Beyond The Message: Don't Leave the Gift Unopened

Welcome to Beyond the Message, a midweek space where we continue the conversation from Sunday's sermon, unpacking context, exploring your questions, and growing as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.

Well, welcome back to Beyond the Message, our weekly opportunity to unpack a little bit of what we covered on Sunday here at Windsor.

And today I'm joined on debut by Pastor Heather.

Yeah, never done this before.

Never.

A longtime listener, first-time talker, or something like that, which is good.

On Sunday, Heather preached to us a message called the Grace Gifts Given to You.

All part of our Holy Spirit series.

We've been looking at the spiritual gifts.

But first, before we get into that, and we'll be looking at some things today, like how we have wisdom around the spiritual gifts, how do we go outside our comfort zone with the spiritual gifts and some matters like that.

But the first Lee, before we sort of get into those heavy topics, Heather, this is your first time.

Yes.

So for those that don't know you beyond perhaps what we see on a Sunday up front or behind the infodesk or around about in the various things that you do, tell us a little bit about your own background, I guess your faith background.

Um I think you mentioned on Sunday you've been part of this church for 30 years, but to be fair, you're a little bit older than 30.

Just a little bit, yeah.

Tell us a little bit about, I guess, who is Heather and what is your sort of, I guess, church background.

Sure.

Um I am uh originally from a good Presbyterian family, and uh mum and dad went every week to church and we went with them.

Um it was a bit of an unusual church because uh I remember one of our pastors didn't believe in the virgin birth and didn't believe in uh the fact that Jesus rose again.

Um and our worship song was the answer is blowing in the wind.

Um so um Well that's interesting.

Yeah.

Um and uh and mum and dad uh yeah, um were I think sincerely Christian, but um there were some big gaps in their in their experience of Jesus and and walking in uh with God.

And uh I think we had a situation where um my sisters got involved with Youth for Christ, got involved with uh putting on rallies, if you remember.

Rallies were big sort of concerts back in the day, you'd have mite non-Christians too.

Um, and mum and dad went along to support them, to see what they were doing, and met a guy who said, Hey, we're running something called a Life in the Spirit seminar.

Would you like to come along?

So mum and dad went along uh and it completely changed their lives, not just their faith, but their lives.

And it was super exciting for me.

I was only 10 at the time, um, and it was so, so good to see uh people who had been just struggling in their relationship with each other, struggling in their relationship with money, struggling in their relationship with how to hold relationships, um, and suddenly so much happier, so much joy.

And so that that little um group that had prayed for mum and dad and seen such change in them, uh started a church called Up Heart Christian Fellowship.

And so mum and dad became part of that.

Dad became an elder because he only had one wife, which was good.

Um, and uh then um uh from there we went from setting up every Sunday in school halls to having our own building.

Uh and as I got older and grew through my teenage years, um, I did struggle with the fact that only men could talk, that only men could lead.

That was something that um I was like, um, but but I would like to be part of that.

I would like to be involved in the leadership and and why not?

Uh and uh we went on to uh be asked, or I was asked to be part of a Youth for Christ team that ran clubs called Campus Life Clubs.

They were youth clubs to non-Christian kids.

And boy, um that was so good.

Team of people, so much energy, so much time poured into running fun events, camps for um, yeah, for for non-Christians.

And then seeing these guys become Christians, super exciting, really, really good.

And so um I did my teacher training, but also stayed involved in Youth for Christ.

And then uh beyond my teachers' training and registration, um, I said I'd like to give some time to this.

You know, you lived off faith support, so your friends and family and church uh sort of gave you a little bit of money as well as working part-time, and they asked me to lead a club, which was a bit of a struggle, to be honest, because I had been taught women weren't supposed to lead and speak.

Um, and so they really helped me, the Youth for Christ leadership team with the theology around women and leadership, um, gave me some great stuff to get my teeth into.

So there was a lot of freedom, a lot of belief, a lot of encouragement in my leadership, which I I was so appreciative of.

And then um I found this lovely man called Alan Amy, and he was also in youth work, loved young people.

Uh, and uh we got married.

So um when we got married, we moved from uh two different parts of the city to be in the same space, good thing.

And um we wanted a good youth group we could bring our um unchurched kids to, and so that was a Baptist youth group, you know.

There was um Marilyn uh Withers and her sister Dawn um back in the day.

This is in Lower Hutt.

Lower Hutt.

