Win at Life
Pastor Hollis Moore
Know Your Role
1 Corinthians 12 (MSG)
1-3 What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our I lives. This is complex and often misunderstood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable.Remember how you were when you didn’t know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It’s different in this life.God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say “Jesus be damned!” Nor would anyone be inclined to say “Jesus is Master!” without the insight of the Holy Spirit.
Verses 1-3
- You need to get this! This is important!
- Part of winning in life is understanding God’s Word and how to effectively apply it
4-11 God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:
wise counsel
clear understanding
simple trust
healing the sick
miraculous acts
proclamation
distinguishing between spirits
tongues
interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
Verses 4-7 –
- It’s God who gives the gifting & talent.
- It’s God who assigns your role and responsibilities on the team.
- Everyone, including you, is a part of the team. And when the team wins, everyone, including you, wins.
Verses 8-11
- List of the several roles we have to play on the team (and there are many more that weren’t listed…. worship, hospitality, prayer, etc….)
- If He has so many roles and positions on the team to hand out, he obviously wants you on the team.
12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ.By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body,refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
Verse 12-13
- The body of Christ, The Church, is a team!
- We are on this team because of the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross. (We don’t have enough talent or strength on our own to even be considered for this team. But because Jesus won it all when He raised His life, our lack of skill and strength in our flesh don’t matter. We’ve been drafted onto the winning team)
14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less.A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
Verses 14-18
- It’s time to stop disqualifying your role on the team.
- Even bench players play an important role on the team
- Start owning your position on the team and do it with pride. (Be the best greeter, childcare worker, life group leader, business owner, car salesman, mother, father you can be.)
- We can be proud of our role on the team because it’s exactly where God needs us. (Stop looking at other people’s role as better than yours and trust where God has placed you.)
- Luke 16:10 (NAS) “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.
19-24 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
Verses 19-24
- Be proud of your God-given role, but don’t be prideful.
- Matthew 20:16 “So the last will be first, and the first last.”
- 2 Corinthians 3:18 (TPT) “We can all draw close to him with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus. We are being transfigured into his very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another.And this glorious transfiguration comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
- God’s called each of us to be promoted to greater roles on the team, so don’t forget forget where you came from and where you are going
- 1 Peter 5:5-6“Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time,
25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
Verses 25-26
- No role is too great or too insignificant for the team. We all need each other to win. (Choir, sound, pro presenter, camera operators)
- Being a member of the team is about more than just the individual role, but also the importance of building camaraderie.
- No one has ever one a championship alone, even in an individual sport.
- Stop competing alone, lean into your team.
27-31 You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything. You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:
apostles
prophets
teachers
miracle workers
healers
helpers
organizers
those who pray in tongues.
But it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts.
But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.
Verses 27-31 (Conclusion )
- Accept, with confidence, your role on the team. You were made for this!!!
- You need the team, and the team needs you
- Verse 31 (TPT) “But you should constantly boil over with passion in seeking the higher gifts”
- Your role is important, but it’s not forever. Don’t stop pursuing the higher gifts! The church needs you to be the super star God has created you to be