Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Paul Washer - Ascertaining your Spiritual Gift

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Paul Washer, the founder of the HeartCry Missionary Society, and asks him, "How do you ascertain your spiritual gifts?"Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with Paul Washer and ask him how we can ascertain and employ our spiritual gift. Every single Christian has been given a spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit that they are to use in the context of the local church for the equipping of the saints and the evangelization of the lost. And yet, some people don't know what their gifting is or even if they do, they don't know necessarily how to employ that within the local church. And so I ask Paul Washer for some help in this very important subject. Let's dial in. Well, thanks for sitting down again. I wanted to ask you, you know, we've been told that we are to employ our spiritual gift in the service of Christ, but maybe many today are wondering,

well, I don't actually know what my gift is. How does someone go about ascertaining their spiritual gift? Well, first of all, let me tell you how you don't do it. And again, back in the 80s, there were all these almost kind of psychological exams, questionnaires that you could go through. And in the end, you would kind of discern. Do you like leading people? Yes. Who doesn't like leading people? That's a part of our sinful nature, wanting to dominate. And so, you know, the first thing you need to ask yourself when you see things like that, did the first century church have something like that?

No, absolutely not. They did not. So how did they discern their spiritual gifts? Well, let's begin with the foundation. And it's this. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. The way that we come

to discern the will of God is by reading the will of God, by reading the scriptures. The scriptures are the manifestation, not only of the character of God, the person of God, but it is the inerrant manifestation of the will of God. So if I saturate my life in the Scriptures, then I'm going to be able to discern the will of God more clearly on a personalized level. So you have to start there. A person shouldn't start seeking for their gift. They should start seeking God, seeking to understand the will of God and submit themselves to that will. Now, once they do, there's something that, especially young people, when I tell them

this, they go, no, it can't be that way. And I go, really, it is. The first thing is, what do you aspire to do? What do you delight in? There are some young men that become Christians, and you don't even have to tell them. They go out in the street with tracks almost immediately and start witnessing to everybody on the planet. Let's say that their friend is converted at the same time. Yeah. And he doesn't do that. Does that mean he's not spiritual? No, but he's studying the word like four hours a day. Yeah. And so what you have to do is ask yourself, what do I aspire to?

Because it says in 1 Timothy 3 that if anyone aspires to the work of an overseer, okay? So what do you aspire to do? But then, as we also see in 1 Timothy chapter 3, you don't just aspire to be an overseer and become one, but you submit yourself to the leadership and the congregation, and they begin to judge also, do you have the gifts? And if you do have the gifts, that's still not good enough. Are those gifts brought to maturity through study and through nurturing? So what I tell people is this. Begin in the Word of God. Ask yourself, what do you aspire to do in the congregation?

And then talk to the leadership, talk to people and say, do you see this in me? Could I have an opportunity to begin doing this? Now, I've seen people that the moment they're converted, they go directly to the kitchen. I mean, it's what they love. They pick up a broom, they start sweeping. Other people who to have a gift of mercy, reaching out to broken people. The more that your gift involves the proclamation of the word, the more you must realize that that gift must be nurtured and it must be watched over by spiritual leaders, or you can get yourself in trouble.

You may have the gift, but you jump into the ministry far too quickly, and you do more damage than good. That's helpful, Paul. Now, I'm not even sure if I'm thinking about this the right way, but I remember being in Nepal a couple of years ago with some new believers and small church on the Himalayan plateau, and I just thought, no one here wonders what their spiritual gift is, because they wake up and they recognize a need, and then they do it. Meaning, like I met with pastors there that had been hiking for days to come to a Bible conference, and they said, I asked them,

how long have you known you've been called to be a pastor? And they just responded and said, no one else was. And talk to me about, I wanna make sure I'm even thinking the right way, how needs presented within the body of Christ sometime even help serve as a catalyst for us serving where we might not even had previously thought we were gifted, but it's a need. Well, everything I've said thus far, what you just said doesn't contradict any of it yeah that's just one more way yeah you recognize the need yeah i remember thinking that i was going to i never thought about being a missionary yeah um i was very evangelistic but i thought for sure i was going to stay in the united

states and i was invited to go down with an old missionary in Peru just to visit for about a week and a half. And the moment I got there, I couldn't believe there was such a need. And that need drove me. So it's not one thing. It's many, many things. Do you feel like the Lord often uses what burdens us to help us even figure out where we're gifted? I mean, like if that's something God has put on your heart where you go, man, I can't sleep at night. Now, of course, that's subjective.