Yep, and um and so yeah, from there we did some really lovely uh stuff with that church, just such good people in that space um who supported us, not just financially, but uh more importantly uh with our young people and their faith journeys.

And then um we sort of started to feel a bit of a a change, a shift, and we became the youth pastors here at Winds Park back in ninety seven.

So um last century.

Last century, yeah, just just we had two kids, gorgeous kids by then, uh came up here and were youth pastors here and kind of haven't left since, really.

Yeah.

Done a range of different things over that that 30 years as well, but still around.

Still around, still here.

Well, I did actually I had a a year and a bit at Northgate Baptist.

That's right.

Um, but my husband never left Windsor Parks.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you're a great asset to Windsor, and that longevity says something about you guys and your heart for ministry.

So we're really blessed.

So great to have that little bit of context and background for those that don't know a little bit of your story, and you shared some of that on Sunday as well.

So let me just recap uh what I kind of recall from Sunday's message.

The title was called The Grace Gifts Given to You.

And you spoke from 1 Corinthians 12 on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and explored how I guess God gives gifts to every believer.

Not for our own benefit, but for to serve others, to build up the church, to participate in what God is doing in the world out of what God has given to us.

We were encouraged, or you encouraged us, to discover what those gifts are, to step beyond fear with those gifts and allow the Holy Spirit to work in ways in our lives that are both practical but powerful as well, and particularly within it comes to the supernatural.

Um, so it was about discovering, growing into uh and allowing the spirit the space to work in our lives.

Is that kind of a fair summary?

Yeah, I I think that's a very good summary.

Yeah, thanks for great.

Nothing you want to add to sort of oh, so much I could add.

No, um that that's it've got to sum it up.

That's great.

So that you really wanted to speak out of that passage when we were putting the series together because spiritual gifts are very close to you.

Why is that?

Why have you um sought to, and you do this as part of your job anyway, but that's who you are as a person.

Why have you sought to sort of encourage people to grow in their spiritual gifts?

Why is that so important to you?

Um, I think for a whole lot of reasons, it's it's really important.

I think two of the primary ones is that it actually grows your own relationship with God.

So um when I was asked to lead a club and I really struggled with that, um, to actually go through the theology of that, to go through the pain of um of having to lead other leaders, um, of having to organize stuff, plan stuff, um, having to pray hard outs, uh, be part of a prayer group for our young people, to disciple our young people.

My faith just grew in leaps and bounds, you know.

So to use your gifts, you grow in your relationship with God, you know, really reliant on Him to give people, to give strategy, to give finances, to give wisdom.

So um, oh, it just brings you when you're using your gifts so much closer to God.

Uh and there is a challenge, there's always a risk in in serving anywhere, you know, it's obviously easier staying to stay at home and watch Netflix.

Um, but wow, the loss.

And and that is it too.

The the loss is for the kingdom of God.

You know, there's young people today, they're not young anymore.

Sorry, they were our young people.

They are now um men and women who are leading churches all over New Zealand, you know.

Um, and so I uh um because we stepped into that space, because we used our gifts, um, there are people now who are free.

There's people now who know Jesus, who are leading others, who are um helping in the um uh in the non-profit sector, you know, helping other families amazingly.

So yeah, I uh by using our gifts, not only do we grow ourselves and our relationship with God goes deeper and richer, but boy, it ministers to God's world because the gifts are all about for others.

They're the gifts are all about for um loving on others, growing others, caring for others.

Yeah, so that's great.

I can hear the passion in your voice with that.

One of the analogies that you use was that God gives us a gift, and often those gifts remain unopened if in us if we don't sort of allow them to be opened.

Uh somebody wrote into us with a question, I guess a little bit about this.

Um they wrote, I loved what Heather was sharing and the challenge she put before us.

Have you opened your gift?

So simple, yet something I haven't done.

Um looking forward to the workshop next weekend, which is the Discover Your Design workshop.

You can give a little promo for that a bit later.

Sure.

With that being said, I'm curious about what guidance the Bible gives around using the gifts.

I know we use his gifts to further his will and kingdom, but for example, 1 Corinthians 14, 27 to 28, it talks about having an interpreter present when talking about tongues.

That's what that's about.

Sure.

How does it it apply to us today?

I guess how does that apply to us as far as the wisdom and discernment of using the gifts today?

I guess that's what someone's asking.

Right, yeah.

Um, I I mean, particularly around that that the question around tongues and interpretation.

