This is a comment I made to Dan who wrote an interesting blog post on the movie “The Rite”
I have come to believe that the gifts are not our gifts- rather are gifts for the person we minister to. For example – if someone gets healed; its the person healed who receives the gift of healing. If someone is given a prophetic word; its they who have received the word. And therefore they are not so much a gift we can use at will – rather its a gift God will grant amongst the brethren when its needed…though it does seem that some can seem to be granted a particular gift more often.
This helps prevent pride building up and knowing that God is more interested in helping the other and wants us to serve him / them.
Within the context of Christianity – we serve and live within a community of believers. It’s within this context that we confess and receive forgiveness. We ask each other for help and receive it. We ask each other to pray for us and we pray for those who ask.