Billy Graham's comments on this important subject are helpful: "These gifts come to us from the Holy Spirit. He chooses who gets which gifts, and He dispenses them at His good pleasure. While we are held accountable for the use of any gifts He gives us, we have no responsibility for gifts we have not been given. Nor are we to covet what someone else has or be envious of that person. We may wish to have certain gifts and even ask for them, but if it is not the will of the Holy Spirit, we will not get what we ask for. And if we are dissatisfied because the Holy Spirit does not give us the gifts we want, we sin."
Helping Strategy
1. Stay within the guidelines of the above "Background" when discussing the area of the gifts of the Spirit. It is possible to be diverted by some who would make the gifts something they were never meant to be.
2. Make it clear that one must be a born-again Christian in order to appropriate the gifts of the Spirit. Contrary to the insistence of some, this order cannot be reversed. Ask the inquirer if he or she has received the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If not, share "Steps to Peace with God," page 11.
3. If your inquirer is a believer who is sincerely seeking the fullness of the Holy Spirit and identification of a gift, encourage prolonged and careful study of the Scriptures that deal with the gifts, including the book of Acts and the epistles of Paul, where we see the gifts being exercised. Careful and thoughtful prayer should accompany such study, as spiritual discernment and wisdom will come to guide the seeker away from excesses.
4. Advise him or her not to be unduly influenced by people or groups who insist on a kind of standardized approach for the receiving and exercising of any gift or gifts, or who insist that all believers must possess certain gifts. Each one must trust the Holy Spirit to distribute as He wills (John 3:8; 1 Corinthians 12:11).
A comment by Billy Graham helps put this into perspective: "I believe that a person who is Spirit-filled—constantly submitting to the lordship of Christ—will come to discover his or her gifts with some degree of ease. He or she wants God's guidance, and that is the kind of person God stands ready to bless, revealing the gifts that the Holy Spirit has bestowed on him or her."