I hope that, after spending the last four days examining what the scriptures say about spiritual gifts, you’ve come to realize the high and holy privilege that is yours when you serve as a vessel through which the Spirit of the Lord works! In fact, all spiritual work is God’s work and can only be accomplished by God’s Spirit working in and through us, thus making every gift (not just the more overtly supernatural ones that people tend to focus on), truly miraculous (and equally important)! Even Jesus, our example, said in John 5:19, “ Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” 

But the Father moves at his own pace! Which means that we who are longing for him to move often find ourselves in a position of waiting! But, take heart, for as Isaiah told us above, our God is a God who “acts for those who wait for him.” (Is. 64:4) So what might this look like?

Well, for example, it can look like us rushing off to use the gifts that God has given us in our own strength (which violates the very definition of spiritual gifts that Sam Storms gave us on Monday of this week: “Spiritual gifts are nothing less than God himself in us, energizing our souls, imparting revelation to our minds, infusing power in our wills and working his sovereign and gracious purposes through us. Spiritual gifts are God present in, with and through human thoughts, human deeds, human words, human love.”). And, sometimes, we have to wait for that energy, revelation or power!

To put it differently, God wants us to walk (in every area of our lives) in total daily dependency upon him (as opposed to ourselves). So, waiting upon the Lord means coming before him in prayer, surrendering our agendas in favor of his, and then asking to be made ready for his service in the day to come. As we realize and confess our utter weakness and helplessness to do anything spiritual and then present ourselves to him for his filling (see last week), God provides us with the strength and power that we need for the mission he has for us in the coming day (2 Cor. 12:10, Romans 12:1-2). This is a very real transaction that we don’t always necessarily feel, but that God performs for us as we lay down our “selves” for his service and will!

So, make the commitment to approach your spiritual work in this way! And then, as you step out to do the Lord’s work, you will sense that God is providing what you need in connection with it, and is teaching you more and more how to trust him for the results. Let’s not just settle for what we can do for God! Let’s look, instead, for him to do through us what only he can do! For, he is able to do “far more abundantly than we could ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20)!