Month: August 2011

Gifts of the Holy Spirit 2 of 2

Who benefits from the Gifts of the Holy Spirit?

They are for the edification of the church (1Cor 12:17; 14:12)

All too often we think that the “gift” is given to us so we can use it. You can know this is wrong by where the “focus” lies. The focus is on the self.

Love focuses on others.

Really it is the Holy Spirit using us to manifest His blessing on someone else.

For example, a “gift” of healing is a benefit to the person who is sick, not the willing vessel through whom the Holy Spirit ministered healing.

We are motivated to be willing vessels through love.

I do not find anywhere in the Bible where we are supposed to be spending ANY TIME “finding” our gifts…

All I find in the Bible is that we are to love God, and love one another, and by that love we are willing to be used by God as He purposes…

So while it is important that we are aware of the gifts and even desire their manifestation, we do not need to spend any time hung up on figuring out which gift we have. Instead, we can spend our time in God’s word and being willing vessels to be used by God has He wills.

How can we know God?

There are really only two possible religions

1. God is not personal (god is a force or consciousness) or god is personal and has chosen not to reveal himself to us. It is impossible for us to know god, so we worship a god of our own imagination. All variations that spring from this are man-made religions. There are no absolutes, we make our own rules, and are ultimately our own “god”.

2. God is personal. Because we as finite beings cannot possibly understand God on our own, He has chosen to reveal Himself to us in a way we CAN understand. We learn about Him and develop a trusting relationship with Him through His revelation of Himself to us. We come to Him on His terms and are accountable to His standard.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit 1 of 2

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are:

1. Not at our command, they are manifestations of the Holy Spirit as He wills

2. Not signs to unbelievers, it is for edification of believers (the church). The gifts of the Holy Spirit are foolishness to unbelievers and like casting perls before swine.

3. They are manifested as the Spirit directs, or in other words, as the Holy Spirit determines they are needed.

We get too hung up on TV personalities thinking that for the Holy Spirit to be working in our lives that we should be at some “level of faith” such that we are manifesting the gifts of the spirit on command.

More often than not, the TV personalities are manifesting occultic “miracles” and not the working of the Holy Spirit. You can know them by their fruits, and whether they drawing attention to themselves or to Jesus.

The truth is, all we are to do is desire the gifts, be willing vessels, and be motivated by love to help other believers. When there are times that a manifestation of a Gift would benefit a believer, then we trust that the Holy Spirit will manifest it through us. We are basically “out of the loop” in deciding when and where a gift manifests, it is only important that we desire to be used.