Deep down, we know that each one of us is different. But sometimes, it’s a bit of a challenge to figure out where we fit in – who we are and who we aren’t. But this is such an important thing to get a handle on.

What I am and I have a confession to make, I’m now 49 years old and it took me probably the first 42 or 43 years of my life to figure out what my gig was. What do I mean by that? Well I believe that each of us have a specific talent or aptitude or gift or motivation or call it what you like, that God has handcrafted into our DNA and that gift, that’s what I’m going to call it, is the thing that fits us to the particular life that He’s prepared for us to live. The two fit like a hand in a glove.

Think of it, if you want to nail two pieces of wood together you use a hammer, not a shovel. If it’s a hole that you’re wanting to dig, well you’ll be grabbing the shovel and not the hammer, makes sense. Well if God is who He says He is and He loves us the way He says He loves us, then it stands to reason that He’s deliberately made each one of us uniquely different to fit the plan He has for each of our lives. The problem is most people like me spend half if not all of their lives not really knowing who God made them to be and what He made them to do.

Why is that? Well I think we live in a world that tells us ‘You can be anything you want to be, you can do anything you want to do. It’s all out there for the taking, all you have to do is set your mind to it and you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do’. Sounds pretty good huh? Sounds like the sort of thing that you or I would love to swallow hook, line and sinker and I guess, in the affluent parts of this world where everything seems to be laid on, every opportunity and possibility, well why not? But feed that notion to a young teenager sitting in a refugee camp in Somalia and see how easy they find this stuff to swallow and then when you scratch around in that the more you realise it’s a load of rubbish.

You see I have no doubt that people are capable of doing the most incredible things and overcoming adversity and all sorts of stuff but Berni here is 174cm or 5 foot 9 inches tall. ‘I want to be a world-famous basketball player’. Hmph, that’s going to fly. Berni has short dumpy little legs, ‘I want to be a world-class sprinter’, yeah right! Berni can’t sing for nuts, well sort of okay but not really, ‘I want to be a world famous singer’, gotta tell ya none of those things is going to happen, why? Because plainly, Berni is not cut out to do those things.

Now it’s true physically but it’s also true emotionally and spiritually, we all have different personalities and motivations and there’s a reason for that. God is the God of the most amazing diversity. My favourite of all the statistics is this; the number of different species of beetles that God created is not 5, 10, 100, 5,000 or 10,000, God created 360,000 different species of beetles and I look around at my friends and family and they’re just as different. Okay, there’s some common threads but, but we’re also incredibly diversely different aren’t we?

I want to read you one of the best explanations of this that I ever read. It was written 2,000 years ago by a chap called Paul in a letter to a Church in Rome. Have a listen; it comes from the Bible, Romans chapter 12, verse 3. He says:

By the grace given to me I tell each one of you, don’t think of yourselves more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given you. Just as each body has many members and those members don’t all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. 

We have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If a persons gift is prophesying, well let him use it in proportion to their faith; maybe it’s serving, let him serve; if it’s teaching, let him teach; if it’s encouraging, encourage people; if it’s contributing to the needs of others then give generously; if it’s leadership, govern diligently; if it’s showing mercy, do it cheerfully.

It’s great isn’t it? There’s kind of three bits to what Paul is saying here. The first is how we think about ourselves then he uses that beautiful analogy of the body, then he lists the seven different giftings. Now I’m no psychologist but those who are tell me that that list of seven corresponds remarkably to the different personality types that the experts talk about today.

Now we’re going to look at the second and third of those, that analogy of the body and the different giftings over the coming weeks. Today, I just want to concentrate on the first thing that Paul says; how we see ourselves. Listen again to what Paul has to say:

By the grace given to me I say to each one of you, don’t think of yourselves more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given to you.

How easy is it to think of ourselves more highly than we should? I’m an expert in that, I used to see myself as God’s gift to the universe, gifted at everything. The problem is no one is gifted at everything and I had to learn that the hard way. There are some things that I am just not good at. There are some things that I am good at and a whole bunch that I’m not. Out of that list of seven different giftings there are two that I really relate to. That means there are five on that list that just aren’t me.

