Frankie Mazzapica - Do Not Forget Your Gift
Thank you for tuning in today. My name's Frankie Mazzapica. The title of today's message is, "Do Not Forget Your Gift". Do Not Forget Your Gift. Let me lay the scriptural foundation of where this message is coming from. It's in 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 10 and 11, and it says this, each of you should use your gift. Now, hit pause just for one second. He's saying each of you should use your gift, meaning all of you have been born with a gift from God. Every single one of you. And I'll talk more about that in a minute, but each of you should use your gift to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in various forms. If anyone speaks, you should speak as though you are speaking the words of God. In other words, just as a sidebar, there's a complimenting scripture to that.
It's in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29, where it says, do not let any word come out of your mouth. Not an insult, not gossip, not a curse word. Don't let any word come out of your mouth except that gives strength to the person hearing it. Alright back to the original verse. 1 Peter chapter, what did I say 4? Four, verse 10 and 11. It says, if anyone speaks, let him speak as one who is speaking the words of God. If anyone is serving someone, let them serve with the strength that God gives, so that God will be praised through Jesus Christ, and let all the glory, and all the power, and all the praise go to God forever and ever. Amen. Do you agree with that? Come on, forever and ever.
So he talks about how all of us have received a gift. And I got three major points for you. The first one, we're gonna talk about your gift. Then we're gonna talk about other people's gifts, and then we're gonna talk about another category, it's called power gifts. So let's talk about your gift. Imagine for a second, we just came out of the Christmas season, imagine for a second, you're exchanging presents with a friend, maybe it's just one friend, maybe there's a circle around you and you're exchanging presents, and you're giving gifts away and people are giving gifts to each other. In some of these gifts, you're looking at them and you're like, man, that was a good gift. I wish that gift was mine. Have you ever done that? Yeah. You know, Right. It's like I'm real happy for you, but I kind of wish I had one of those.
But anyway, you're almost like you're keeping yourself from being jealous, right? You're just like that was good. But everyone's passing gifts and then someone says to you, hey, you have a gift. Open it, it's your turn. You have a gift and you say back, oh, thank you. Thank you for telling me I have a gift. Thank you almost halfway. Not believing it. Everybody sees it, except for you. So you're just saying thank you. And then everyone's kinda waiting, like, don't you wanna know what's in there? It's yours. And so eventually you just kinda stand up and you walk out the door. And everyone's like, come on it's really good. You don't know what it is, but a gift this big, like my son came in before the service and he was like, what's in the gift? Is it a box of tennis shoes? Like five boxes, 15 boxes of tennis shoes? Because for him, that's the ultimate gift. You give him a big box full of Jordan tennis shoes and he's happy for life. But what's in it?
Well, something like this is beyond your imagination. It's too small for a little refrigerator. It's too what's in it. And, and that's the expectation that we should have. Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20. It says that he is able, not he will, he is able to give you more than what you can imagine. See, we ask for things that we legitimately need. But there are certain things that he wants to give you that you can't even imagine it. And so you can't even ask for it because you can't imagine it.
Now there are certain gifts, point number one that you were born with and you already know you have. And so before you discover the gifts that you don't have, I want you to use and get comfortable with the gifts that I have given you. Now, the obvious question that all of us ask, is, how do I know what gift God gave me? How do I know which one, that gift? If everyone has a gift, how do I know which one God gave me? I'm so glad you asked. Your gift is your sweet spot. But our sweet spot is when our skill matches a challenge and when our skill matches that challenge, it may be difficult for other people. But for you, it's easy. It's effortless. You don't even have to try. Like for example, some of you have the same gift I have where, it's an encouragement gift. Like I sincerely enjoy telling somebody about themselves something awesome about them. Like that's what makes me feel alive.
Now there's other people, they don't do that, not because they're bad. It's just, that's not their thing to encourage. If every single Sunday morning, I get a sticky and I write a love note to Allie, and I, like this morning, I wrote 'A' for Allie comma and I wrote, "You are so beautiful," 'F,' and I stick it every Sunday morning. I do that. Now around Thursday. I rip it down. I gotta dry her out a little bit before Sunday. If you walk into any three of my kids, personal space. Stickies everywhere. Going all the way back, they're rolled up, they fall off. That's my thing. It might be your thing as well. Other people, they enjoy bringing gifts to people because they love to see on their face, their face light up because they know that you were thinking about them.
Another gift that many of you have is that you feel alive in level three conversations. A level one is when you're in the elevator, somebody walks in and they say, how are you? And you're like, I'm good, how are you? And then you look at the numbers. Okay. It's just, hey, hi, bye, see you, Merry Christmas, right? That's a level one. A level two is kind of where we live. It's kind of just a conversation, right? But a level three now we're going under the surface. How are you doing? And if this is a gift for you, if they give you some shallow answer, that's not enough. You wanna know how they're doing and because you're skilled at it, you recognize that you gotta set the standards sometimes of transparency. The kind of transparency you want them to have.
