AUGUST 14: “Unity-in-Diversity in Spiritual Gifts”

In today’s devotional text, Paul gives a list of nine (9) spiritual gifts, thus, indicating the diversity of spiritual gifts poured out into one church. God is the giver who gave the gifts, and works through them. The gifts are diverse, so are the ministries and the activities, but by the same Spirit, the same LORD, the same God doing His work through the gifts, the ministries, and the activities.

In every local church today, there are different “gifted offices”, such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor-teachers, according to Paul in Ephesians 4. These gifts are given by the same LORD who also directs their services. In verse 7, Paul reveals that the Holy Spirit is always present through these diverse gifts in the church.

The main concern here is that those who function in various capacities through these gifts must imbibe the concept of unity in diversity. This simply means that every member of the church must discover his or her area/s of giftedness and stick to it/them faithfully. The evangelist must stick to his evangelistic duties; the pastor focuses on his pastoral assignments; the teacher teaches; the prophet prophesies and so on. This is the beauty of ministering in churches with diverse gifts of ministry.

However, in most cases, the reverse is the case. The teacher wants to take over the office of the prophet; the prophet wants to become the pastor and vice versa. The outcome of this situation is usually chaotic and catastrophic while the church ends up losing out from the blessings imbued in the diverse ministry gifts. May God help members to discover their area of giftedness and stick faithfully to them for the equipping of the church.

PRAYER: Father, help each member to discover his or her areas of giftedness for your service in Jesus name, Amen.