Um, 1 Corinthians 14 covers that quite a lot.

Uh and it does say there, you know, that um the Corinthians church was kind of going nuts on tongues and no interpretation and it was kind of wild uh and nobody was sort of learning anything.

Um uh and uh there's two two um sort of roles that tongues has.

One is it it can be spoken out in a public public place of worship, which is kind of like a prophecy, but in um uh in glyconasia, so in a heavenly language.

So in that situation, if it's in a public space, you need interpretation.

But then the other one is that tongues is also for private use, for your for your it's one of the only gifts that actually is for self-edification or building yourself up in the Lord, which uh is also in 1 Corinthians 14.

Um and and Paul said, I wish that I I pray more in tongues than anybody else, you know.

I wish you would all pray as much as I do, but that was in his own space.

So if you are speaking in tongues in a public situation, then yeah, um, you need an interpreter and uh and not go nuts like they did in Corinth the church in Corinthians.

Um but I think um I guess around the the the issue around discernment and having wisdom with your gifts, um, my dad uh had the gift of casting out demons.

There's a gift for you.

Um but he just didn't go off and do that on his own.

He had somebody who apprenticed him, you know, he had somebody who worked along with him, uh, and he went they went places together, and the person who was much more experienced um sort of trained him in how to do that.

But in a lot of our gifts, like gifts that are service gifts, not particularly um the sort of supernatural manifestation gifts, um, you know, they're they're really practical and really easy to use, you know.

I come along to church and join the connect team, you know, but um but or um s serve somewhere I think there's there's um the modelling of apprenticeship, but there's also the um modelling of getting on and doing it and growing it as you do it, you know.

So I I don't think I would have ever learnt as much as I did unless I just got on with leading uh a club for unchurch kids.

But I also think um we've got a a course coming up called Naturally Supernatural, uh starting at the beginning of July, July the 6th, um, on Monday nights, and they have a great sort of framework for how you use the supernatural gifts like prophecy, uh like prophecy in tongues.

And it sort of goes along the lines of um love, it must be done out of love.

Now that came was very strongly from when you preached on 1 Corinthians 13.

Um, the other one is it needs to be encouraging.

Um, and then uh if it's not encouraging, you know, if it's a a uh sort of a a pretty negative word, then you need to be incredibly careful about it and weigh it up with somebody else before you say something to the people.

Um it needs to be humble, you need to come from a place of I'm here to serve you, and then it also needs to be accountable.

And um, I think that's really good.

There's a great scripture that says the um the spirit of the prophet prophet is subject to the prophet's plural, and it means that when you prophesy, what you said is accountable and needs to be weighed up by other people.

And so, yeah, there are there are different ways that you use gifts with wisdom, but the biggest one is doing it out of love.

The biggest one is doing it out of a heart of I w I'm caring for this person, I'm stepping into this space of stepping out in faith and having a word for them because I want to encourage them, because I want to see them grow, because God has good things for them.

Um so yeah, that's yeah, it's great.

On Sunday, you only sort of briefly touched on some of the gifts, the two that sort of people like, oh, they're interesting ones, uh, martyrdom and celibacy.

And they're not sort of the ones that we promote a lot or seem to get a lot of air time.

Yes.

But interesting in thinking about it, like I have a relative who has been a missionary in a very troubled country, and I would say probably has the gift of martyrdom.

She knew that she was risking her life, she knew there's a real chance that she could be killed for what she was doing.

She was fine with that, and I think it's a gift for that.

Hence, like, who do we get from mentors around that one?

But you go back into scripture and the disciples obviously um had that as well, and it probably is a gift, right?

I I don't know who you go to for celibacy, maybe it's for another podcast or something like that.

Um a lot of the gifts, supernaturally speaking, there'll be a lot of people.

We're a wide church, and there's a lot of people that come from a lot of different backgrounds.

You come from a different background than what I come from, and you know, that's the joy of who we are.

There will be some people that have been around a little while that might have experienced, I guess, some sort of hurt when it comes to the use of gifts when love maybe isn't the predominant emotion involved, and you know, churches today, you know, we're a we're a Baptist church, obviously, but hands up if you're a you know a born and bred Baptist, there's not many.

Um, and so there is a spectrum of people.

And so there is sometimes people that have been hurt um in churches, yeah, and probably hurt here too, let's be honest.

We're not perfect, it probably happens from time to time.

How do we deal with that?

