When saints are out of fellowship with the Lord, out of harmony with each other, out of line in their spiritual lives-we can't offer pleasing worship. Only a clean, humbled, and Spirit-filled saint can offer acceptable worship. So we are all called to be some part of mending and building up other believers.

That is why every one of us has a spiritual gift set, just right for what God wants us to do. To help us remember exactly what God wants each of us to be doing, we need to examine another passage of Scripture. As we turn to Romans 12 we find the job descriptions of-

Spiritual gifts are the grace-energized empowerments God uses to build up His Church.

There are several New Testament lists of these gifted believers, or construction workers God deploys at each building site. The two main gift lists are Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12.

The easiest way to look at these two lists is to say that the Corinthian list is primarily pointed at temporary sign gifts and the Roman list is pointed at the ongoing gifts that we see today at work in local churches.

For our construction site visit, we'll focus on the list in Romans 12. Please join me in v.4 as we see what God has given each of us and wants to do with all of us:

Romans 12:4-12 For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function,5 so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith;7 or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching;8 he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. 9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.10 Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another;11 not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord;12 rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; NKJV

This passage in Romans 12 gives us seven amazing types of gifted people God wants to use in every church.

Three of these seven gifts are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 (prophets, teachers, administration); two of the gifts (prophets and pastor-teachers) are included in Ephesians 4:11; and another two (administering and serving) are listed in 1 Peter 4:10-11.

So, these seven seem to resonate as a complete set of workers that God loves to use to build up the individual members of Christ's church into fully functioning worshippers. But whatever gift, or blend of gifts, you have been given, exercise them faithfully as a stewardship from God.