THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES ON THE GIFT OF PROPHECY. Click here for the rest of the series.

Jesus did all he did because of His communion with the Father. He was the exact representation of the Father in all that he did.

Hebrews 1:3a …being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person…

He embodied and imaged forth the Father. The manifestation of the Spirit was predicated on the “making known the heart of the Father” mission of Jesus. His reason was not the gifts, his reason was the Father. The invitation given to all that he touched was to come into communion with the Father in the way he communed with the Father. Jesus assumed our humanity in order that we would become like he is:

As he revealed the Father, we are to reveal the Father. The dynamic of ministry is not to be predicated upon a gift, or relegated to the most gifted, but rather that we have been made in the image of the Father, have received the Spirit given from the Father, and are commissioned to make Him known. The dynamic for ministry is predicated on the presence of the Father, not on the gift that I carry.

Our present dynamic emphasizes the gift, the dynamic we need to shift to places the emphasis upon the Father and His heart. It gets the focus off of me and onto Him, and the potential everyone carries to reveal His heart in our unique capacity.

Here is a helpful chart to stress the different dynamic seen in a presence-based model versus a gift-based model:

Gift-Based

• The Gift of the Person

• Accuracy of Word

• Goal-oriented

• Manifestation of the Gift

• Primary growth model is practice and repetition

• Emphasizes number of salvations (if healing is secondary salvation will be short lived)

• Exercise increases revelation

• Motivated by failure

• What I can know about the person

• Tends towards needing validation

Presence-Based

• The Role of the Spirit

• Presence of Spirit

• Touch-oriented

• Manifestation of the Spirit

• Primary growth model is sensitivity to the Spirit

• Emphasizes quality of healing (if healing comes salvation will happen)

• Prayer/Devotional life increases revelation

• Motivated by presence

• What God knows about the person

• Comfortable not receiving credit

The gift-based paradigm is person-centric. I can only function if I have a gift, have identified that gift (or had someone else identify it), and have grown in that gift. Do I have the gift of healing? If not, I will have a hard time finding the time or capacity to pray for healing. Do I have the gift of prophecy? If not, I have will have a hard time thinking of myself as having the ability to share the mind of Christ.

In the gift-based model only the most excellent gifted are seen and excel. This is a travesty for the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God all are called to make disciples, heal, prophesy, and proclaim the gospel. We have relegated that call to only the most elite, those that we understand to have a spiritual gift. This has come because of the way we think about and understand the operation and flow of the Holy Spirit. That understanding is broken.

Some churches and ministries see such a hard line distinction between the have and have-nots that they separate their prayer teams into those who can pray for healing, those who can prophesy, and those who can pray for deliverance. We orient our hiring policies for pastors and leaders around the most excellently gifted when Paul claimed the qualifications were far different than simply their ability:

1 Timothy 3:1-4 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive.

Paul never even mentions the topic of gift. He only mentions ability or education in the following verse:

1 Timothy 3:6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

His education (not a recent convert) is only seen in light of his spiritual maturity. Paul primarily looks at the character of the leader, not just the ability. Why? Because those who carry themselves with character reflect the nature of Christ. The qualifications for a leader ought to be his or her capacity to love God and love the people. And that is most directly seen in the family life of the individual.

If we were to understand that the gift is the Holy Spirit then the ramifications would be manifold. It is not just the pastor, preacher, or itinerant that can do the work of the kingdom of God, it is everyone. As John Wimber used to say, “Everyone gets to play.”

The shift in understanding is slight but the outworking is enormous. We move from “I have a gift and therefore I can work” to “I have been given the Spirit and He is within me to move through me.” The ability is not contingent upon myself but upon the presence of God within me. Of course, some do tend to gravitate towards specific components of the in-dwelt Spirit, but that does not preclude me from revealing the Father. The mission is not my gift, it is His heart.