Chad and Keith discuss the dangers of comparing your spiritual gifting to others' and explain the gift of exhortation.
If you want to learn more about spiritual gifts or take a spiritual gifts test, click here.
Chad and Keith discuss the dangers of comparing your spiritual gifting to others' and explain the gift of exhortation.
If you want to learn more about spiritual gifts or take a spiritual gifts test, click here.
Intro (Keith): Welcome to the Kanakuk Institute Podcast, where we continue to equip leaders with Biblical skills for a lifetime of ministry.
Chad (00:13): And good morning, welcome back into the Kanakuk Institute Podcast studio, Keith, it’s been a minute since we’ve been here. How are you doing?
Keith (00:22): Man, I’m doing so good Chad, it’s such a joy to be here. The Ozark mountains, man, I just wish all of you were here to be able to see the beauty of what God has given to us. These, I mean this year, Chad, the leaves are not just good, they’re spectacular. I look out the window, man we’re seeing red, yellow, gold, I mean, and they are magnificent.
Chad (00:48): Yeah, it has been a really really fun fall so far, and excited to be with you guys this morning, you know, we have started this series on Spiritual Gifts, and kind of laid the groundwork for what Spiritual Gifts are. And just by way of reminder to our audience, you know, the beauty of Spiritual Gifts is that for those of us that know Christ, Keith, that we have been indwelt with the Holy :Spirit, and that God has given us a unique measure of the Spirit, Romans tells us, and because of that we have this gift, sometimes multiple gifts, but a gift that we can use to serve the body. If you were encouraging our audience this morning about why it’s important for them to use their gift, what would you say?
Keith (01:31): You know, Chad, that’s a great question because, you know, I just want to take it to the most simple way right now. This morning, I woke up and there’s this beautiful girl laying beside me in bed, her name is Karen, I am in love with that girl. But what makes me so in love with Karen is not just her external. But what makes me love a is, you know, how she values me, how she just with her elegant grace, she moves through the house, she’s in the word of God. She’s a woman of prayer. She’s always in tune with her kids, what Cameron and Callie, and Hannah, what each one of the kids are doing, and it’s really fun to just watch her. This morning as I walked into the closet, you know, and Karen’s up. I’m watching her in there and she’s got her phone on and she’s listening to Eric’s worship music, and he just released a new song, and I’m going to tell you something. The hairs on my body, you know, just began to stick up because I’m going, “That’s magnificent and so fun because, here’s my wife in there.” It wasn’t just the music. It was watching her with her hands up just worshiping God. And I’m going, “And I’m married to her.” And you know, I just go, it’s such an enjoyment to see how a gift and how you use that gift and how that gift Eric’s music, Karen’s love, passion, bringing everybody together. You know what Paul said in Ephesians, that the gifts are to bring us together, to unify us. And so, when you maximize your gift, you’re no longer looking at others at what kind of comparing yourself or, “I’m not good enough.” But you’re looking at them going, “Man, I can help that person become the best they can become. This is a better day.”
Chad (03:19): Yeah, you touched on a couple traps here with Spiritual gifts. One significant one is being compared or doing the whole comparison thing. How do we encourage our audience to understand their gift, and then also to not, like, feel like they’re constantly living in this shadow of maybe a gift they desired, or a gift they admire. What is our mind state need to be in to make sure that we have Spiritual gifts in the right place?
Keith (03:45): Well, you know, that’s a really, once again, that’s such a good question, because me personally. You know, the trap like you said that I fall into is when I begin to look at somebody and think that they’re better than me. And so, that’s a huge deal. Comparison can cause you to go, “I don’t measure up. I’m not as good looking as that person, I’m not as smart as that person, I don’t communicate as good as that person.” And before long what you’ve done is you’ve put yourself in a state of depression. You know?
Chad (04:14): Self-induced.
