, maximizing the Holy Spirit’s function in our lives, necessitates three things. The first is awareness. You can’t walk in what you don’t understand; you can’t walk in what you don’t know you have. If you don’t know you have it, then how can you walk in the power of it? There was a passage that said, «My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge,» so the first thing we need is an awareness of it, an understanding of what it is. We began to talk about that last Thursday. Not only do we need to have awareness, but I believe that maximizing the gift also has to do with impartation. That’s why I felt moved on Sunday to teach about the Holy Spirit a bit more, but more than that, I spent the majority of my time praying for you, laying hands on you, and anointing you with oil because impartation is very much a part of it. Some things are taught; other things are just caught. Are you tracking with me? Some aspects you can be taught, and we will go into a teaching tonight. Other things, some advantages, you gain through teaching, while other things you just have to be around; you have to be close to it. It has to rest on you and settle on you. I believe the Spirit is maximized not only because of awareness, as I mentioned, and not only because of impartation, but also through knowledge. So I believe it; I’m just here to share about it on Sunday. If you were here on Sunday and you got prayed for, holler at me! If you were here and received prayer and feel a difference in your life—if you’ve not been the same since—holler at me! It’s real; it’s a reality. I can’t explain it; I’ve been through it. But that’s how it works. Jesus drew people near so that He could touch them, and that’s why even when He was gone, they still looked like Him. They had His scent, they had His conversation, they had His perspective, and they had His power. In fact, if you study the book of Acts, there’s one place that says you can tell that these men had been with Jesus. Have you ever seen that in the scriptures from the pastors before? I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want my life to look like. I want people to know that Jesus is real because of me. I want them to say, «There’s something about Him; Jesus is real because of how real He is in their life.» I’m not trying to promote myself; I’m not interested in that. I can’t heal you; I can’t save you. I’m still working on my own, hello! But I know somebody who can. So tonight, I want to talk about—remember we started in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 last Thursday? I want us to get back into it. What I like about 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is that it begins to talk about some of the ways, in particular, that the Holy Spirit expresses Himself through believers. I want us to see it and know it because here’s the thing: the majority of you, when you come to faith and experience the power of the Holy Spirit and start walking in the Spirit, you are actually already sensitive; there are already things working in you. What teaching does is help you identify the Spirit working in you so that you can, from a place of knowledge, begin to maximize those abilities. Are you tracking with me? I want to talk about what some of those abilities are because they’re in you. As we discussed last week when we first looked at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, one of the big misconceptions about chapter 12—and I believe it’s because sometimes we get lazy in really digging into the text and understanding the thoughts and intentions of the writer—is that we thought the gifts of the Spirit were something that everyone has a certain gift of, like you have the gift of prophecy by the Spirit, you have the gift of healing by the Spirit, you have the gift of working miracles by the Spirit. So you have all these different gifts, as if they were individual gifts. They are not gifts; they are expressions, manifestations of one gift. I take my time to say this because there is more to you than you think. It’s not just about saying, «Oh, Jesus, I love you, and I’m going to heaven one day.» That’s wonderful; it’s great! But spiritual maturity is understanding what you received when you got Jesus. You received more than just salvation, more than a place in heaven, and more than a friend—you received power! You have power that is not just for you, but that is supposed to flow through you and affect change in the lives of people around you. That’s who you are, but I can’t do it if I don’t understand it.