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Understanding Spiritual Gifts

March 25, 2016 by Robert Hartzell

Understanding Spiritual Gifts and those of others is extremely helpful in improving all of your relationships.

Understanding the 7 Redemptive Gifts does more than explain your own wiring and your natural strengths anUnderstanding Spiritual Giftsd weaknesses. When you begin understanding spiritual gifts, yours and those of others, you learn how to sense one another and be able to relate much better. It improves all relationships.

In this post I will review the drive of each of the 7 gifts and then what each gift “needs” from other people. The drive of a gift is what motivates them, what is their natural “wiring.” The need of a gift is what they need people of other gifts to understand about them.

With each of us having different spiritual gifts, sometimes it’s difficult to understand where another person is coming from. Knowing these drives and needs can help spouses relate to each other better as well as helping all your relationships become life-giving.

 

Redemptive Gift Drive and Need from Others

Prophet

  • Drive – To see into. To see design and motive and to call it forth into excellence.
  • Need from Others – Action, honesty. When prophets see denial, a victim spirit, and procrastination in others is difficult for them to understand; they don’t like it.

Servant

  • Drive – To mend, cleanse. To facilitate an environment of empowerment where people work together and thrive.
  • Need from Others – Approval of their contribution. Appreciation. Team work. Servants do not like disunity and arguments.

Teacher

  • Drive – To raise a standard. To present knowledge and truth that makes things work, keeps things accurate and safe.
  • Need from Others – Attention and space for processing and thinking. Listening to their thoughts and making the effort to “hear” them. Teachers are not prone to promote or exert  themselves.

Exhorter

  • Drive – For connection. To make others feel connected and included so as to cast vision and influence.
  • Need from Others – Affirmation, encouragement, connection, and playfulness. Exhorters allow fun and humor sometimes to keep things lighter and not so serious.

Giver

  • Drive – To be a resource. To help others, especially family. To have security and resources to move ahead and make things happen.
  • Need from Others – Appreciation. Graciousness and hospitality. Givers want to be good stewards but not have their relationships taken for granted because of what they offer.

Ruler

  • Drive – To lead. To provide “right” leadership to accomplish goals.
  • Need from Others – Agreement. Support for their leadership, goals, and vision. Rulers need others to follow through when delegated and uphold their part.

Mercy

  • Drive – To be with. To have emotional connection with God, others, and their surroundings that are life-giving. To align life for connection and ambiance.
  • Need from Others – Affection. Acceptance, empathy. Mercies need you to hear their heart, not judging too quickly their thoughts and ideas, but allowing time for them to fully explain and express themselves.

 

As you can clearly see, each gift has it’s own unique qualities. I hope this gives you some deeper insights into the Redemptive Gifts. May it help you in all your relationships.

 

For a review of each of the 7 Redemptive Gifts, a Spiritual Gifts Test you can take, and an overview chart, “Click Here.”

Filed Under: Redemptive Gifts

Cognitive Dissonance in Redemptive Gifts of Teacher, Giver, and Ruler

March 11, 2015 by Robert Hartzell

Cognitive Dissonance in Redemptive Gifts Shines a Light into a battle area for 3 of the gifts.

A Definition of Cognitive Dissonance: Discomfort when your beliefs don’t match up with your reality.

Redemptive Gifts Divisions (Kinesthetic, Cognitive, and Emotive)

I have written a blog series on the Redemptive Gifts if you need a refresher before reading this article. One way to consider the gifts is through their response to life. When responding to a situation, is action the first stimulus? Is thinking first? Or, is emotion first?

The Redemptive Gifts can be divided up into 3 divisions:

1-Kinesthetic: Prophet and Servant

2-Cognitive: Teacher, Giver, and Ruler

3-Emotive: Exhorter and Mercy

In today’s post I want to consider the cognitive gifts – Teacher, Giver and Ruler – and a weakness they have. I first became aware of this in my own gift, the Teacher gift.