And so you're courageous enough to take your armor off first and talk about what your feelings are, what your concerns are, what you're worried about. But because you're skilled at it, that conversation is not all about you. You're not just sitting there unloading, that's unloading, and there's times for that, but because you're skilled at it, it's about them. You're really good at listening. You're really good at asking questions. You're really good at shutting up. Don't you wish more people had that gift? And you feel comfortable there. When you're in your gift, it's easy. It's comfortable. It's, you enjoy, you feel alive when you do it.
My mother in the Lord, it's not my the mother who birthed me, who I love dearly, but I was adopted so to speak. I was 19 and she was like 41 and she just said, I'm adopted, I'm your spiritual mom. And I wanna challenge every lady in this room to reach for that, to just look for someone who catches your eye and adopt them. Because if Jeannie never adopted me, I'm gonna promise you one thing, you wouldn't be seeing me right now. I'd be doing something stupid somewhere. And so she lived her life just changing lives. I'm one of them. There's a million other Frankie's out there. For 50 years, she's 71 right now. She started when she was 20. Fifty years, 50 years, and I said, Jeannie, like there's a whole swath of people. You've changed their life. Like, how do you, how are you so strategic to do that?
Watch this. She goes, I live my life giving to others what I wish someone would have given to me. If you find yourself feeling alone a lot, like you're just alone. Here's the thing about this. When you're feeling really alone, you can be in a room full of people and still feel alone. That's a different alone than being in the car by yourself. That's a different alone. And if you are there, you say to yourself, I'm not gonna let anyone in my life feel what I'm feeling. I'm gonna live my life giving to people what I wish I had myself. And if I always feel alone, for the rest of my life, then so be it. But I'm not gonna let anyone else feel alone. And what we've all learned, is what you give to others is like a boomerang. It comes back around. You cuss at other people, get ready, chin up buttercup, because it's coming back.
And so God does things like that. That's your gift. You kind of figure out your sweet spot that comes easy for you. But now other people's gift. Now this is a dangerous thing, because it is so easy to recognize other people's gift and their gift always looks better than your gift. I got a friend of mine who just is so successful in business, and if I'm not careful, I'll be jealous. Like this is stupid. This is amazing. God has totally forgotten about me. All the favor is clearly on you. Like this is insane, because other people's gift is always more impressive than our own gift. David experienced this. Here's Goliath and people are telling David, he's too big for you to knock down. And he says, back to him. No, no, no, he's too big for me to miss. It was just a different mentality. And so King Saul brings them to the kingdom, and he says, alright, if you're courageous enough to fight him, I'm gonna give you the best armor. I'm giving you mine.
I have the most impressive sword. I have the most impressive armor in the land. It's all yours and he backs up and he's looking at someone else's gift and it is shining. But it's a powerful moment when you recognize that your own shabby gift, if it's anointed by God, so David knew that, right? David knew that. And so he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out this just a bunch of like this crumpled up leather and he grabs, it's like a string from one side to the other and there's a pocket leather right in the middle, and it's a slingshot, and you swing, you put both strings in the pockets down here, and you swing it and you let go of one, hang on to the other and a rock flies. And he's holding this shabby gift, but he knows that his gift is anointed by God. How does he know? Faith is spelled R-I-S-K. He's taken a risk a lot in his life. For us, he's practiced being encouraging. He's practiced in his level three conversation. He's practiced with that sling over and over again. And he's saying, uh, uh, no, this looks like it's shabby, but God has anointed my shabby and now is powerful.
So he goes out there and he says, keep your armor. It's impressive. But I'll just go ahead and use what I got. And you know the story, he comes running out... out. Gone, his shabby gift. Here's a good scripture, in Galatians chapter 6, verse 4. It says this, pay careful attention to your own work. You know those horses that got these blinders on? Pay careful attention to your own work, because then you'll receive the satisfaction of a job well done. I'm doing good and then you won't have to compare yourself to others. Look, I more power to you, man. I hope you do great, but I'm not gonna look at you very much because your gift looks a lot better than mine. I'm just gonna focus on my gifts and back up and go. I'm getting this thing down, baby.
Last one we talked about your gift, talked about other people's gift. Now I wanna talk about power gifts. These gifts you're not born with. Some people are but like the 0.05, okay? These gifts you're not born with, these gifts you become aware of, and you back up and go, okay, I want those. These gifts, you cannot get them on your own, you cannot get them, you can only receive them. Let me just list off these power gifts. It's in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 8, And I think it goes to verse 9 as well. These power gifts, I'll rattle them off and then I'll talk about them. These power gifts are wisdom. Now, wisdom, you can read all the books in the world and you won't have this kind of wisdom. It's divine wisdom. It's a thought from God.