These seven giftings are often called “motivational giftings”, lets just quickly go through them again:

The gift of prophecy.
The gift of serving.
The gift of teaching.
The gift of encouraging.
The gift of giving.
The gift of leadership.
The gift of mercy.

Yeah, they’re called “motivational giftings” because they’re gifts; I like to think of them as gifts of the heart. There are certain things that flick my switch, there are certain things that really motivate me and others don’t and probably those others are the ones that motivate you. We need to be realistic about that Paul says, some people are academic, others aren’t; some people are gifted musicians, others are gifted sportsmen or women.

The problem is, if we’re unrealistic, if we set our hearts on something that really, truly deep down we can’t do, we’re not motivated to do, well we’re going to labour very hard, very very hard and it will all be in vain. See I used to work really hard at things that I didn’t enjoy and all of a sudden I discovered one day, that’s because it’s just not me to do those things. Now what a dumb thing to spend your life doing, sitting at a job that you’re just not cut out to do. No, Paul says look:

Think of yourselves with sober judgement.

You know what that means? Accept who it is that God has made us to be. More than that enjoy it, revel in it. You know something, once I got a grip on my expectations what I discovered is this, I really like who I am. In fact I love the things that I am and the things that I’m not. It’s such liberation finally to love who God made me to be. So many people spend their time wishing they were someone else, well guess what? You’re never going to be. It was His choice to make me who I am; to make you who you are. It’s time to fall in love with that.

We all know that each one of us is different, but it can be hard to cope with those differences. And so sometimes, we try to go it alone – but, well, that was never really God’s plan.

I want you to imagine a human body for a moment but not the whole body, rather all the different parts of the body laid out in neat order on a table, all the organs in different bowls. The liver and the heart and the spleen and the kidneys and the lungs and the eyes and all that stuff. The heads over there, the torso’s over here, let’s not get gruesome about it, let’s just be clinical and detached. All the parts neatly laid out in a row, well-ordered, logical, everything’s there. Oh, except one thing, it doesn’t matter how well laid out they are, how neat and how logical, there’s no life in them.

Well that’s obvious you might say and it is but let’s just stop and think for a moment and ask ourselves, why is that the case? Well that’s obvious too, because each part depends on the other. Without the heart the eyes can’t see, without the liver, well none of the other parts can live. They depend on one another and they have to be connected in the right way for the whole body to survive and to function. That’s exactly right!

I truly believe that God has made each one of us with a special gifting or ability or motivation, whatever you’d like to call it. I see so many people who go through life and they just don’t have a handle of what that is and so they’re working in a job that they’re not cut out to do and that’s a tragedy. That’s how I lived the first 40 or so years of my life. See I had no real handle on the particular things that I was gifted to do.

I saw myself, arrogantly, as God’s gift to the universe so I decided I could do anything that I wanted to do and so I found myself struggling to try to do things that, in my heart of hearts, I just didn’t want to do and believe you me, I speak as an expert when I say this. That’s an awful way to live your life, it is really hard work, there’s no real satisfaction.

So many people are living these dis-satisfied lives and one of the main reasons is that they’re trying to do things they were never cut out to do but the flip side of that is that, as well as not enjoying the things that they’re doing they miss out on the joy of doing the things that they were gifted to do. The things that they’d succeed at, the things that would bring them joy and satisfaction and that ultimately would bear fruit and bless other people all at the same time. See, it’s a double whammy. What is it that makes us think that we can do it all on our own? What is it that makes us think that somehow we don’t need other people?

You know I used to look down at other people that didn’t have the same giftings and abilities as me and my favourite saying was this, “It’s so hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys” and sure, perhaps those people weren’t quite as capable of doing the things that I’m gifted to do but they had such amazing talents and creativity to do the things that God made them to do, things that I could never dream of doing and so, because of my stinking attitude I missed out on the fruits of their labours in the areas of their gifting. Does that make sense? I mean, it’s a real waste.