Teacher Strength and WeaknessCognitive Dissonance in Redemptive Gifts

Every gift has a strength and a corresponding weakness. For the Teacher, the weakness is social responsibility. Let me explain this. First of all, the way a teacher thinks is that life is about standards and equations. Think about chemistry. There are certain truths (standards) that can form an equation in order to solve problems. Teachers track this way and live like this – all of life is put into a logical equation. Think about Mr. Spock on Star Trek. If a given thing doesn’t make sense, the teacher – with great patience – will meditate on it and contemplate about it until it does.

The problem is, not everything is logical. Romance for example is not logical. Relationships with imperfect people (that’s everyone) are not always logical. To love someone despite their shortcomings takes heart, not the thinking mind. So the teacher has to press in and develop social responsibility. They have to intentionally try to “feel” and not “figure out” people. Giver and Ruler don’t seem to struggle to the same degree as teacher, however, their cognitive powers can get in their way also. Their thinking happens before any feeling, or even before any doing usually.

Givers

Givers have an incredible ability to birth things, to make things happen, to find resources where others never thought to even look. They are able to do this because they don’t get caught up in the past and they have a natural independence giving them freedom to grab a new idea and run with it. Yet, in their drive to bring something forth and in their independence, they can miss people’s hearts, or even run over people at times. Awareness is key here. If Givers can see this tendency in themselves, they can birth things in healthy ways.

Rulers

Rulers have an amazing capacity to accomplish a task. They don’t fear taking a task on and typically know the absolute best way to get it done. This is how their minds work, how they track. For Rulers life is about developing and organizing something then managing until it’s done. The world would be in real trouble without the Ruler gift. However, the Ruler too, can often run over people with their various ideas of the “right” ways to do things. People’s hearts aren’t always ready to do the right thing. Again awareness is key.

As a potential weaknesses are recognized, they can be addressed. The cognitive gifts – Teacher, Giver, Ruler – are all extremely important in the Kingdom of God. By knowing how they think, and how that’s their primary response in life, we can understand them and relate to them better. And by themselves knowing their own weaknesses and tendencies, they can seek to take responsibility to grow and mature in those areas.

 

Filed Under: Redemptive Gifts Tagged With: Redemptive Gifts

Redemptive Gift of Prophet Stronghold of the Need to Fix

October 5, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Prophet Stronghold and Prophet’s Natural Strength

redemptive gift of prophet strongholdThe redemptive gift of prophet stronghold comes from a perversion of the prophet’s natural strength and drive is to “see into,” to discern. They see what makes a thing work. This can include everything from discovering the problem with a broken antique clock, to developing a new, unique way to do evangelism with an unreached people group, to seeing motives behind people’s interactions and why injustice is occurring.

The Redemptive Gift of Prophet Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with discernment and problem solving. The highest use of discernment is for agape – sacrificial love for the other person’s benefit.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the prophet is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. So he takes action — making his gifting flow in his own strength for his own benefit.

Prophet Picture

I knew of a man that had a falling out with every church leader he had ever worked with so he began to carry a staff everywhere he went, even walking through airports with it. He did this as a sign of the Old Testament prophet. He felt this to be a physical representation of God’s angry judgement toward the impure motives he saw in church leadership. This was far from seeking to intercede and restore in meekness, considering himself lest he also fall. It was expressing Old Testament anger and flowed from unresolved wounding he carried in his heart.

The prophet’s weakness is in trying to fix what God has not called them to fix. Prophets tend to continually look for the design in things, both in principles and in people. They seek to get their needs met in this way when trusting God in an area of their lives becomes difficult.

We All Battle the Redemptive Gift of Prophet Stronghold at Some Level

We all have to be able to “see into” and problem solve at some level. Most of us have a career based on some skill of problem solving. Nurses, teachers, trash collectors, and professional athletes all have gained a skill that serves society in some way and solves a problem. However, the minute our identity is rooted in our skill rather than in being a child of God, we are battling this stronghold. We are no longer using our skill to the glory of God but to get our own ego needs met.

