The Spiritual Gifts Challenge: A Christ Through Our Hands Challenge Program

By Rachel Linkswiler

Discover what the Bible says about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. God provides everyone with spirit-given abilities for their walk of faith. Learn about those gifts and put that knowledge to action in the Spiritual Gifts Challenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643000879

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The Spiritual Gifts Challenge

A Christ Through Our Hands Challenge Program

Rachel Linkswiler

ISBN 978-1-64300-086-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64300-087-9 (Digital)

Copyright © 2018 Rachel Linkswiler

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Dedicated to

my treasured gifts from God:

the Spirit-filled

ladies of the

Stewardship Committee,

who met all challenges with me.

The Stewardship Challenge

This book isn’t the answer to your problems or to your questions. Do you have a Bible? Open it. If you don’t have a Bible, get one by any means necessary. Your soul depends upon it. The Bible has the answers, the questions, the reasons, and the inspirations. I have written this book in hopes that the program we started will inspire you to pick up the Bible or inspire you into service that springs from a God-filled heart. This book is a stewardship challenge. Do you know what stewardship is?

Stewardship is the concept of caretaking, being responsible for the gifts with which God has entrusted us. Showing care for God’s creations and safeguarding the souls with which we come in contact every day. As children of God, we don’t own anything: not the money in our accounts, not the clothes in our closets, not the houses we claim as homes. All that we have belongs to God. The question or test that we are posed is how will we care for what we have been given? Will we use the money in our accounts to further the message of Christ Jesus or for our own benefit? As the Word says in Matthew 6:8, Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. This doesn’t mean that our paycheck needs to go directly to the church or that our house needs to be turned into a homeless shelter, but that we should listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit on how God wants us individually to use what tools we have at our disposal to further the message of salvation and to show His love to other people.

Stewardship is not about tithing and money. Tithing is a by-product of a heart filled with God’s love and a desire to put that outpouring of love into an action that speaks to God. What stewardship means is that as redeemed Children of God, we want to listen and act as the children of the light described in Ephesians. We want to step forward in faith and volunteer to care for something that touches our hearts. Find the passion that the Holy Spirit has given you and inspire others to do the same.

That desire to help others and to inspire is how my stewardship journey began, with an immature Christian stepping forward upon her return to her home church and saying, I will serve as Stewardship chair. I wish I could tell you now how the passion began. The insights I felt had to have come from the Holy Spirit, but I can tell you that I felt I needed to volunteer for a council position. Stewardship was becoming available, and I was passionate about volunteerism. I didn’t have a lot of money but had always felt that serving was the key to giving back to God. Why I felt so passionate at that particular moment, I can only attribute to God, but a history of service had been ingrained in me my whole life. Clearly, I am a product of nurture. If you have met my parents, then you would know that they have service to the church stamped over every inch of them. I have been taught from infancy that you serve the church, your work, and tend your friendships with every ounce of your heart or go down trying.

But at that particular time, I remember there were conversations around church about the need to focus on tithing, and simultaneously, also a concern about how focusing on money would chase people away from the church. I felt very passionately that the answer was focusing on volunteerism. If people are investing their time and their hearts in the church, then eventually they will invest their money. That was the gist of my first pronouncement of my plans in my first council meeting, and I have to admit, I cried bit through my declaration. I can smile now, because my heart was in the right place at the time. I was so intimidated in front of my confirmation teacher and these pillars of the church that sat around the table. I had to describe my plans for stewardship. That was the problem right there. I started out with my plans, but the beautiful result is that to this day, I stand in awe of God’s plans for me and my stewardship committee’s hearts for service.

More often than any of us know, God asks His people to step forward in small every day ways and be brave in His service. I hate talking about myself, but I love talking about how God works through us. We are the body of Christ on Earth. Each of us has been endowed with a unique blend of gifts, and we have been strategically placed right where we need to be to use those gifts optimally. The more we serve by giving of our time, talents, and treasures, the more our spiritual gifts develop. For the days ahead, for our spiritual growth, for our mission as the body of Christ, God has provided each of us with not only His Word, but also with individual gifts from the Holy Spirit.

God prepared us for days ahead. He gave us His Son to deliver to us the gift of Salvation and teach us how to walk in righteousness, He sent the Holy Spirit to guide us, and gave us gifts of the spirit that we can use to carry out His plans for the world. God has thought of everything we personally need for our spiritual journey and did so millennia in advance. So when challenges come your way, remember He doesn’t give us more difficulties than any of us can handle. And our Heavenly Father doesn’t ask us to carry our burdens alone. For where two or three gather in My name, there I am with them (Matthew 18:20). Did you know that we have complimentary gifts? Gather the body of Christ together and like puzzle pieces, God’s plans start snapping into place. With God in our midst and the Holy Spirit moving among us, there isn’t anything that isn’t possible. So when you are asked to exercise your stewardship muscles, trust in God and see what tools and help appear.

