Gifts of Holy Spirit

To excel in the National Basketball Association, as in any sports league, a player must be in excellent physical condition. But according to a profile by ESPN senior writer Baxter Holmes, what sets NBA champion Nikola Jokic apart from his peers is not his towering physique or his Serbian heritage, but rather, his dizzying intellect.

Ognjen Stojaković, player development coach for Jokic’s Denver Nuggets, says, “You're as fast as you can anticipate. He anticipates situations two and three steps ahead. People don't understand, before the situation happens, he can predict it."

According to tracking firm Second Spectrum, Jokic assisted on 468 layups and dunks--the most of any active NBA player. All-time NBA great LeBron James describes Jokic as mentally exceptional. James said, “He sees plays before they happen. Maybe it's not talked about, because a lot of people don't understand it, but I do. He's special.”

Branislav Vicentic coached Jokic as a teenager in Belgrade, Serbia. He said, “The first time I saw him. I just fell in love.” Despite his substandard conditioning, at first Jokic was unable to complete 10 sit-ups or pushups, Vicentic said that Jokic simply didn’t make any mistakes on the court. Having only coached him for that one year, Vicentic said he’d never seen anyone like Jokic, either before or since.

Vicentic said, “Listen, I don't want to take credit. Some [people] ask me, ‘Hey, you create Nikola Jokic?’ I don't know how to make Nikola Jokic. I was blessed to have him on my team. He's Beethoven. You give him a piano. He makes music.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Don't devalue the gifting and identity with which God has gifted you. Be yourself to the best of your ability, and don't worry about whether it matches the expectations of others.

God is no respecter of persons, especially when it comes to the gifts of the Spirit. For an example from recent church history, consider the beginning of the Pentecostal movement at the turn of the twentieth century. In the decade prior to 1906, lynchings of African Americans in America had skyrocketed. It is estimated that well over one thousand blacks, mainly men, were lynched—hanged, shot or sometimes buried alive—in the United States. Millions of people in the United States had joined the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1906, the Spirit of God was poured out in a powerful revival in Los Angeles that has come to be known as the Azusa Street Revival. Under the leadership of an African American man, William Seymour, tens of thousands of people from all over the world and all walks of life—rich, poor, men, women, Americans, non-Americans, black, white, Asian, Latino— came by car, by horse and buggy, by train and by boat. They all encountered the Spirit. In a year of lynchings, blacks and whites were embracing each other as beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. Frank Bartleman, a historian of the Azusa Street Revival, said, "The color line is washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ!"

Charles R. Swindoll writes in “Embraced By the Spirit”:

By the time I graduated from [seminary], I had many convictions and few questions, especially regarding the Holy Spirit …. But during a lifetime of ministry that has taken me around the United States and to many countries abroad, I have found that the work of the Holy Spirit continually keeps me off balance. I'm not alone in that. Those in church leadership seem afraid the Spirit is going to do something we can't explain. I've found that disturbs many folks … but I'll admit it energizes me.

I've come to realize there are dimensions of the Spirit's ministry I have never tapped and places in this study about which I know very little. I'm on a strong learning curve. I have witnessed a dynamic power in his presence that I long to know more of firsthand. I now have questions and a strong interest in many of the things of the Spirit I once felt were settled. To say it plainly, I am hungry for more of him. I long to know God more deeply and more intimately.

When Christians meet…their purpose is not—or should not be—to ascertain what is the mind of the majority, but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit—something which may be quite different.

— Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister (1925—)

It is an image of the Trinity as a plant, with the Father as a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance.

— Tertullian, Church Father (c. 155–230)

The top single superpower adults would most like to have:

To read minds: 28 percent
To fly: 15 percent
To be invisible: 11 percent
To possess super strength: 9 percent
To walk through walls: 1 percent

Reverend Thomas Tewell writes:

My friend Andy Eddington, once the president of Shriner College in Texas, would go to prisons and preach to men on death row in Huntsville, Texas. I used to go with Andy every now and then, and on one of those trips we stopped at a greasy spoon on our way home to Dallas. Andy loved sugar in his coffee, so he took not one, not two, but three teaspoonfuls of sugar. As the waitress watched, Andy said, "Ma'am, we're going to need more sugar for this table." This Texas waitress looked at Andy and said, "Listen, bud, before I give you more sugar, you stir what you got."

Now, there's a sermon there, and the sermon is: Stir what you got. Use your gifts.

In a "60 Minutes" interview with Ed Bradley, Denzel Washington spoke of a pivotal moment in his life.

Washington was in college at the time and was dealing with questions about his future. As he sat in a chair in his mother's beauty salon, he saw an elderly lady in the mirror. She stared at Denzel and suddenly spoke to his mother, saying, "Give me a piece of paper; I have a word for [Denzel]." On the paper she wrote, "You will speak to millions."

When Denzel asked his mother who the woman was, she said, "She's one of the oldest women at Mt. Vernon [Denzel's church], and she has the gift of prophecy." Washington pointed to that day as a defining moment in his life. Though Washington is one of Hollywood's busiest actors, his faith is an essential part of his life; he prays and attends church regularly.