Overcoming

The key to overcoming all strongholds is to put them on the altar as a living sacrifice. (Romans 12:1) It’s been said that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep jumping off the altar. This simply means sanctification is a lifelong process of growing ever deeper in our capacity to trust God to meet every need that arises and not resort to our own strength. It’s a laying down of the gift and taking up His strength instead of ours.

Prophets have to learn to use their discernment for intercession and greater brokenness. Instead of being on the sidelines pointing out problems, they need to be working in community to help bring forth an answer. I know prophets who love God but do not attend church because of all the problems they see there. I also know nurses who judge other nurses for “not doing it right,” and carpenters who feel that they alone are the only ones who do quality work, and missionaries and teachers and engineers and so on that battle thinking believing they have the insight others do not and allowing that to hinder community.

All of us need to put our discernment and judgment on the altar and lay our lives down in prayer and service. Unfortunately it’s just harder for prophets to do that than the other gifts.

Next week I’ll cover the Redemptive Gift of Servant stronghold.

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Overcoming Redemptive Gifts Strongholds As A Pathway to Growth and Destiny

October 4, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

Overcoming Redemptive Gifts Strongholds

Overcoming redemptive gifts strongholds in their distinctive order unfolds destiny.Overcoming redemptive gifts strongholds

Ephesians 4 says God gave the 5-fold ministry gifts to equip the saints for ministry. To me this means that everyone has some type of ministry God has for them to fulfill.

A Path to Destiny

Regrettably many Christians feel stuck in discovering this path, so let me help. The first step is to know your redemptive gift. This will tell you in what areas you will be most effective. Then, overcoming all seven strongholds will lead you in taking your gifting into your destiny.

Overcoming Redemptive Gifts Strongholds

Prophet problem solving is the first key to destiny. We all must develop some skill that makes the world a better place. As we use this gift to benefit others rather than to build our own identity, we grow. We find favor as people look to us for our gifting. This is how a new business or a ministry is started.

Serving is the next step. As we learn to serve others with proper boundaries in place, our ministry will grow. We teach people to respond to our gift in a healthy way and not take advantage of us.

Teacher principles now come into play. Having a problem solving skill and serving others with it will lead to unique new insights. You will begin to have knowledge based on your experience that others don’t have. Using this knowledge rightly and not for ego will build yet more into your destiny. For example: If your gift is evangelism and you have learned the basics well and serve others with it well, you will then have experience-based knowledge to teach others with. This may lead to writing a book, teaching workshop, or equipping others.

Exhorter personality is needed. Having intellectual property is not enough. You now have to connect socially to bring your specialized knowledge to the world and let them know what you have to offer. This requires good people skills.

Giver shepherds the increase. Accomplishing the first four steps typically leads to attaining a resource or resources of some sort, be it people, a product, or an idea. As you steward these resources well, you will be able to reach yet even more people and advance the Kingdom of God.

Ruling rightly is now important. With greater reach you will likely have people who want to be on your team. This is where leading with the healthy skills of ruler will help.

Mercy keeps God’s heart in the center. Finally, you will have the opportunity to leave a lasting impact on the world around you. The authority of your presence in your niche area can leave a legacy to the next generation. The heart connection with many people, and even connecting them with God, can be realized in a right way and in a big way when all the other steps are in place.

Destiny Blueprint

Many people have ideas for ministry and for ways they feel called. I find this to be an excellent pattern for how that can develop from a humble beginning all the way to lasting impact. Each one of us are uniquely designed with our own gift that can impact the world, whether that be through our families or through large companies. We all have our place in the Kingdom.

By knowing our gift and following these steps, we can grow, mature, and fulfill the destiny God has for us.

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Redemptive Gift of Mercy Stronghold of Emotionality – Understanding for Freedom

October 4, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Mercy Stronghold and Strength of Emotionality

The redemptive gift of mercy stronghold of emotionality works because Mercies have such a natural ability to find heart alignment and empathy. Some have called mercies the empaths of the world. The classic example of this is a mercy entering a room full of people and quickly sensing who is hurting in the room, going to them, and connecting with that person through compassion.