Look at how the Apostle Paul talks about this very thing in his letter to the Roman Church, chapter 12 beginning at verse 3. He says:

By the grace given to me I say to each one of you, don’t think of yourselves more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with a sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given to you. Just as each of us has one body with many members and those members don’t have all the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.

We have different gifts according to God’s grace, if your gift is prophesying, well prophecy in proportion to your faith; if it’s serving then serve; if it’s teaching, teach; if it’s encouraging, well encourage people; if it’s contributing to the needs of others then give generously; if it’s leadership then govern diligently; if it’s showing mercy do it cheerfully.

Paul starts that off by saying, “Look, get real, get a grip, judge yourself soberly. Get a handle on what we are and what we aren’t. Think of yourselves, not more highly than you should but with sober judgement.” Now that was definitely me, I used to think of myself much, much more highly than I should because I was full of myself but I love this second bit, this analogy of the body.

What I was talking about at the beginning of today’s program, all those body parts laid out neatly on the table, well organised but with no life. See in this competitive dog eat dog world that we live in, that is such an apt picture for so many organisations. Companies, government departments, sporting clubs and yep, even Churches. I can’t tell you the number of Churches I have been in where people aren’t operating in their giftings.

You sit and listen to the preacher and you think to yourself, “That guy shouldn’t be up there preaching at all”, when all along God has a gifted preacher that He’s called to that Church sitting in yonder pew over there. “Oh no, but you see that’s not the minister.” Perhaps the guy in the pulpit is more gifted to pastor people than to preach and yet for some reason so many of God’s Church’s struggle to have people operating according to their giftings.

Listen again to what Paul writes:

Just as each one of us has a body with many members and those members don’t all have the same function, so in Christ, we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to God’s grace. 

Whose choice is the giftings? Are they the pastor’s choice? Are they, “Do I get to choose my gifting”? NO! We each have different gifts according to God’s grace, its God’s choice. So God gives you and me different giftings, you the pastor, let’s say, and me the preacher and we decide to have you preach and me pastor. Well that’s a brilliant plan, someone tried to do that to me when I was an elder at a Church, exactly that. The head of pastoral care decided to have a roster, each elder would have to pastor so many people and I refused, she was horrified. She was pastorally gifted so I said to her, “Well, tell you what, I’ll do that and then you preach every other week.” And she said, “I couldn’t do that”.

I encourage you to get a handle on your gifting and in your work and in your service and in all that you do, flow in that gifting, major in what God has made you to be. You know, there’s such a joy in that, there’s such a joy in being the part of the body that actually you and I are and then we let others excel in doing the things that they’re gifted to do, things that we can’t do. This attitude of “I’m Mr or Mrs I can do it all”, is pride, it’s exhausting, it doesn’t work ever, full stop, end of story.

It’s really interesting but every now and then, you stumble across someone who seems to see things so clearly – they unravel complex situations and steer a way forward. That’s a real God Given gift.

Have you ever met a person who seems to see things so clearly? Lets say there’s some confusing, foggy, politically charged situation at work and there’s this one person who just takes a close look and then that person just tells it the way it is and not only that, they help everybody to chart a course out of that mess and you look at the person and you look back at that ugly situation and you turn back to the person and you think to yourself, ‘I wouldn’t have seen that in a million years but you know something, they’re right. That’s exactly what’s going on here, that’s exactly the way forward. How did they see that?’

One of my former business partners in 20 years in our IT consulting practice, was like that. Graham just had this amazing ability to see things clearly and judge things fairly and look at options and plot a course forward with such incredible wisdom, it’s a real gift. In the Old Testament there were men called “prophets” who spoke God’s wisdom into confusing and ugly situations. They were often referred to as seers, it’s a real gift.

A prophet is someone who sees things clearly and then has the ability to speak wisdom into that place. The world has its prophets, often they’re journalists or social commentators or sociologists. They have real insight, they see what’s going on in society and they tell it the way things really are but in God’s family, a prophet is a person that speaks God’s will and God’s wisdom into a specific situation and prophets are alive and well in the New Testament as well. It’s a clear gifting and calling and it’s one that I relate to.

