STUDY: THE
MINISTRY GIFTS by Kenneth E Hagin
Lesson III WHOM GOD CALLS, HE EQUIPS
A. The ministry gifts are
people — people who are called of God to the full-time ministry.
1. Philip is called an
evangelist.
2. Peter is called an
apostle.
3. Paul is called a prophet and
a teacher first, and later on an apostle.
4. Other people in the New
Testament are called ministry gifts. B. Those people (ministry
gifts) whom God calls, He equips with spiritual gifts.
1. These ministries are not
based on natural gifts, but on spiritual gifts — supernatural
gifts.
a. Not realizing this, results
in the Church and the ministry getting away from the supernatural into the
natural.
2. When a person is born again,
God has in mind what He called that person to do. With the new birth, one is
equipped with certain spiritual talents to equip him
to stand wherever he is set in the Body of Christ.
3. Being filled with the Holy
Spirit enhances that.
Personal
experience: I
preached two or three years without the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, yet the same anointing came on me to preach then as it does
now.
4. God equips people with
the spiritual gifts necessary to stand in the office He calls
them
to.
a. Laymen can have spiritual
gifts operating through them. But ministers will be equipped to minister
regularly with those gifts necessary to stand in the office they are called
to.
b. The same spiritual gifts
operating through the ministerial level will carry a greater anointing than it does operating
occasionally in a layman's life.
Example:
Tongues and
interpretation or prophecy operating through the ministerial level carry a
greater anointing than when operating through the laymen level.
5. Education is good — but we
need more than education. Ambition, if it is legitimate (seeking that
for which Christ has apprehended) is good — but we need more
than ambition. We need a ministry equipped with supernatural
gifts.
C. The
ministry gifts consist not in name, but in power.
1. It is easy to call yourself
something, but that doesn't make you that.
You
can sit in a garage and call yourself a car, but that doesn't make you
one.
2. You can call yourself a pastor,
but that doesn't make you one. You can call yourself an apostle, but that
doesn't make you one.
The
proof of the pudding is in the eating. In other words, the ministry to which you
are called will be evident in your life. You will have the divine enablement
or
endowment to stand in the office to which you are called.
D. All the work of the ministry
comes under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
1. Jesus Christ is the Head of His
body, the Church. The Head and the body are one; therefore, Jesus directs all
operations of His body from the right hand of God the Father.
MARK 16:20
20 And they went forth,
and preached every where, THE LORD WORKING WITH THEM, AND CONFIRMING THE
WORD with signs following....
a. Notice it was their Lord
working with these early disciples.
b. It was as their Lord and not
merely as their Helper that Jesus worked with the disciples. Although He is our Helper,
through the Holy Ghost, He is also
our Lord.
2. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the Head of the Church, a. He is the One who gave,
b. He is the One who calls,
c. He is the One who
equips, d. Let Him
do it.
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