The motivation of mercies is heart alignment, to “be with.” Jehovah Shammah (Ezekiel 48:35) – theRedemptive Gift of Mercy Stronghold Lord is Present or “with” us. Mercies can easily align to God’s heart through their natural empathic ability and can align with others, therefore helping others align to God. They can be a sort of middleman. This is a wonderful gift.

The redemptive gifts can be divided up in categories of Kinesthetic, Cognitive, and Emotive. Prophet and Servant are kinesthetic – they take action first, and think and feel second. Teacher, Giver, and Ruler are cognitive – they think first and feel second. Exhorter and Mercy are the two emotive gifts. Just as we considered Owen Wilson movies where he uses emotionally fun connection to bypass his character issues, there are many shows and movies where a mercy is depicted as freaking out emotionally. Note the mercy stronghold of emotionality Steve Carell in The Office, or Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Mercies are driven by this heart-to-heart connection, yet, not everyone wants to connect. Life throws challenges at all of us wherein we don’t feel very connected to God, others, or ourselves. This can lead to the stronghold.

The Redemptive Gift of Mercy Stronghold of Emotionality

As one of the emotive gifts, mercies can end up living for this feeling of emotional fulfillment they get when hearts are aligned in connection. If not God directed, this fulfillment drive can turn into self-gratification through dysfunctional connections with people, food, sex, and other things.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the mercy is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. He will seek to connect to someone or something for fulfillment.

With the mercy being an emotive gift, they usually have a keen sensitivity to the spirit realm. Of course, this can be a positive and a negative. They commonly enter into praise and worship quite easily and have the ability to truly sense the heart of God. Many musicians, artists, dancers, and painters are mercies as they tend to use their talents to reach out and connect with others.

Mercies feel very deeply. They are highly sensitive to the emotions around them, however, they cannot get their needs met – promoting, protecting, or providing for themselves – through these means.

We All Battle the Mercy Stronghold of Emotionality at Some Level

We can all battle feeling disconnected, that we have somehow displeased God or other people and so are left out. This can lead to works in order to somehow gain favor. Manipulation, control, or tapping into others’ emotions are all ways we try to comfort ourselves when we feel alone or rejected.

Overcoming

Like all the gifts, heart connection also has to go on the altar as a living sacrifice. The creative drive to connect emotionally with other people, with music, with art, with interior design that brings a wonderful ambiance, are all wonderful things. Yet, that can’t rule us.

We all have times we must live by faith regardless of feelings. Knowing our identity is in being a child of God whether we feel connected to Him or not at the time, is how the mercy overcomes and matures into their destiny.

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The Redemptive Gift of Ruler Stronghold of Dominance

October 4, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Ruler Stronghold and Natural Strength

Rulers instinctively see what’s right as clearly as prophets see into what makes things work.The Redemptive Gift of Ruler Stronghold

Rulers are motivated by what is right, just, or normal. Jer.23:6 gives us the compound name Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord our Righteousness. The verse says, “Judah shall be saved, Israel will dwell safely.” Rulers can easily bring people to safety under their leadership. This can be in military battle situations or in something as small as organizing a youth soccer team. They can “take the bull by the horns” and make something happen.

It’s natural for rulers to see the right way to do things. They have no problems leading companies, committees, or organizations because they have a boldness to accomplish tasks in life. There’s an inborn “knowing” how to move from point A to point B, however, if they are not careful they can run over others with this gift.

The Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with leading rightly. In a word, it is bossiness.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the ruler is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. Rulers can easily take over and lead in any situation. However, God doesn’t always call a ruler to lead every situation in life.

In Ecclesiastes 2:4 Solomon says, “I made my works great…,” but rulers cannot live on their ability to accomplish. It ends up feeling meaningless, as Ecclesiastes so eloquently explains. Loving others and giving them leadership is great, but also nurture and freedom to develop are foundational too. A ruler cannot find their identity in their accomplishments, they must know their identity in being a child of God and that it’s by His grace and enablement that they are able to complete and organize things.