For me, like any good little Lutheran that wants to fix the world with God, I did the predictable thing and formed a Stewardship committee. Those were some of the hardest phone calls that I have ever had to make. I knew who I wanted. That’s how the Holy Spirit talks to me, through ideas … mostly on car rides. I am a project person, and I just get these inexplicable flashes of inspiration that absolutely do not come from me. My mother asked me who I thought would be good workers, and I answered, but I saw them clicking together like puzzle pieces. Not because these women were workers, but because I saw their gifts coming together. Barbara had the experience. Elizabeth was the encourager. Alice was the knowledge and wisdom, and Debbie was a discerner. Not that I understood those terms at the time or thought of them that way but that was what I saw, heart, insight, and inspiration. Those were just a few of these women’s many gifts, gifts I had always admired from afar; these were women whose lives inspired me to service. The challenge for me was finding the courage to ask them to share this service with me. I am blessed to say that all of them agreed.

But I have to admit, even though my predecessor handed me a Stewardship program binder that the church had purchased years back, I could not find decent, meaty stewardship materials that fit our ideas on volunteerism. We could not find practical guides on how to educate our church family and encourage action and spiritual growth. Everything we found were abstract or vague notions on being righteous or tithing or caretaking, but nothing that truly inspired action. Our committee realized rather quickly that we would need to develop our own materials to educate and to spiritually stimulate the church family. One of the first major topics we researched at length was the spiritual gifts. I remember praying about and voting on the topic at the time in the committee meeting. I had written a list of stewardship subjects on a piece of paper and asking the ladies where we should start. In hindsight, that meeting was a pivotal moment because the spiritual gifts became the backbone of our future committee plans. But as a minister from our district explained, learning about the spiritual gifts, however fascinating they may be, is not enough. Education alone is insufficient with the Holy Spirit; with stewardship, education must be followed immediately with opportunities for using the gifts that have been discovered. Faith needs to be followed with action. Thus was born the Christ Through Our Hands Challenge Program.

If you meet the challenges posed within these pages, you are not guaranteed to grow spiritually or gain anything but service experience. I sincerely hope that you grow closer to God in your heart and that you develop a better understanding of stewardship in the service of the Father from reading this. I want to share with you what my dear friends and I discovered together. I want to provide you with ideas and opportunities for growth and using your spirit-endowed gifts.

Your Heart Condition

Do you love me? Jesus asked Peter in the book of John verse 21 not once but three times. This is not an easy question. Do any of us truly, fully, and completely love God? Certainly we strive toward that goal, but could we say that we love God completely without anything or anyone else getting in the way? I love Jesus, but am I willing to fill myself with the love that overflows in perfect obedience to that love? Am I willing to step out in faith to follow where that love leads me?

Three times, Peter is called by name and asked directly if he loves Jesus. The number 3 is significant to Peter, because three times Peter denied his connection to God. To his great shame, three times Peter denies even knowing Jesus and three times Jesus replaces the denial with love. ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him a third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep’ (John 21:17). God not only replaced Peter’s shame and sin with love, but He replaced ours too. He suffered and died to save each of us from our sin. Christ opened the door directly to God for us. He took our sins upon Himself and anointed us as siblings, children of the heavenly Father.

Do we love Him? We worship Him on Saturdays and Sundays, sing praises to our Heavenly Father, but do we love Him fully, completely, and deeply? My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs His love, at night His song is within me—a prayer to the God of my life (Psalm 42:6–9). How deep is our devotion? Though we are often discouraged by this world, we should anchor ourselves in Jesus. Each day we should remember the magnitude of the love that surrounds us, washes over us, and the debt that was paid for us. Remember and the deep love that we have will call out to the deep love of God in the midst of the storms of this life. We should strive each day to remain connected to God in love and in prayer. Faith isn’t a choice we make once and it just miraculously sticks. Faith is a daily decision of trust and belief in our Holy Father.

In 1 John 2:15, the scripture says, Do not love the world or the things of the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever. Our love of God should not be distracted by love of other worldly goods. Everything we have been given in this life comes from the Father. We can enjoy and appreciate the blessings, but we cannot allow them to come become our focus or hold our love. To what do we cling in our dark hours, our sins or our Savior? The world is passing away, but God’s love is permanent.

How does God say we should show our love for Him? Three times Jesus asked Peter in John 21 if he loved Him and each time, Jesus followed it with a command for Peter to show His love to others. Feed my lambs. Care for my sheep. Feed my sheep. Jesus was ordering His disciple to love. If you love, put your love into action. The first step to service is love of God. Everything hinges on the condition of your heart. In Mark, Jesus explains that the most important commandment, Is this: ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.’ Search your heart for the love of God. Find it