Launch Your Ministry Chapter 5 of 27
<-Chapter 4 Chapter 6-> Return to FulltextStarting With Body Ministry
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Body Ministry 1 - Serving
One of the first Body Ministries that Paul listed for us is 'serving'. It means that we are available to help other people.
We call this 'serving the Lord'. And one of the best ways of serving the Lord is to serve His children.
When Jesus was on this earth He could reach out and touch people to help them.
But now that He is gone, He wants us to take His place on this earth and to do the kind of things that He did. You can go around helping people and serving them.
If you are wondering what you should do, then look around you and see if there is someone that you can serve. Who is there that you can help?
The moment you do that with the love of the Lord in your heart, you are doing ministry. It is a Body Ministry under the direction of the Lord Jesus.
Body Ministry 2 - Teaching
You might think that to be a teacher you need to go to university and get a degree first.
But really teaching simply means taking all the knowledge you have about the Lord and the Bible, and sharing it with other people.
The first thing you can do is to teach those out there who do not know Jesus, how to get saved.
Teaching is simply taking the Word and sharing it with other people. So after finding someone to serve, look for someone that you can help with your knowledge.
That is a very simple ministry that you can do anywhere and anytime. It is not your 'function in the church meeting'. It is what you do every day as a Christian.
Body Ministry 3 - Encouragement
How far do you need to look to find someone who needs encouragement? You probably won't even need to leave your house.
Get up in the morning and you will probably find at least one person in the family who is feeling down. You bump into people all the time who are feeling down and discouraged.
What is the best way to encourage somebody? By flowing out with a heart of love, offering to pray for them. Or you just need to be there to give a smile or a friendly word and say something positive.
Try to imagine that Jesus is walking with you and living inside of you. As you go, ask Him,
"Lord what do you want to do for this person?"
Then do what you feel He wants you to do.
Body Ministry 4 - Giving
You might want to get involved in the ministry of giving. There are always people in need all around you.
Look around you. There are always people asking you for something. If you can just give out in the love of the Lord you have started a ministry.
You won't need to spend your whole life doing that, because it is not your calling. It is a Body ministry and something that you can get involved in right away.
Body Ministry 5 - Leading or Ruling
If you have natural leadership capabilities then you can help other people by leading them in how they should serve the Lord.
Even if you think you cannot be a leader, you can at least lead someone to the Lord. How do you do that? You simply speak to them about the Lord and say to them,
"Let me take you and show you the Lord."
Hopefully in the future the Lord has a calling for you that will lift you up into higher leadership levels. But you can start right where you are and influence people in a leadership role in ministry.
Body Ministry 6 - Showing Compassion
Showing compassion means that when you look at people who have problems in life - people who are suffering, sick or mentally challenged - your heart is stirred inside you.
You want to help people like that. Once again this is very naturalistic. But how much better it is when we are doing it to show people that Jesus loves them?
Anybody can do that. But it is when the heart of the Lord and His love burn strongly inside you, and you want to cry out for these people. You want to help them and minister to them.
Body Ministry 7 - Prophecy
This does not speak of the ministry of the prophet. It means using your words to speak and tell other people what God thinks or says.
You will find that after you become a Christian you are so excited to share the Lord with people. As you do this, something comes up inside of you.
You find yourself talking and sharing as Scriptures come back to your memory and a flow takes place. What happened was all that you had inside of you poured out as you ministered and spoke God's words to that person.
Prophecy can simply mean 'inspired preaching' or 'inspired speaking'. You could simply say to the person,
"Do you know that Jesus really loves you, and He is with you right now? He is sitting right next to you and He wants to put His arms around you and show you that He loves you."
If you want to be used in prophecy, then start by learning to just speak to people what you know Jesus would say to them if He were there.
Adding the Holy Spirit
You will need the Holy Spirit, because all of the natural ministries can only take you so far. You need an extra piece of power; something supernatural to add to it.
The way we do that is by adding the Holy Spirit to the work of Jesus. We combine together the Ministries and the Gifts of the Spirit.
There are nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, and these can be broken down into three groups. There are the Vocal Gifts, the Revelation Gifts and the Power Gifts.
The Vocal Gifts include the ability to speak in tongues, the ability to interpret tongues, and the speaking of prophetic utterance.
The Revelation Gifts are the gift of the word of wisdom, which has a future orientation, the word of knowledge, which tells us about the past and the present, and the discerning of spirits, which helps us to detect when there are demon powers present.
The Power Gifts are faith, which allows us to supernaturally believe for the impossible, performing miracles and healing the sick.
If we add those to the Body Ministries, we start putting together something far more powerful. So you start with the Body Ministries and begin where you are.
After a while your heart begins to burn within, and you cry out,
"Lord, if only I had more supernatural power and ability to do this. Oh Lord, I need the power of your Holy Spirit."
That is when you realize that Jesus alone is not enough. You have an awesome relationship with Him and He makes you feel good when you are down. But you need the power of the Holy Spirit.
You start adding the Gifts of the Spirit to the Body Ministries. As as you do that, those ministries will come to life in a powerful way. They will now move from being largely natural to more supernatural.
You will begin to see a clear ministry that is being controlled by both the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit working together through you.
We will look at the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and how to enter into them shortly.
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