God the Holy Spirit, Mentor's Guide, MG14

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G O D T H E H O L Y S P I R I T

Put away your notes, gather up your thoughts and reflections, and take the quiz for Lesson 3, The Powerful Presence of the Holy Spirit (Part One).

Quiz

Scripture Memorization Review

Review with a partner, write out and/or recite the text for last class session’s assigned memory verse: Romans 8.22-25.

Turn in your summary of the reading assignment for last week, that is, your brief response and explanation of the main points that the authors were seeking to make in the assigned reading (Reading Completion Sheet).

Assignments Due

Discussion: Spiritual Gifts

In their book Soar With Your Strengths , Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson tell a parable about a school that is held for the animals in a meadow. The teachers in the school believe that a well rounded animal can run, swim, climb trees, jump, and fly. When a rabbit enters the school the results are predictable, he does extremely well at running and jumping but horribly at swimming, tree climbing and flying. Naturally his teachers advise him to spend more time on the areas in which he is deficient. So the rabbit that used to spend his days running and jumping now spends his days working on swimming and flying and finds that he is constantly either humiliated or injured. The end result is that he hates school. In the end of the parable, however, he is inspired by a wise old owl to envision a world in which each person operates out of their strengths, gifts, and skills rather than trying to become what they were never intended to be. In 1 Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul makes a similar sort of analogy but instead of a parable about animals he uses the metaphor of the human body. Eyes see well but don’t hear well. Ears hear well but have no sense of smell. The answer that Paul gives to this dilemma is not to try and make every body part do everything well but rather to encourage people to work together so that each person uses the gifts given to him or her by the Holy Spirit for the good of the whole body. If this is true, it is very important that churches know and correctly use the spiritual gifts of their members. Speaking from your experience, how can we help the people in our congregations discover and use the gifts that the Spirit has given them?

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