Keith (04:15): And you go, “Why did I do that?” Because, what I didn’t know at first is the value of my gift. And so if I see your gift and I go, “You know, Chad is obviously such a good teacher, he’s such a good communicator, he’s so handsome.” You know, look at his four kids, look at his wife, look at his house. You see, all of a sudden I go, “Look at what all he’s got and I don’t know if I have as much as he has.” And so as I compare myself, immediately, I’m in trouble because I’m seeing others, I’m looking as, so to speak, at the other side of the fence. And the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. And so I see my side of the fence being the grass is dead, you know, no flowers are growing, the deers keep eating all of my flowers, and I’m frustrated because everything seems to be working for you. So that comparison trap is that rather than saying, “You know what?” I’m not going to compare myself to Chad or anybody. I’m going to accept who I am. I have the gift of exhortation, my gifts may not be as good as that person, but you know what, I’m going to be the best me that I can become. And so, in order to be the best me that I can become. I’ve got to exercise that gift a little bit. I’ve got to go to the word, I’ve got to be in prayer. I’ve got to ask God, and what you know a lot of times people don’t do is they don’t go, “God thank you for the gift that you’ve given to me.”
Chad (05:37): Yeah, helps me maximize it.
Keith (05:38): Yeah, help me maximize that and what hit me this morning as I’m in the word to receive the word, to apply the word. To meditate on the word. To have a word in my heart that’s absolutely changing me. And what I’ve got that that’s like putting gas in your car. And when you’ve got that gas in your car, you’re going to move. But when there’s no gas there, you can’t maximize your gift. So it’s important for us to have the word, prayer, the Spiritual disciplines in our life that allow us to maximize at full capacity.
Chad (06:08): And you hint on this without using a specific word, but this idea of surrender, right? Like, we may not be in love with the gift we have, or, you know, we see somebody else, we see Keith, like, encourage, encourage, encourage, and like, I can’t do that. And all of a sudden, I’m actually not surrendering my heart under the authority of God to go, “God you gave me this gift.” And by the way, if I don’t use my gift, the body actually suffers. And I think that’s what we miss is we get into he comparison game, and I go, “Man, I can never encourage like Keith.” And so I actually stop using the gift God gave me. At least to the fullness because I’m all in this comparison mindset, and now, everybody loses. And that’s what we miss as the church is how the body suffers. 1 Corinthians talks about this, right? Don’t let the arm say to the leg, what are you doing? And we have so many members of our church that are in paralysis because of that comparison game. Speak to that just a little bit.
Keith (07:09): Well that’s a great word, you know the word paralysis. You just think, that is an ugly word. You know, it’s interesting that I can make myself paralyzed by fear, by comparison, by any of those words that take me into that word we used a while ago, that trapped place where anything about me compares, it begins to think that I wish I was something that I’m not, rather than accepting who I am. And I can never be that person of who I am if I don’t realize the value in which I am. Ok? So, you know, my gift. The gift of exhortation. And I want to do that this morning for just a second Chad, you know, I was thinking about that because I go, you know, You and I we’ve worked together for a long time. I mean how many years do you think we’ve been working?
Chad (07:59): Uh twenty-eight.
Keith (08:00): Ok, twenty-eight years. I mean I, when I met you, you are single, you are, you’ve got a big ‘ole flock of hair on your head.
Chad (08:09): Oh, I miss those days.
Keith (08:10): You’re driving a Jeep. I mean, bro, you are that guy. And, you know, one of the things about you is that yours and my relationship kind of became a little tense for a moment. You remember that?
Chad (08:24): Yeah, those first couple of years were a little hard.
Keith (08:27): Yeah, talk about that for just a second because I want to exhort what happened there because, I don’t, I think people in the audience just think that relationships just naturally are there.
Chad (08:37): Yeah, well I think, you know, we, for those of y’all that don’t know, Keith and I have worked together for years at K7, and then when we came to start the Institute, you know, we move here. And it was like we had to learn each other all over again. And I think we were in this dance of, ok, here’s your gift here’s my gift, I was trying to run in my lane, and you were trying to figure out how to let me run in my lane. And vice versa, and I think, really there just came a place where we really understood like, God wired you this way, God wired Chad this way. The ministry wins, the gospel wins if we not only the two of us, but then everybody with us can run in the lane that God designed them to do, and so we really, I think, came to that point where we got onto the dry erase board and went, “How do we put everybody where they’re maximizing their gifts?” And that’s when we just, everything took off.
Keith (09:28): Everything flourished because. I remember one day walking into your office, and you look like.
Chad (09:34): Not good, not good.
Keith (09:35): You looked like you were a puppy run over by a truck, and I said, “Chad what’s wrong.” And you said, “You hurt my feelings.” Because I, and I didn’t realize, I was hurting your feelings a lot because I am high energy, high go.