If you ever said something and you're like, man, that was really good, like I'm not trying to brag or anything, but that was awesome. And I heard at the same time as you, the are you with me? That that was a moment of like divine wisdom, bang. But to operate in that, a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge where you know what someone's going through. You know, it's like, you are having this sickness in your body, but they never told you. You are having this trouble at home and they never told you, it's that word of knowledge. It's faith in God. That's the one I'm gonna circle back to, faith in God, healings, miracles, prophecy, if you're talking about something in the future. Discernment, where someone prophesied and you go, that sounds, you're out there.
And then someone else prophesied and you're like, okay, that just resonated. That's just one example. You walk into your house and you're like, there's a demon in this place. Something feels weird in Jesus name. You open up the door, get out, get out. That's discernment. You're in the middle of an argument and you go, this isn't normal. This is being fueled by something. There's a devil in this. That's discernment. Many of you have moved into discernment, you don't even know it. Have you ever been talking to somebody, and they lie and you go... that's discernment, right? They're big eyed and they're really trying to convince you, you're like, no, no, no, liar, liar, pants on fire. You know it, that's discernment. Speaking in new languages. Let me say it this way, Paul said it in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1, says, though I speak the tongue of men and of angels, that there's a tongue that only God understands. And then some people have a gift of interpretation that understand what's being said. These are power gifts.
Let me just use an example of a power gift in motion. And I wrote about this in the first book I wrote, "You're a Divine Invitation," that there are actually things that you can do to receive these power gifts. I remember saying, God, if you just tell me what to do, I'm gonna do it. Like just tell me. And then I realize there are things that you can do. To give you an example, for the past five or six years, and only within the past five or six years. And I've been in the ministry for 26 years. Nobody got healed. Actually one, one person got healed, physically healed right in front of me. Nobody, for 20, 21 years. Over the last five years, I have no idea. I have no idea. But let me tell you one example of the faith in God is, I'm in Costa Rica. We're passing out food, and after we pass out food, I stand on the foot of the first step of the bus and I say, hey, we're out of food. There's like 40 people there, we're out of food. We don't have any more food, but Jesus is here and wherever Jesus is, miracles can happen.
Now we're in the barrios. It's, I don't even, I can't find, like this is the poorest of the poor, of the poor. Their homes are made of, like stick, I can't remember what the name of it is, but it's like stick and rock and it turns into mud. They string electricity from one home to the next and they all use the same line of electricity. So I know they don't have insurance, right? And they're all like middle aged or older. And so I'm like, there's nobody here that's sick? Because nobody raised their hand. And I'm like, is anyone here a liar? Right? But then it dawned on me, I'm this American guy. They don't know me. Why would they be honest with me?
And so I looked to a cantina that was like, you know, 20 ft away. And this guy was sitting on a stool and it was obvious he was blind. It was obvious. And so I said, hey, will you come over here real quick, somebody get him and bring him over here. And I put my arm around him. I said, if God opens his eyes, will you believe that God can heal you? All of them are like, yeah, like do that. And so I pray for him. I said, in the name of Jesus eyes open. I said, interpreter, he opens up his eyes, still blind. Can't see anything but black. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm not stopping there. Let me pray again.
In the name of Jesus eyes open, opens his eyes, can't see anything. I feel a circle of sweat on my back. Everybody's eyes are like burning into my face. I just went from having a whole bunch of faith. Now I'm nervous, sick. And then I pray for him a third time. He opens up his eyes, he drops his head, tears are coming out of his face. And he says, I can see, I can see, I can see. Come on, would you just put your... I know you weren't there. But just. Now how in the world, I've never seen blind eyes open in my life. Where did that faith come from? Saying, okay, this guy's eyes are gonna open. That is, that's a power gift.
And sometimes I have it, most of the time, I don't. But that's a power gift that comes sometimes, and I just knew, like I knew my name. God's gonna open up that guy's eyes. These power gifts, you and I must have. And I'm telling you that God is going to pour out his gifts on people who talk to him every day, on people who want the gift, on people who stand in a gray area. There's holiness over here, there's sin over there. And they say, oh, I don't know, it could go both ways. I'm not gonna go to hell if I do that, and you go, but you know that's a gray area. I'm gonna err on this side. Those are the people where God backs up and says, you already know what your gift is. It's your sweet spot. You already know not to get jealous of their gift. But now I'm gonna give you a supernatural gift that you cannot earn on your own. Does anybody receive that? Come on.