You see, before I became a Christian I was an IT consultant and as that career progressed more and more in the role of Independent Advisor, I ended up mediating between warring parties and calling it the way it was without fear or favour and helping people to work through their disputes and find ways around road blocks and I absolutely loved doing that. So many people thought I was nuts and then, when I became a Christian the first pastor of my Church, when he heard me preach a few times, he said, “You know something, there’s a real prophetic edge to your teaching.”

And at Bible College, I remember the principal of the Bible College, Barry Chant, was taking a subject called Ministry of the Holy Spirit and he said, “Right, tonight we’re going to prophecy.” I laughed at him and so we did, we sat down and we started praying with people and I was praying for a student and I started praying really specifically and this fellow student was in tears because it was exactly what he was struggling with and then 2 days later I had a phone call from a friend at Church and she said, “Look, I just felt to give you this verse.” Out of the blue, Romans chapter 12, verse 6 which says:

Prophesy according to your faith.

I thought, “Oh okay God, maybe you’re doing something here.” See I wanted the gift of healing, I thought the gift of healing would be so much more fun but God sovereignly chooses giftings and this is the one He has given me. Now I use if very carefully and very responsibly, we’ll talk about misuse of this particular gift of prophecy a little bit later.

So what does a prophet look like, what are some of the characteristics of a prophet? Well they tend to quickly and accurately identify good and evil and they hate evil. Prophets often see things as kind of black and white, there is not many grey or indefinite areas for a prophet and they easily see the character of a group or individuals. They encourage people to turn away from the bad stuff they’re doing and produce good fruit. They believe the acceptance of difficulties will produce positive personal brokenness.

Prophets tend to have only one or two close relationships, they view the Bible as the basis for truth and belief and action and authority. They boldly operate on spiritual principles. They’re frank, outspoken and they don’t mince words, gee and I thought I was shy and retiring. They’re very persuasive in the way that they speak and they deeply grieve over the sins of others. They’re eager to identify their own blind spots and help others see theirs too. They desire, above all else, to see God’s plan worked out in all situations.

They’re called to intercession, they pray for other people and situations. They feel the need to verbalise or dramatise what they see. They’re often very introspective; they can have really strong opinions and convictions. They have strict personal standards and they desire to be obedient to God at all costs. Now that’s kind of a list of 20 characteristics of what someone with a motivational gifting of prophecy has. A gifting, a desire to speak out, to see clearly what’s going on and then to speak God’s will into that situation.

But you see, each area of gifting has some down sides too, There’s always a flip side of the coin and some of the key ones for a prophet is that they can be judgemental and blunt. Sometimes they forget to praise partial progress because they’re so goal focused they just don’t see partial progress as success. Sometimes they’re pushy in trying to get other people to grow and mature spiritually. Sometimes they’re intolerant of the opinions and views that differ from their own (I’m not like that, really). Sometimes they struggle with self-image.

See that’s what someone with a prophetic gifting is and in each of the giftings we’re going to go through over the next few days on the program, we’re going to look at some characteristics so that maybe you can see it yourself or someone you know in that but also look at some of the problem areas for that gifting because there always are, there’s always a down side to our personality. Perhaps you recognise yourself in there or maybe you think, “oh yuck, that’s definitely not me.” But there’s someone you know, someone that you’re close to, someone that’s been trying to tell you some things and you’ve been pushing them away because you didn’t want to hear.

Maybe God has bought someone with a prophetic gifting into your life and you know, so often God wants to tell us stuff we don’t want to hear. So often God wants to tell us stuff that challenges us or drags us out of our comfort zone or we think it’s scary and so we push Him away but Paul makes it really clear, that:

One of the gifts that God sovereignly bestows amongst His people is the gift of being a prophet.

Someone who sees things through God’s eyes, someone who often hears God very clearly and then speaks out what God is saying. Now I have seen this gift misused, absolutely. I was in a home group once and a pastor, who was convening the home group said, “I have a prophecy for you from God.” And I listened to him and I thought, “That doesn’t sit right with me” and some of the other people, in the group, came up afterwards and said, “You know something, we don’t think that came from God” and that’s why we always have to discern when someone says, “Look, I’m speaking a prophetic word, I’m speaking on behalf of God”, when someone says that we just can’t take that at face value, we do have to discern it and yet several times through my life I’ve been mightily blessed.