Chad (09:48): You went coach on me.
Keith (09:47): I went coach on you. And I said, “You can’t do that.” And that was frustrating for you, frustrating me, but until I valued and you valued my gift we couldn’t, we would have never lasted. We would have quit. You would have walked away. I would have walked away and said, “You know what? We are having a Barnabas moment where we can’t get along. You know?” A John-Mark moment.
Chad (10:14): Yeah, John has to take off and Barnabas has got to come a long time.
Keith (10:16): Exactly right, and you know what’s so good about that is that because you and I began the journey of really seeing your gift, which by the way, bro, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a man more gifted than you, and I consider it a privilege every day to get to be a part of your life to watch you be a dad, and as you’re a great dad, you’re a great husband to watch you be a great teacher to be a great communicator to be a great student of the Bible. All your gifts that are easily identifiable by me, because I don’t see you as a competitor, but I see you as a teammate.
Chad (10:54): Yeah, and I think you touched on something really important: we began to understand. And here we are 20 years later, still learning to understand. And that’s true in marriage, that’s true in… and how often in the church in particular, we come to these crossroads where we feel like people are banging and we go, “Let’s all go our separate ways.” And what do we have now? Another church plan.
Keith (11:18): The split happens, and the split happens in the church, it happens in marriage, it happens with kids, and so friendships that were friendships for a long time, and then all of a sudden because they couldn’t get along, they split, because they, and I really believe this Chad, that it’s because we didn’t really understand their gift.
Chad (11:36): Yeah, and in the moment, it’s like, “this is the easy way out.” Which we know the collateral on the back side, right? Is that ever really the easy way out, and it’s not, but, well. So, one, thank you for the encouragement, and two, you are an encourager, and you had mentioned a guy in the Bible that we would love to get to talk about just for a second. We’ve got this guy named, “Joseph” originally.
Keith (11:57): Yeah, his name was Joseph and we see that, you know, in the scriptures, and Acts 4:36 it says that his name was Joseph, and that what he was, he was one of those guys, he was a son of encouragement, and he had a piece of land, and he sold the land to give it to others. He is such an encourager that his gift was to encourage others with what he said and also what he did.
Chad (12:19): So, I’ve got a question for you, because you and I have had this question before, but there are people that use words that don’t feel like encouragement. And there are people that are really good at encouraging. Help us understand the difference between flattery, or just throwing words at somebody, vs actual, like what’s the difference there, coming from an encourager?
Keith (12:42): Well, you know, one of the things I said about you earlier, you know, you wore your long hair, you know big curly locks of red hair. That could get touchy. Because, you know,
Chad (12:54): Because I don’t have hair anymore.
Keith (12:56): Right! And if you were kind of sensitive about that, and I made mention to your hair what would that do for you?
Chad (13:00): Yeah, it turns into discouragement.
Keith (13L04): Absolutely, I’ll never forget, Kallie was like, 6 or 7 years old. She had this, the year before, she’d had this beautiful ringlet blonde hair, and everybody made comments about, “Look at Chance, look at your daughter who’s blonde headed.”
Chad (13:21): Yeah, big old curls.
Keith (13:23): Yeah, big ringlets, and she’s awesome. Well, then, the next year, it began to straighten and darken. I love her dark brown hair. I love it. But people would go, “Oh, what happened to Kallie’s hair?”
Chad (13:39): Like something’s wrong.
Keith (13:40): I go, “Are you nuts?” You know? Because what they were doing was emphasizing the external, rather than the internal. And what encouraging should always do, if I say to you, “Look at you, that’s a nice shirt that you wear.” You’re going to start thinking you need to wear a type of shirt that everybody comments about, a type of shoe that people need to comment about. Your hair, the way you comb it, we need to comment about that, “You’re beautiful.” So, things like that that are externally worn, can become a real trap, because then we start to think that people like me because of the way I look, and not for how I serve, and not for how I exhort, and not for how I work, and so all the gifts of the spirit have nothing to do with the external, but the external will be a part of it, but the internal is so important.
Chad (14:32): So I hear you saying if I want to encourage somebody today, I need to focus something on about who they are, not what they do or what they look like.