A ruler at times can look like a giver, however, the drive and motivation are different. A giver may control for the need of personal security and safety, whereas a ruler will do so simply to get the task accomplished.

We All Battle

We can all battle bossiness at times, at the very least in raising our children. There are times when we know the right thing to do, yet in our administration of getting them done and leading people in accomplishing that task, we plow over others’ emotions and opinions and push towards the goal not realizing we have left many wounded behind us. It is one thing to lead, it is another thing to lead rightly. Leading is not controlling.

Keeping relationships more important than finishing the job can be a struggle to us all sometimes. But we have misplaced our identity if we put it in what we’ve achieved and not in who we are. We don’t want to lose ourselves in all our “doing;” we need our “being” to rest in knowing we’re a child of God.

Overcoming

Rulers, just like all the gifts, have to put their gifting on the altar and lead only as God directs. They cannot use their gift to dominate others. Whether they are leading themselves, or being on a team, they need to give other people freedom to express their thoughts and gifts whether they seem right or not.

Next week I’ll cover the final Redemptive Gift Stronghold for Mercies.

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The Redemptive Gift of Giver Stronghold of Ownership

October 4, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Giver Stronghold of Ownership and the Giver’s Natural Strength

The redemptive gift of giver stronghold comes from a misuse of the giver’s strength and drive is from the 5th compound name of God, Jehovah Ra’ah – to “shepherd.”

Givers understand resources. Psalm 23 is a great picture of how a giver functions. They lead sheep to green grass and still waters. They restore, guide, protect and provide sustenance. Givers are naturally good at stewarding resThe Redemptive Gift of Giver Strongholdources to bring security and comfort to themselves, their families and others.  At times, though, it can be too comforting and turns more into control issues.

The Redemptive Gift of Giver Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with resources.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the giver is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. He will take action, which is usually controlling in some way, to make him feel safe.

It’s easy for givers to become controlling in their shepherding of others. They can miss another’s heart as they unilaterally decide what’s best for them. They can even play God over other people’s lives – their employment, their education, even their beliefs. It’s true that they really are often very giving, yet many times there are strings attached. A giver’s giving always needs to be from a place of stewardship, acknowledging that all belongs to God and that He is the authority.

Giver Picture

The classic picture of a giver is the rich old man that is controlling over his son. The son rebels and fights against all the control. The giver insists that the son will be cut off from any inheritance or blessing if he doesn’t follow the career path the giver “knows” is best.

Obviously, not all givers are rich, yet, this plays out in countless smaller ways. Givers perhaps battle performance orientation more than any other gift. They give and serve in countless ways, going around doing good, but are shocked when others don’t respond as they expected. They are usually expecting something in return. At times they may look similar to servants, but unlike givers, servants don’t typically have the same expectations and aren’t controlling.

We All Battle

Any of us can battle giving with strings attached. This happens often in parenting. There’s the dynamic tension between providing for our children and yet them needing to take their own age-appropriate responsibility. We can all also battle with being stingy with our hard-earned resources of money and talents. This keeps us in control and safe.

Overcoming

Overcoming the stronghold of ownership involves embracing stewardship, not ownership. When we allow God to be Lord over how and when we give, it leads to success. Surrendering our basic needs of security and comfort to God’s leading brings prosperity and maturity.

Next week I’ll cover the stronghold for the Redemptive Gift of Ruler.

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The Redemptive Gift of Exhorter Stronghold of Schmoozing

October 3, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Exhorter Stronghold and the Exhorter’s Natural Strength

The Redemptive Gift of Exhorter Stronghold

The Redemptive Gift of Exhorter Stronghold occurs from a perversion of their natural strength. The 4th compound name of Jehovah describes the exhorter’s natural strength or personality drive. Jehovah Shalom means the God who gives a sense of soundness, safety, welfare, peace; the God who gives us a sense of well-being.

Exhorters very naturally make people feel included and valued. God does this with Gideon in Judges 6 where He tells him he is a mighty man of valour right at the moment when Gideon is much afraid.