How do we sort of get through that so that we can find a fuller expression, I guess, of the gifts without the fear of hurt that often surrounds the subject?

Yeah, um, I I I think it's amazing, I and I think it's just human nature is that we focus on the negative, you know, we focus on the things that have gone bad, uh, rather than the the amazing situations like my family situation where God bought so much freedom, you know.

Um, but I I think that I mean the one I was thinking of particularly when I was preaching was somebody had just shared with me the week before uh a woman really wanted to become pregnant.

She wanted to have a have have kids and she wasn't falling pregnant and hadn't for years, and someone prophesied over her and said, You will have a baby.

And she believed them.

Um and she never did.

And just deep, deep hurt from that, you know, and um I I think uh when I think about that, I think that probably that person that gave the prophecy um did do it out of care, you know, did do it, but it wasn't something from the Lord, you know, and so it is um having to learn to forgive, to let that go, you know, um, and and uh um and knowing that we're fallible.

Uh I also really like the model that again is coming up in naturally supernatural, is that people having safe places where they can practice and be accountable and be allowed to fail in in small groups, you know, as they learn to step into this group, you know, into the into these gifts.

So I I think those are those are some of them, but often with hurts, you know, um uh it's it's so easy to they become a real focus.

And again and again the Lord invites us to I mean I have heard lots of crazy things that have happened with the supernatural gifts, you know, and I think people talk about them because they're crazy.

Um but the I think that there is a situ there are many situations where I just don't understand why that happened, you know.

I I I I do not send to the spiritual realm.

Um, I can't understand, but Lord, um, I know that even this you can use for good.

So Lord help me to forgive, Lord help me to move on, help me to know that the gifts are predominantly um doing amazing things.

You know, Jesus did miracles, the disciples did miracles, and what did miracles do?

Miracles actually spoke of the power of God to bring change, that he is transcendent, that he moves outside uh in of the heavenly realm and breaks through into the earthly realm, you know, and for our good and for the good of the church and the good of his kingdom.

Yeah, I love that.

I'm old enough to have grown up when I started testing my faith watching a bit of early morning TV, evangelists and things like that.

Um, and one of them was Benny Hinn.

And I remember watching Benny Hill and thinking, oh, what's going on here?

Boy, these are some pretty crazy days.

Um, but you know, you also don't want to underestimate what God's doing, and so there's kind of this mix of emotions a lot of the time.

Learning to, I guess, test my faith and what I thought about that at the time is all part of growing into that space as well.

And you know, the longer you go through life, the more you see and experience, and I guess you grow into fuller appreciations that we can't control everything, that God does do stuff well beyond us, even when things maybe seem a little bit crazy.

I I guess forgiveness, I spent a lot of time last week talking about forgiveness and how difficult that is, but how important it is for us to find freedom in those spaces.

When it comes to exercising the gifts, unwrapping the gifts that we've been given, a lot of people would say, it's a really uncomfortable space, it's a new space for me.

What would you say to someone that's maybe new to this and you're wanting to encourage them as we are wanting to encourage people to discover all that God has for us?

What would you say about getting outside your comfort zone?

Yeah, I mean, I think the one of the things that really holds us back is fear.

Um there's two kinds of fear.

There's a fear of looking like a f failure, and there's a fear of of mankind, of of others and what they'll think of me and potentially being rejected.

Um and uh and I I think, you know, I think of that scripture that says a perfect love casts out fear.

Or God hasn't given me a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind.

And I love that love is in there, you know.

Um, so it is um Jesus said, you know, you will speak in our tongues, you will um do greater miracles than I do.

So the expectation is that we will do miraculous things in his name.

Uh, we will cast out demons in his name.

So um I think it is it's uh finding people that you trust that you can listen to and walk with along alongside that.

And it's also stepping out.

You know, I I when I was first prayed for to receive the Holy Spirit, I was only 10.

Um and now I think about it.

I at the time I thought I knew everything and I was, you know, wow.

But um, but looking back, uh I was prayed for at 10 to receive the gift of tongues.

Um, I didn't at the time, but the next day I was peeling the potatoes and I thought, wow, I could do, you know, I could, you know, and started speaking in tongues.

And so um it doesn't have to be in freaky spaces, you know, or scary spaces, it can be just in your own quiet time with God, um, listening for what he has to say, um, having words of encouragement and then trying them out with people.