There was a man called Mark who walked up, I’d just become a Christian, just gone to Bible College, really felt God wanted me to speak His word and during a worship time at Bible College, Mark just came up and said, “Berni, I’ve got a word for you from God. God said He’s not in a hurry.” And that little prophecy gave me peace because God had another eight years to run before He moved me to do what I’m doing now. That prophecy just gave me some peace.

I want to encourage you to identify the prophets in your life. If you feel you have a calling make sure that it’s from God and then exercise it in faith, humbly, always under His hand and consistent with His word. If it’s someone you know encourage them to use the gift because it’s God’s gift to the rest of us.

We all have people in our lives who are the most amazing servants – they just have a knack for helping us in practical ways. And even though that’s a real God-given gift, sometimes we don’t really value them the way we should.

I want to take a moment today to tell you about my mate, Bill. Bill is the caretaker at our Church building and he lives on site there with his family. Now Bill would have to be the most practical man that I’ve ever met. Whether its setting up a room for a function or unblocking the blocked gutter up on the roof or organising this or fixing that, whatever it is he takes a look, click, click click in his head and he has it figured out and it’s done before you can blink an eyelid and if he’s not doing something inside the Church building, he’s helping the traders set up their stalls in the mall outside the front door. The desire to serve and fix practical problems just pulses through his veins.

Now I like to help other people but I have to tell you, I stand in awe of Bill. As I said, he is just the most practical man that I have ever met. I’m sure you know people like him too, maybe you’re one of them. In my book, the “Bill’s” of this world are worth their weight in gold.

This week on the program we’re working our way through a little series that I’ve called Discovering Your Gig in Life. I love the picture of that, that the apostle Paul paints in Romans, chapter 12, he says:

Don’t think of yourselves more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with a sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given you. Just as each one of us has many members and these members don’t all have the same function so, in Christ, we who are many form one body and each member belongs to the other. We have different gifts according to the grace that’s been given to us.

So what Paul is saying here is, “Look, get a grip, be realistic, look at yourself with a sober judgement and figure out what your gift is. We all have different gifts, we’re like a body, we depend on each other” and then he goes on to list those gifts. He says:

If your gift is prophecy then prophesy in accordance to your faith. If it’s serving, then serve; if it’s teaching, then teach; if it’s encouraging, well encourage people; if it’s contributing to the needs of others, then give generously; if it’s leadership, govern diligently; if it’s showing mercy, do it cheerfully.

So in this list, the second one after “prophecy” is “service”. Now imagine that, 2,000 years ago the Bible is being written and he’s writing about my mate Bill. Now get this, service or being the caretaker doesn’t feel like a particularly spiritual thing to do does it? It’s not up there with being a prophet or a preacher or an evangelist or something yet it’s the second one on Paul’s list and I have to tell you, we would be lost without these people, wouldn’t we? I mean without the servants in this world it would be pretty ugly.

So what does a servant look like? Are you one of these servants or do you know someone that is one of these servants, they’re gifted to serve and help and be practical. They easily recognise practical needs and they’re often quick to meet those needs. They really enjoy manual projects or jobs or functions, they keep things in meticulous order, they’re a “detail” person with good memory.

They love showing hospitality; you know they’ll stick with something until it’s been completed. Someone who’s a servant has a hard time saying ‘no’ when someone asks them for help. They’re more interested in meeting the needs of others than their own and they love working on immediate goals rather than on long-range goals. The way that they show love for one another is in deeds and actions so much more than words.

A servant really needs to feel appreciated, now we’re going to talk about that because I actually think we don’t, we don’t appreciate the servants in our world enough. They tend to do much more than they’re asked to do; their greatest joy is in doing something that is helpful. They don’t want to lead other people in projects, they just want to get on and do it. They tend to have a very high energy level and they can’t stand to be around clutter. See servants are often real perfectionists and they’ve used serving to be of primary importance in life. They’d much rather do the job than delegate it and they love to support others who are in leadership.