Shalom motivates exhorters, the vision to inspire themselves and others to know they are connected together and can accomplish great things. However, when their vision falters, exhorters really struggle.

The Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with their strength at vision and with relationally connecting.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the exhorter is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. He will look to relationships to promote, protect, or provide for him.

Exhorters will try to live for connection alone but they cannot. They must be on guard to not rely on their gifting of relationships to get by in life. Think of the actor, Owen Wilson, and the character he plays in many of his movies like Shanghai Noon. He portrays this fun, connecting guy who constantly bails on his responsibilities. But right at the time when his partner is about to get mad at him, he schmoozes back into good standing with him. The exhorter has a smooth way of promoting himself and advancing at the expense of others.

We All Battle

We all can battle living in the joy and excitement of some new vision and connecting with others relationally. But we all need to overcome any issues that would cause us to stop there and not press on past personal conflicts and obstacles, take responsibility, and follow through on our dreams.

Overcoming

Vision and relational connection is meaningful to exhorters, it gives them energy. However, follow through is the mark of the mature exhorter. They must overcome any issues with perfection or fear of failure that would keep them from accomplishing their vision. Naturally good people skills are a true gift of exhorters, but they must be put on the altar and allow God to use them correctly, not for their own gain.

Next week I’ll cover the Redemptive Gift of Giver stronghold.

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The Redemptive Gift of Teacher Stronghold of Intellectualizing

October 3, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of Teacher Stronghold and the Teacher’s Natural Strength

The Redemptive Gift of Teacher Stronghold occurs from a misuse of their natural strength. Teachers naturally operate by logic. Life for them is a logical equation. They have a tremendous amount of patience to research the principles that make things work.

Whereas the prophet is after heart motives and points out sin with a desire to see people’s hearts change, the teacher will actually be the one who will work patiently with a person and coach them through the steps of the heart change. A prophet on a city council may intuitively know that attracting certain business to a blighted downtown area will revitalize it, but a teacher will work out logically every step required to make it happen.

The Redemptive Gift of Teacher StrongholdThe Redemptive Gift of Teacher Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with knowledge and logic. A teacher will bond more easily with information and data than with people.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the teacher is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. He lives in his intellect. His gifting then flows in his own strength for his own benefit.

Teacher Picture

Teachers understand that knowledge is power. John Calvin is a good example of a teacher gift. His book, Institutes of the Christian Religion, shows his “teacherness” even in its title. These institutes are provided as a way of keeping the church pure, on track, and acceptable to God. Precepts of truth are to be a guidance to love, not its replacement. The stronghold of knowledge always involves exclusivity, ie, those who have knowledge are acceptable and those who don’t are shunned. This is espoused in Calvin’s doctrines of depravity and predestination. It’s not that these ideas lack truth, but rather are used wrongly. Knowledge is not what keeps us safe, faith in God’s love as our anchor does.

Calvin’s book vigorously attacked the teachings of those he considered unorthodox. The book expressed an “us versus them” mentality in its premise – here’s that exclusivity. Calvin was even complicit in the execution of Michael Servetus who he believed adhered to false doctrine. And lest we forget, Calvinism is not The Gospel. It is simply writings by a man.

The Pharisees in the Bible are another excellent example. They understood standards that would keep their religion intact against outside influences and yet always missed the heart of God to the point of crucifying the very Savior sent for them.

We All Battle

We can all battle a wrong use of knowledge at some level. Consider the saying, “He’s a ‘know-it-all’.” It speaks of pride and arrogance based on some knowledge that one person has who he thinks others do not have.

There’s a concept in psychology called compartmentalization. It’s a defense mechanism where concepts are kept in different mental boxes as an attempt to reduce anxiety over different conflicting ideas. This is another way of describing a legalist. The Pharisees believed no work could be done on the Sabbath, no exceptions. There’s a box; don’t think out of it. Love for others had nothing to do with how this belief was upheld, it simply was a box for them to stay safe and feeling in control.

