I love the display of God’s wisdom and sovereignty in His selection of people to use in the bible. Sometimes, truthfully i’m even silently praying not to appear a certain way that is too favourable to people, just by looking at the kind of people God chose to work through.

Moses was a stammerer, I don’t know if we ever sit and think about these things, like actually visualise them in our minds, the bible tells us that It wasn’t just a low level  speech impairment, his stammering was actually really bad, but yet, God chose Him to go speak to Pharaoh to let His people go. God really could have just chosen Aaron, who had no speech impairment to go do this job, but no, Moses was the one with that purpose and it was irrelevant to God that He had this speech impairment.

Remember also when Samuel was sent to anoint David king? when He arrived in Jesse’s house and automatically thought Eliab was the chosen one because of His stature and God was quick to remind Him that It was not about the physical but all about the heart and so while Eliab appeared fit physically, God had chosen the heart of David.

Naturally, God has blessed each and everyone of us with gifting that come naturally to us, it is inherent and so no one can take it from you because it is part of the nature you have been created with. These gifting  however, are no indication of the Spirit of God or a move of His power. Beyond these natural gifting are Fruits of the spirit that come to live in you after you have accepted JESUS as your personal Lord and Saviour. His Spirit comes with more full, rich gifts that even accentuate the previous natural gifting.

A lot of Christians look at the natural abilities of men and interpret it to be ‘The power or move of the Holy Spirit’. A man’s natural gifting from God can never replace the need to have the Holy Spirit empower such a man for God’s work.

I get people tell me all the time how I am a good orator, its not something I worked to develop or learn, I believe it came naturally to me by God’s ordinance and over time developed into what it might be now, however, once I, myself or someone begins to interpret my Good oratory skill as the Gift of exhortation or teaching or evangelism, there begins to be a problem because my natural gifting can be devoid of the Holy spirit but the 5 fold ministries and divine gifting are fuelled by the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit empowers a person with utterance, it’s never the same as having a natural gift of speaking which differentiates the motivational speakers from the Men of God who stand on the pulpit. Natural gifting appeal to the minds of men, but The Holy Spirit’s empowerment appeals to the hearts of men, which is what God is after.

It is actually beneficial to your spiritual growth to know your natural gifting and this shouldn’t be too hard if you have genuine people around you who truthfully give you commendations after a display of that natural ability. When you are aware of your natural gifts, you know even better how to pray when in a position when those natural gifts might shadow the move of the Holy Spirit. You’re also more conscious to not rely on that natural place of gift and reach into the supernatural empowerment of the Spirit which really is where we should be mostly, particularly for Christians in Ministry (which is you and I).

Your natural gift is not an empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The Holy spirit empowers the natural gifts when He comes to live in you but without Him, those things just remain gifts that our Gracious God has bestowed upon us.

These day’s when I speak to people, particularly in a ministry environment, whether in person or over the phone I’m not asking ‘did I make sense?’, i’m asking ‘were You convicted?’ because the Holy spirit’s conviction is what i’m after, not my ability to get people temporarily excited through a natural gift.

So let’s practicalize this shall we?;

• Identify your natural gifts
• Identify what else the Holy spirit has empowered you with by His coming to live inside you
• Pray about the natural gifts, that they never be interpreted as Holy Spirit empowerment when it is a display of your nature
• When in situations your natural gifts would thrive, that’s time to be more conscious and sensitive to the Holy spirit that you’re not just ‘being yourself’, but actually allowing the Holy Spirit work through you.