So maybe you see yourself in those giftings of a servant but they have some problem areas too. As we go through and look at each of these seven gifts, I’m going to share with you not just kind of the characteristics of that gift, the good things but also some of the problem areas. You see, a servant can be really critical of others who don’t end up helping out with obvious needs because they just don’t get it why I don’t get it and sometimes they’ll neglect their own family’s needs by being too busy helping others. A servant can become pushy and interfering in their eagerness to help and they find it hard to accept being served by other people, isn’t that interesting? And a servant is easily hurt when they feel as though they’re not appreciated.

Well maybe that’s you or someone close to you. My wife Jacqui is someone who is a gifted server and I have to tell you, when I go through that list, the vast majority of those characteristics are what she is like. She thinks of doing things for people that I would never dream of doing and you know something, I think it’s exciting to have people like that in our lives and what’s really important is to recognise this, this gift, this act of serving, it’s from God. It’s His plan to make us different and He puts the “Bill’s” and the “Jacqui’s” of this world into our lives to glue the community together.

See serving, it doesn’t sound very spiritual does it? It doesn’t sound as important as being the preacher or the leader or the high flyer but in terms of creating a sense of community, God has a plan. See God takes these servants who show their love by doing practical things and that tends to bind people together, it makes things tick over smoothly.

The person who serves is a bit like the glue that holds people together and especially for those of us who don’t have this gifting; I think it’s so important that we recognise the incredible value of those people who are gifted in this way and also that we cut them a bit of slack every now and then, when they seem a little bit grumpy because others aren’t servants like them. You see, the servant finds it really hard to understand why it is that the rest of us just don’t get it.

God has an amazing plan. I love the fact that Paul, in his list of motivational gifts, sure he starts off with a prophet, the one who speaks for God, the mouth piece of God if you like but he follows it straight on with the one who serves on God’s behalf. The hands of God; God through word and through deed. I love that, God is an awesome God, He has an awesome plan, don’t you think?

God’s plan is to make each one of us different and next week on the program we’re going to continue looking at the other giftings that the apostle Paul lists in his list of what people call “motivational gifts” in Romans, chapter 12.

Where would we be in life without teachers. Not just in our schools and colleges – but people two are gifted as teachers in the school of life. In fact they show up in all sorts of weird spaces – and sometimes, we can miss them.

About 34 years ago, when I was still in high school, a woman came into my life who utterly transformed and changed me. Her name was Mrs Ramsey and she was my maths teacher. Now Mrs Ramsey was a short woman, black hair, very deliberate in her movements and if my memory serves correctly, somewhat severe but she taught me something more than just mathematics, she taught me that I had an ability to learn.

Somehow this little woman connected with me and flicked that switch of learning inside me in a way that nobody had done up to that point and that had a profound impact on me because from then onwards I had a hunger, a desire, a passion to learn and pure mathematics was one of my majors in my first university degree. I was blessed and I went on to excel in my education in a way that I simply wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t for Mrs Ramsey. Now I’m sure that we can all look back at the teacher in our lives, whether in an educational setting or more generally in the school of life and think, “You know, if it wasn’t for that teacher I wouldn’t be who I am today.”

When you think about it, life is all about learning. People whose hearts and minds aren’t open to learn, well they end up stunted emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. When you watch your kids develop from that very first day when they head off to school right through to when they graduate from high school and they perhaps go on with some tertiary studies and eventually they become valuable, useful contributors to society, you stand back and you look at that and you think, “That is an incredible process”.

You think about it, most of these kids spend so many years just in their education systems. That’s on top of all the things that they have to learn about life; emotional things, economic things, the cold hard realities of that big cruel world out there and we all go on learning.

I for one learn so much from the people around me, the wisdom of those who are close to me; the inside of a journalist in the newspaper or a Bible teacher on TV or radio. I often watch a man called Bayliss Connly on TV; he’s just a great Bible teacher from Southern California. The guy gives me spiritual food. Learning is something we do all our lives and where would you and I be without our teachers?

