1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian Spiritual Gifts | Page 4

ADMINISTRATION
THE divine enablement to understand and to make an organisation function effectively.
Behind every good apostle is a great administrator. Paul, as we mentioned above, was a
man on fire for his apostleship ministry, but we read in scripture as well that he had a sidekick called Timothy who helped put systems in place so that the church could be sustained
in its endeavour to bring change to its communities. Timothy was a young man who Paul
put great hope in and he was the support tha t God ordained for Paul to have in order for
Paul’s ministry to become sustainable.
In of 2 Timothy 4, when Paul was in prison awaiting his execution, he writes to his
administrator friend, please come quickly to me, bring Mark with you and that cloak that I
left behind, along with those scrolls because I have need of them. Timothy’s role in Paul’s
life was clearly administrative and enormously supportive. Thank God for good
administrators in the church – people who are able to keep the wheels turning in the areas
of strategy and finance because, without them the church would simply self-destruct.
There are many who would like to be at the forefront, as Paul was, but as I said just now,
every good apostle has a great administrator working alongside him and picking up on his
areas of weakness, and together they form a great team.

CRAFTSMANSHIP
THE divine enablement to creatively design or construct items to be used for ministry
purposes.
Through the course of the Bible, we note from time to time that God gave the special
enablement to certain people at certain times for certain reasons. One of the most obvious
in this regard would be Noah. Noah had to build a boat in wood, that even in today’s times
with tools that we have at our disposal, would be an enormously challenging task. Noah
however, even without these sophisticated tools, built the ark. He took 120 years of
painstaking effort to make what God had planned. I have to believe that Noah had a gift,
not just the gift of persevering for 120 years, but also the gift of craftsmanship that he
needed in order to build so sophisticated a boat. Remember the truth folks that God will
never ask you to do what you cannot do. He will only ever ask you to do the things that you
can do, or those that he supernaturally enables you to do. Back in the 18th and 19th
centuries, we see the church being at the forefront of architectural building. I believe it
true to say that the men and women who built those beautiful cathedrals at that time had