So I I think that that if I was Satan, I think a great strategy would to make people afraid, to make people cynical, to make people focus on the negative, you know, because uh there is so much good that what God wants to do with using all the gifts, not just the supernatural ones, but all the gifts.

Yeah.

That's a great answer.

Yeah, the two things that you've touched on, you have two opportunities coming up for people to kind of connect into.

Yeah.

This is your chance.

This is my chance.

Do the sales pitch.

Do the sales pitch.

Okay, well, this coming Sunday, um at uh ten forty five in the second service in the core five in the second service.

No, so same time as the second service.

Thanks, great.

Um, yeah, poor Caleb.

That'd be a struggle.

Um it would be uh in in the Ko-Fi room.

We are just doing something that takes an hour and it looks at how God wants to use all of you, you know, um your gifts, and it there's a little test which isn't scriptural or written in stone, these are your gifts.

It's just looking at what God has done in your life and and seeing from that.

Um if it's a test, is it like a pass or a fail?

No, no, there's not.

No, it's just a gradient, you know.

Um so you get a question and you scale it one to three, you know, and that um decides, you know, where where where things land.

Um and then, but it also looks at your passions.

What are you passionate about?

Because God made you, you know, it looks at your pain, what have your struggles been?

God can use that for good as well, and it also looks at your skills in your life, you know, so God can use that as well.

And um, I've seen that in my life, you know, I've got teaching skills from being a primary school teacher.

Um, I'm passionate about evangelism, people coming to know Jesus.

Um, and I've also had pain in my life of not feeling good enough, you know.

So God uses all of that to want to reach out to other people and to encourage you to to use how he's made you for his good.

Um, so that's just for an hour at uh at uh this coming Sunday, you know, discover your design, um, sign up, don't sign up, just show up.

But uh so something that we do regularly, so it's not just this Sunday if someone can't make that.

Yeah, it's it's want to term, so yeah.

And uh and it's just honestly, there's a couple that uh we who did it just last time with me, and it's so encouraging to see them stepping into now the two of them uh mentoring other young couples, and uh boy, that's incr exciting to see.

So um there's lots of situations from that.

People come along, go, ah, I get it, all right, you know.

Um, but I do want to say it's more than just learning what your gifts are, it's actually doing something with it as well.

And that will be a revision.

Yeah, and that would be some an ongoing conversation that we will have, yeah.

So discover your design and your second opportunity?

Second opportunity, it's all on the website under up and coming events.

On the 6th of July, we're starting Naturally Supernatural, which is with um Alex and Hannah Absalon, and they are really, really chill.

Um, they're English, so um, you know, keep calm and carry on.

And um definitely cups of tea.

And um they actually work for Alpha America because um of uh caution around the Holy Spirit, but Alpha has the Holy Spirit weekend, and so they are just coaches for people for Alpha to this is how you run um an alpha weekend.

And so um, yeah, they're they're absolutely fantastic, and they um just uh do really simple things to say, look, here's how you can uh use your um imagination because God has given you an imagination, you can use it to hear from him or see pictures, or um, and then they've set it up so that you're in small groups, and those small groups are to encourage and support you.

There's some theology there uh as well.

And so, yeah, the first one is just six weeks or journey together and um see where we go from there.

But we did it as staff together, it was really good, and we realized wow, how we just don't step into those moments.

We don't ask the Holy Spirit, we don't look for him, but he is always wanting to use us, always wanting to draw people closer to him.

Yeah, so good, Heather.

So good opportunities for people, good unpacking a little bit more of what you spoke on on Sunday.

Uh, it's been a great series.

We have our final week of our Holy Spirit series coming up this Sunday.

Pastor Caleb Finlison will be talking about uh a Holy Spirit-filled community.

What does it mean for us to keep journeying uh together as part of a church community?

What does that look like?

So uh excited by that.

And then following that, there's the two opportunities that Heather has mentioned.

Um, if you've got more questions about anything that we've talked about, keep feeding them into us.

This is not just a series that we finish and then move on from, it's part of who we are and will always be part of who we are.

Uh asking the spirit to move more amongst us and to see where that leads us and grows us.

So, hey, great first debut session between the message podcast.

Wow, it's not as scary as I thought it was.

Scary as what you think it is, that's for sure.

So appreciated all that you brought to us and appreciated your teaching and your heart for what is behind uh all the different things that you do and the way you contribute to life here at Windsor.

So thanks for joining us today.

It's been our pleasure to be with you and see you again.