Currently we’re stepping our way through a little series that I’ve called Discovering My Gig in Life. We’re looking at the different giftings that the apostle Paul lists in Romans, chapter 12. We’ve already looked at the first 2 in the list of 7; the prophet and the one gifted to serve and today, today we’re going to look at the teacher.

Well, what does a teacher look like? How do you pick a teacher? How do you recognise a teacher? Here are some of the characteristics of someone who is gifted to teach in God’s family. Teachers tend to present the truth in a logical and a systematic way. They often validate the truth by checking out the facts, that’s how they’re motivated. They love to do study and research, sick isn’t it? But some people do. They enjoy word studies and they prefer Biblical illustrations rather than true life illustrations, they get really upset when scriptures are used out of context.

They feel concerned that The Truth be established in every situation. They tend to be a lot more objective than subjective. They easily develop and use a large vocabulary. They emphasise facts and the accuracy of words. They check out the sources of knowledge of others who teach. They prefer teaching believers to engaging in evangelism. They feel that Bible study is foundational to the operation of all the gifts we’re talking about in this series. They solve problems by starting with scriptural principles.

Teachers tend to be, well pretty intellectually sharp characters, they’re self-disciplined, they’re emotionally self-controlled. They only have a select circle of friends. They have very strong convictions and opinions based on the investigation of facts and they believe that truth has the intrinsic power to change.

But no one’s perfect, I mean you know, they’re all great characteristics and maybe you recognise yourself or someone else in those characteristics but, but every area of gifting has some characteristics that are, er you’d call them down sides and here are a few for a teacher. They tend to neglect the practical application of the truth. They can be slow to accept the viewpoint of others. Sometimes they develop this pride in their own intellectual ability. They can be very legalistic and dogmatic and they can be easily side tracked by new interests.

Well who do you recognise? Now you maybe a gifted teacher even though you don’t teach in an educational setting or you don’t teach in a Church setting. Is your motivation along the lines of those lists of characteristics? Or do you know someone, someone who’s tucked away out of the normal, not in a place where you’d expect to find them? See, teachers aren’t always in schools, teaching is a gifting, it’s a motivation of the heart that God put in there from the very beginning.

Yesterday I told you about my friend Bill, this gifted servant who is a practical doer. Bill is the most practical person I know on the planet and the desire to serve in practical ways just pulses through his veins; it’s the same with teaching.

I have a very good friend by the name of Mark who lives in the US. He lives on acreage about half way between Lincoln and Omaha in the state of Nebraska. He and his wife have 11 children and they home school their children. Now they’re my heroes, I tell you. I think anyone with 11 children would be pleased to see them head off to school during the day but Mark and his wife Precious, they home school their children.

Now Mark worked in a financial role in the International Ministry Division of Back to the Bible, the ministry that gave birth to our ministry Christianityworks, here in Australia over 50 years ago and I always thought of Mark as an accountant because that’s what he did, that’s what I saw him do, he was certainly gifted in that area but it turns out, his first love, his first love is teaching and when I found that out and I looked at this set of characteristics, I thought, “you know something, that’s exactly who he is”.

Today he’s the Bible teacher at his local Church. Now I was amazed, I said to him, “Mark, if you’re a gifted teacher, if that’s where your heart is, how is it that you’ve spent all these years, over 20 years, in this financial role?” You know what his answer was? He said, “The reason I’ve done this is to empower all you gifted Bible teachers in all the different countries where Back to the Bible has a ministry and there are over 70 teachers in 25 languages in this ministry”. And he said, “To be able to get out there and do what you do and teach the word of God”, he said, “I’ve been doing this, this financial role.” What a sacrifice!

See we find teachers all over the place. Under stones and behind logs where we’d never expect to find them and often we miss them. They are different to the rest of us but where would we be? Where would I be without the Mrs Ramsey’s in this world? Where would you and I be without the gifted and brilliant and passionate teachers who teach us the things of God and His ways in our lives?

I want to encourage you, search out the teachers whom you know, those who are gifted with the motivation of teaching and draw close to them and spend time with them because I tell you, when we do that we learn so much.