O.k. I’m hooked. Now I know why my husband spends so much time on his blog. I thought I would do just one post for today, but turns out blogging is fun. So here go my thoughts for the day: Healing, prophecy, intercession, and hearing from God. And before you stop reading because of skepticism or frustration in the fact that these topics are so debated over in the church, hear me out. I definitely don’t have much figured out, but I have been asking Jesus questions about these gifts and think He’s given me a few things to hold onto in the dealings and practices of these gifts.
I have to admit, before the past month I was quite skeptical that the “gifts of the Spirit” still existed today. I haven’t ever been around someone who has been physically or spiritually healed and I have heard people prophecy over dear brothers and sisters that have been really wounded by false prophecy. And honestly, it frustrated me. My frustration moved me to a place of bitterness and fear of these gifts. God is so gracious though and has slowly been immersing me into the realities of the gifts of the Spirit-mainly prophecy, intercession, and healing, and hearing from Him. The state I’m in now is one of believing that God’s agenda, as it says in John 10:10, is “…to bring life and life to the full.” I don’t mean that the body will be exempt from suffering and hardship, but I do think that my view of why God allows us to suffer has changed. Just as the Spirit lead Jesus into the desert to endure temptation and trials, I think the Spirit leads us into seasons of trials in order that we would realize our dependence upon Him and ultimately rest in the joy and satisfaction that HE is enough for us in the midst of any trial or tribulation, which brings life to the soul, as Jesus says in John 10:10. I also think that He desires to bring us into these seasons of trial and tribulation so that these “gifts of the Spirit” can be used to bring about healing, prophecy, intercession, and hearing from Jesus. The danger in these gifts is having our own agenda though. This is a big danger and something I fell into just about 30 minutes ago. When God calls me to use one of these gifts, I often times want so badly for the “life to the full” part to come to the person I’m ministering to that I forget that God has his own agenda in getting that person there. Just as it talks about Paul’s ship having to run aground for the crew to come to safety and provision in Acts 27 and 28, so sometimes God wants His children to run aground to experience this life to the full. As Beth Moore says, “Deliverance does not mean ease. It may be simple and painless, or, God’s deliverance in your life may be one of the most excruciating things you ever experience. Difficulty does not necessarily mean disaster. Heavy winds and raging seas don’t always mean you’re on the wrong course.” My agenda seems to be the “simple and painless” path for people usually. Ha! So my point with all of these gifts and what not is that I think He desperately wants them to be used, but to be used in His way and with His agenda. In each situation we must ask what God’s agenda is and then step in accordingly with our gifts and hearts.
(I found this because I know your husband and see him a lot at the warehouse tutoring.) What you write about concerning gifts is right on with 1 Cor. 12-14. Paul takes 3 whole chapters to make the point you do. People often lift 1 Cor. 13 out of the middle to talk about God’s kind of love and everyone needs to have that saturate their hearts. If they read it in context, they find it is sandwiched between his teaching on spiritual gifts to show what kind of heart the believer is to have when operating in a gift.
ReplyDeleteA couple of interesting things on Paul’s teaching. Several gifts are mentioned which are not taught on anywhere else in the NT. So I conclude that no more teaching is vital:
* A spoken word of Wisdom
* A spoken word of Knowledge
* Gifts of Healing
* The working of miracles
He does teach us how to use them in a broad sense throughout those 3 chapters and in Eph. 4-5, but there is no more detail on them found elsewhere that I have found.
Distinguishing between spirits is taught on in 1st John.
Tongues, interpretation of tongues & prophecy are taught on at length in 1 Cor 14. Paul also goes to considerable lengths to teach about the difference between the gift of tongues (God’s intent is to build up others) and praying in the Spirit (God’s intent is to build up yourself).
And then there is the simplest and for me, most mysterious gift: faith. Everyone is given a measure of faith for themselves, but I don’t think that is the same as it being called a spiritual gift (not everyone gets all spiritual gifts, so faith in both contexts can’t be the exact same thing). Gifts are given for the body, to be used in the context of helping someone else and not yourself. So my question is not ‘what is faith’? Most folk could come up with a working definition for faith. My question is “what is the spiritual gift called faith? I have heard preachers/teachers take a stab at it, but it always sounded like what they were giving was just a guess. No scriptures to back up the opinion and not even good stories or analogies. I am a little thirsty for more.
Why am I even stirring this up? When it comes to the other 8 gifts, I am pretty sure I know which ones I have been given and which ones I haven’t. Usually I know when God is moving and wanting me to move in one of those gifts. But I am pretty clueless on faith. What does it look like? Is it common or rare? I am pretty sure the body can discern when most of the other gifts are operating. A healing or a miracle is kind of hard to miss. I kind of believe that faith would not be completely invisible since none of the other gifts are.
So I am asking about the gift of faith. What does is it look like? How do you know if you have it? How do you know when someone is using it? How does the body make room for it to operate? And so on… Any scripture, experience, or idea from the heart would be welcome.