Keith (14:43): That’s right, so if you go to work today, and you see something there, it’s so easy, “Hey, nice dress, nice shirt.” Be careful, rather than say that, who’s inside of that dress, who’s inside of that shirt? And what, have I really exhorted that person in them? Because I will, I just bet most conflicts are because we don’t see people as God sees them, but we’re looking at the external, we don’t like them, they frustrate us in a lot of ways, and so we don’t see the best in them. And so if we can go and say, “You know what? That guy really has the gift of administration, this company works because that guy puts that together well. I, have I told you this lately? You have really built a great business here. You really are someone that I could follow, because I just love how you manage people well. I love watching you read your Bible, I love watching how that you serve others. Those are things that are very tangible things that we can do with people.
Chad (15:48): Yeah, really specific. One of the things Kat and I talk about as parents, and I’m sure we have a lot of parents listening to us now is, how do we, when we tell our kids, “We’re so proud of you.” We go out of our way to say, “We’re proud of you for who you are, not what you do.” But that’s a challenge, right, because kids get good grades, you know, and so in our mindset, we can go “Miley I’m so proud of you for doing this.” Which is fine, but we’re always looking for ways to couple it with, “I’m proud of you for this, but I’m really more proud of you for who you are.” And then, like you said, bring a specific attribute, maybe, “because of your kindness, you’re an amazing friend.” Whatever it might be. So I hear you saying, when we want to be an encourager, it’s got to be specific and it needs to be…
Keith (16:31): Let me give you one more example… the thing about that is that, watching you have, what I, my raising Kallie and Cameron, was I had man on man coverage. Mine was a lot easier, because I could say to Cameron, “You’re my favorite son.” I could say to Kallie, “You’re my favorite daughter.” You can’t do that because you have zone coverage. You have four kids, you have to exhort them. And knowing that, it’s a little bit more, you know, difficult, because you have to make each kid feel great in their lane. And if you say things like, “You look pretty today.” The other one doesn’t feel pretty, because you didn’t mention to them they’re not pretty. So, or you’re … Oh, Miley’s so … and whatever the next word that you want to say, and that makes the other three feel like they’re not. So, you know, when Kallie and Cameron, Kallie had a very,, her tendency was more toward music, Cameron’s was more towards athletics. But when Kallie would see that I enjoyed Cameron more as an athlete, she wanted to excel as an athlete because she wanted to get that attention to me, and so what did I have to do to make sure that she felt validated?
Chad (17:38): Yeah, you became the greatest piano recital guy in history.
Keith (17:43): Yeah, it’s unbelievable, right? And so, people don’t recognize that. They think it’s a science that I’ve got to figure this thing out, it’s really right before us, it’s low hanging fruit.
Chad (17:52): Yeah, and it, I love what you said, it’s like, who are the kids, or who are the employees that God has given me, and then how do I meet them where they’re at, and then encourage them where they’re at, so that they can flourish. Because they probably don’t have the gifts that I have, they have different gifts as well, we’re still discovering that with our kids. Obviously, you already know that with your kids. So, let’s break it down practical for today. The listening audience is about to go to work, they’re about to go to class. Give us two or three things. How do I specifically encourage today? What would be the action step that you would give me?
Keith (18:32): Well, I think we’re in a very lonely word. I think a lot of people social media has made it easy to believe we have all these friends on Facebook, and all these instagrams and stuffs. And so, we like to think I have this huge following. Well I just want to encourage you today to find that one person that you encourage to their spirit. You know, find something about them that’s not external, but’s internal, and just tell them, I really appreciate that about you. Because the goal of life, as I see it in scripture, is that we want to be a friend. I want to be a friend to others. I want to be willing to lay my life down for you, so that you could find who you are. I don’t need you to see how, I’m not that great. God is great, so therefore, I want people to see God’s voice through me, finding areas of their life that represent Christ.
Chad (19:20): That’s good. That’s a good word, and a good challenge, encouragement for us today. You know, I would just, as our audience heads to whatever is in their day, just ask the Holy Spirit, “Spirit, show me somebody today that needs encouragement, that needs, not just flattery, but needs a word to maximize who they are, and who knows what God can do with that.” So, we thank you so much for joining us here for this series on Spiritual Gifts. Tune in next time, we’ll continue working through the six, seven, eight spiritual gifts, and excited to be with you here on the Kanakuk Institute Podcast