It’s called a Sermon Companion. It’s helpful to me for connecting even more with Dr. Stanley’s messages. male announcer: “In Touch,” the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “The Holy Spirit: The Giver of Gifts.” Dr. Stanley: When you’re called upon to serve the Lord, do you oftentimes feel very, very inadequate to do that? Well, probably that’s one of the reasons that many of you will not serve Him, simply because you feel so inadequate, you feel so incapable, you so you feel so ill-equipped, and so you say,
“You know, I just can’t do it.” Well, I can understand that, but let me remind you of something. When you refuse to serve the Lord God, what happens is you miss the blessing here, you miss the reward in heaven, and thirdly, you hinder the work of God here on this earth. Well, the Lord Jesus knew about that, and that’s why He said in the 14th chapter of John, 15th, 16th chapters, that when He left, He would send the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who would be in us, with us, and upon us, that He would abide with us forever.
So all of us who have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us have a helper to enable us, to energize us, to equip us, to grant us the wisdom and the knowledge and the understanding to do whatever God has called us to do. Remember the promise? He says, “He that calleth thee will also do it.” Well, that’s what I want to talk about in this particular message today, because one of the manifestations and one of the works of the Holy Spirit is to equip us to do whatever God has called us to do.
And one of the ways He does that is through spiritual gifts. And so that is the theme of this message, “The Holy Spirit: The Giver of Gifts,” and this is one of the messages in the series on the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. And I want you to turn, if you will, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, one of the most familiar passages of scripture, and yet probably one of the most controversial ones because of our feelings and attitudes and differences of opinion about spiritual gifts.