Totally. But it is appropriate. One of the ways I look at it is like this. I knew a guy in seminary. He was very timid. But he studied Scripture. He consumed Scripture. He was so merciful. And he was always seeming to reach out to hurting believers. Me, I was studying Scripture, but I was running around with street people preaching on the, you know, and, and what I did in one sense, and we know this, if you're out there preaching on the streets or whatever, everyone thinks you're more spiritual. The fact of the matter is I

couldn't hold a candle to this other guy who was so timid. It was difficult for him to witness with regard to spirituality. It was just our gifts. It's just our gifts. And I was burdened to do that. He was burdened for something else. It's the same way in prayer. You know, I'll pass thousands of people on the street sometimes when I'm in a major city, but I can tell you there have been times as I'm walking through there, I will see a certain person and become so burdened for them that if they're walking away, I'll at least pray for them. And if I can catch them, I'll witness to them. Now that is subjective, but it's still a part of our Christianity. Paul, last question, just in regards to spiritual gifting. And we've talked about this elsewhere. What's the importance of a church being full of

people that are leading that have different giftings um do you know how for example the pendulum swings like here's one extreme yeah and instead of coming to center we will sometimes go over to the other extreme and hopefully as as we mature, we come back. I'm kind of seeing that in Christianity now, especially among those who consider themselves sort of reformed or something like that. And that is so much is being placed on the pulpit. So much importance is being placed on the pulpit. And rightfully so. We would both agree with that. But what's happening though,

is I think we're also losing the idea of Ephesians 4, 11 and 12, of the entire body being equipped according to its gift and calling to minister. And so it's absolutely essential. It's absolutely essential. Every person in the body of Christ has a place and a gift to minister. I did this a few times in churches. And so I'm teaching on like Ephesians 4, 11 and 12. And so I'll ask a little boy, you know, nine or 10 years old. I said, is there a little boy somewhere in the congregation? Little boy raises his hand. I said, come forward. Of course, he's a little scared. I said, come forward. He comes forward right in front of the pulpit. I said, now turn around and look at the congregation. So he turns around and looks at the congregation. I said, now I want you to do something that normally you would really get in trouble for.

What's that? I want you to run to the very back of the auditorium i want you to turn around and run back i'm gonna see how fast you can do it and he'll look at his mom like am i gonna get no and he'll take off running and come back and he's so proud i said man that was fast now i want you to hold one leg behind you with your hand and do the same thing and he comes back and it's like difficult. And he's standing there. I said, now hold that leg. And I go, now I want you to grab the other leg with the other hand and do it. And you can see him looking like, if I do this, I'm going to fall. I can't grab both legs. And then I look at the congregation and I say, listen,

I took away two of his members. And not only could he not run as fast, he couldn't run at all. He couldn't even move. I took away two of his members, and I think that in our right emphasis on expository preaching and the importance of the pulpit, we need to get back to the idea of there's a gifted congregation, and they all need to be ministering according to God's will. You've raised up, I guess, one more question that's fitting is how do pastors then encourage that type of mindset amongst the congregation to go, hey, we're all members of the body? I think, of course, teaching on who a Christian is, number one. But there's another thing. When I started in Peru after a few years with a church plant, the church really grew. And it was mainly

a lot of new believers. And there was an old, well, he's old to me, he was probably in his 50s, a minister, a Peruvian minister. And he said, I want to talk to you tomorrow about idolatry. And I said, okay. I didn't know what he meant. So he sat down with me and he says, you need to be careful of leading your people into idolatry. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, when someone comes to you with a problem, what do you do? I said, well, I open the word and I counsel them. Exactly, he said. Shouldn't they have gone to God? Should they always just first think about coming to you?

And it really got me to think. And this is what he said. He goes, when someone comes to me, now, he said, this does not apply if the counseling is critical. He said, but when someone comes to me and says, for example, they're struggling with marriage, the first thing I ask them is, in the weeks that you have studied the Word and prayed, what has God showed you in the Word? And he goes, most of them say, well, I didn't do that. And he said, well, I want you to go back. Again, if it's not a crucial moment, I want you to go back for a week. I want you to study the Word with regard to marriage. I want you to pray, and I want you to come back and show me what God showed you in His Word.

And he says, then they'll say to me, well, I don't even know where to look. And he says, then I pulled out a sheet with all the verses on it about marriage. And I know that seems like I'm making a long circle to answer your question, but the whole thing is, is we have got to get people going to the Word, going to prayer, meeting with God. We've got to teach people how to be in the Word. We've got to spend more time teaching them how to study the Word. We've got to teach them more time with more earnestness regarding what they need to be doing in their own life, their relationship with God, their relationship to the church. They need to see that you do not come to church just to sing and receive a message, but that it's a body, and we all have a part in it. And I think it's just teaching. It's just teaching. For example, when I'm at Grace Community, I've never really heard them make

just a big deal all the time about gifts. But when I go to Grace Community, I see so many people from all walks of life with all kinds of different gifts doing all kinds of things. It's because the Word of God is preached. You see? That's so helpful. I want to be able to use my gifting in a way that honors God, and I think a lot of people do, but I think even figuring it out fundamentally. And sometimes I think to your point, they overthink even what that means because they've missed studying and they've missed pursuing the revealed will of God,

which is going to translate to just practical elements of servants. It applies to other things. Like I have two sons that are thinking about their careers, you know, and I always begin with, what do you wanna do? I mean, what do you desire to do? And sometimes people think, well, that's just too easy. Well, it's not the whole answer, but it is part of it. Yeah, yeah, Harry, my friend says, what do you delight to do that's a blessing to the body?

Right. He says, someone loves to sing, but it's hard for people to listen to. It might not be a gift. You might enjoy it. That would be me. Yeah. But what do you love to do that's a blessing to the body of Christ? Well, Paul, thank you so much for your time. Oh, it's my privilege.