Again, this is something we can all do on occasion when feeling vulnerable. Many conversations reveal this. You express an opinion to someone on a certain subject and if the person you’re sharing with thinks differently and lacks basic trust in God’s love, they’ll struggle to show acceptance to opposing ideas and will respond with their “box” on the subject. It’s like a script, or set of scripts they always parrot when the subject is triggered. Boxes block true heart-to-heart exchange. This unfolds the teacher stronghold we all must overcome to be successful in using knowledge rightly – for the benefit of others.

Boxes are an attempt to protect our hearts and get our needs met in our own strength when trusting God’s love is deficient.

Overcoming

Standards are important when used rightly. The third compound name of God is Jehovah Nissi, God, our Banner or Standard. However, knowledge standards can never replace relationship. Teachers battle this stronghold the most, but anyone can battle this at times.

Next week will look at the Redemptive Gift of Exhorter stronghold.

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Redemptive Gift of Servant Stronghold of Keeping the Peace

October 3, 2014 by Robert Hartzell

The Redemptive Gift of servant stronghold comes from the servant’s natural strength.

The redemptive gift of servant stronghold occurs from a misuse of their natural strength. The servant’s drive comes from the second compound name of Jehovah, Jehovah Rapha – to heal, mend, and cleanse. Servants know this healing occurs as we all work together in obedience to authority. This is exactly what God says in redemptive gift of servant strongholdExodus 15:26 where He reveals Himself in this way. God, of course, expresses these seven aspects of His nature in the healthiest way. When the children of Israel did not obey and took advantage of God’s service to them, God allowed them to face the consequences of their actions and they could not enter the promised land. Servants must learn this lesson.

Obviously servants receive fulfillment from serving, but why? They pursue an atmosphere where people work together and are empowered to fulfill a mission. This is a clean atmosphere where God delights to be in the midst of His people.

The Redemptive Gift of Servant Stronghold

The stronghold occurs from a wrong relationship with service. This is when, while serving others, a servant actually gets their own needs met.

There are 3 vulnerabilities common to man:

  • To promote ourselves
  • To protect ourselves
  • To provide for ourselves

If the servant is feeling vulnerable and needing to protect his heart, he will gravitate to relying on his natural strength. He takes action. He tries to keep the peace. He tries to create a supportive environment even when boundaries and tough love are what’s needed. Codependence can be a real challenge for servants. They often comply repeatedly to unreasonable demands from their bosses and allow bad behavior from spouses and children.

Unlike the prophet, the servant seeks peace above everything – no rocking the boat or causing any disturbance. Their hearts desire is that “we’d all just get along,” and they will constantly strive for that, even to the point of accepting abuse if necessary.

Servant Picture

George served his boss faithfully. He was competent in every aspect of his job and stayed later than most other employees and always got more done. Yet repeatedly the boss promoted others instead of him. George would feel slighted but would then decide to buckle down and work even harder. Finally, after much prayer and counsel, George asked his boss why he was never promoted. He was shocked at his boss’s answer: “I thought you enjoyed your current position so much that I didn’t think you wanted to be promoted. You never came to me and told me you wanted that.”

Servants have to risk speaking up, even when it might damage the atmosphere of peace. It is ungodly to express bad behavior. It can also be ungodly to allow it.

We All Battle

We all are called to be serving others with our gifting yet setting appropriate boundaries when others seek to take advantage of that. Serving becomes a problem when we have our identity in it. The minute our identity is rooted in our serving rather than in being a child of God, we are battling the redemptive gift of servant stronghold. Asking a servant to only receive and not give is a real test of their healing and their place of identity.

Overcoming

The servant must learn to walk in authority. It feels counterintuitive to them to show tough love or set boundaries on people, it just doesn’t feel supportive. Their key for overcoming is to work through this. They must be able to put their servant gift on the altar and trust God to meet their needs, even when they have to stop serving others, disturb the serenity, and start standing up for themselves.

Next week we’ll look at the Redemptive Gift of Teacher stronghold of intellectualizing.

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