Last time Pastor Jess looked at the gifts of the Spirit, especially tongues and prophecy. Today we are going to look at the gifts of power as we continue our series on the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:7-11:Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
It is clear that supernatural living was to be the normal for the New Testament community and that this would manifest in many ways.
There is diversity in the gifts and these are delayed throughout the body of the Church. We are one body with many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-20).
Each of us is an individual and the Spirit wants to release His gifts through us so that we all find our place to serve and minister in the church.
We could group the gifts listed in I Corinthians 12 in this way to help us understand them:
Revelation Gifts: Word of wisdom, word of knowledge, Discerning of spirits.
Power Gifts: Gift of faith, Gift of healing's, Working of Miracles.
Vocal Gifts: Prophecy, Kinds of Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues.
(Because Pastor Jess has covered the vocal gifts, I am not going to major on those today).
These gifts are what make a Pentecostal church distinctive. There are many gifts listed in the NT. There are four main lists of gifts in the NT. These describe the variety of gifts (see BLOG BONUS).
However, when we gather for worship we expect the Spirit to move, the heal, to save. We expect corporate worship to be marked with tongues, prophecy and knowledge. We also expect to use some of these gifts outside of the church.
1. Revelation Gifts:
Knowledge, wisdom, discerning of spirits.
These are receiving and imparting revelatory knowledge unknown to the person but that answers the need in another. They are often confirming what someone knowns about themselves.
Messages of Knowledge or Wisdom
There is a difference between the two.
Knowledge is the imparting of knowledge that could not be known by the Spirit-filled believer without this gift.
Wisdom is the awareness of what to do with that knowledge or what God’s will is in a given situation.
Both these gifts are a way in which we receive information that we could not have known on our own without the Spirit.
I often find in my experience that the words or language used is that of the person receiving the word, not the person giving it (with prophecy, knowledge, wisdom).
Illustration#1: I was praying in a the alter call for people and a lady came for prayer. I had a word of knowledge for her: “It’s okay to have more strawberries”. Meant nothing to me. She went down in the spirit and stayed there for an hour. She later told me that she was out for lunch and was asked if she’d like more strawberries, which she had refused. She realised that she had been doing this with the Holy Spirit, “I don't want more Lord, let others have time to receive.” As she repented, God met her!
Illustration 2#: I was visiting a friend's church for a conference and was invited to help pray for those who responded. My wife was with me. This couple made their way to us, we did not know them, had never met them, have not seen them since! I started to rya in tongues (I find this helps me hear God). I said to the man, “I think God wants you to take your wife away for a dirty weekend!” Barbie was shocked. His wife cried. His mouth fell open! He said, “You’re right” Now, remember what I said about language and words. They went and talked with their pastor and told him. He came to me afterwards and I was thinking, now I’m in trouble. He told me they had not been to church in months and this was their first time back in church! I thought, “Oh boy! I’m gonna get it now!” But he said the husband had bene having an affair for six months and was taking his secretary on dirty weekends. He had just confessed this to his wife, was seeking God, and said he would try church one more time with his wife but if God did not speak to him their marriage was over. God used language he understood to turn his life around!
Illustration #3: I was having lunch with a friend at Bible College. She was expressing some of the ethical difficulties she was being challenged with. Now, she was a single mum who had run a pub in a rough part of her town. She had lived a life, met Jesus, and her world turned upside down (or the right way up). She asked me what I thought was going on. I said, “I think God is restoring your innocence”. The conversation moved on. She went on to been of Elim's most successful pastors and chaplains. Years later we met at a conference. She said, “Do you remember when you gave me that word of knowledge about God restoring my innocence?” Frankly, I did not. She reminded my our our conversation. I did not think I was dong anything particularly spiritual, she took it as a supernatural moment that changed her direction!
Point: these words are not always dressed up in “Thus saith the Lord…” We can be naturally supernatural.
Discernment or Distinguishing Between Spirits
Discernment of distinguishing between spirits, is vitally important.
We know the enemy wants to counterfeit what God is genuinely God. We do not get back to the things of the Spirit by copying the fake. We want the genuine here at All Nations.
Wayne Grudem: “Distinguishing between spirits is a special ability to recognise the influence of the Holy Spirit or of demonic spirits in a person”.
An example of this is in Acts 16:17-18 - this is where a girl used by paymasters was telling people that the apostles were from God, but it was a demonic spirit doing so.
We need the discernment gift today because of the attacks upon the church and because of those playing with the occult seeking truth for their lives.
These gifts are counterfeit. The fact that Satan tries to imitate the real Holy Spirit gifts should not surprise us.
What is more surprising is the Christinas today who deny any supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit (some claim they ended with the apostles but Chruch history proves otherwise). To say the church has no demonstration of power but clearly the enemy still is counterfeiting, means we can end up believing evil is winning.
Illustration#4: we were once invited to go and pray in a house friends had moved into with several others form the church. One lady went along the hallway, which had beautiful wooden floors, and started saying there were demons in floorboards,. She did the same with he fitted wardrobes. Was she discerning something?
No! The belief that spirits inhabit things, plants. Trees, is animism. It is a pagan belief. Nowhere in the Bible do spirits possess objects. Only living things.
So in this case, whilst others were sacred the house was possessed, I discerned this lady was a fruitcake and reassured our friend’s this could not be the case.
We do not get back to the authentic gifts of the Spirit by copying the counterfeit.
Illustration#5: I have here a five pound note. You can spend this. Here is a counterfeit (the enemies gifts). You cannot spend it. Here is what happens when we copy the counterfeit (it has not currency).
Some believe we have to reclaim what the enemy has stolen from the church, but this is not how it is done. We reclaim by looking to the Lord, our provider and gift-giver, and he gives fresh blessing (Joel 2:24-26). It is God who repays what is stolen, not the enemy!!
2. Power Gifts
Gift of faith, Gift of healing's, Working of Miracles.
The Purpose of Power Gifts
All the gifts are for the common good (1 Cor 12:7). Jesus made it clear that the gifts would be the way the gospel is spread too (Acts 1:8).
Caleb Wehrli: “A spiritual gift is not a performance; it is a service to the body of Christ… Remember the gift isn’t for you. It’s for other people… Also remember that exercising your gift brings Jesus pleasure.”
The Gifts of Healing
1 Corinthians 12:7-9: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit…
This means whenever someone is prayed for and they recover or are healed, that it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
In Mark 16:18: [Jesus said] “… they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
Some versions have ‘recover’. The Greek here implies that they will recover over time. So not all healings are instant.
The word used in 1 Corinthians 12 is a plural comes from the verb iaomai (to cure or make whole); it is speaking of the actual result.
The fact that these gifts are seen as plural speaks two-fold. Firstly, for as many diseases there are there will be a particular prescription of the Spirit. Secondly, no one person can claim to have all the gifts of healing.
The emphasis is on the presence of the lots of healing in the community, not one person being singled out as being the healer.
Questions About Healing
Does this mean we can chuck away our medicines? Nope.
The fact that we know that God heals does not mean we are against medicine or surgery. It means when we pray for people having surgery or dealing with disease, their recovery is also actioned by God’s Holy Spirit.
Sin and sickness do not always go together (John 9:1-12; who sinned, this blind man or his parents? Neither, for glory of God).
God has shown us His love and power and wants to do the same for others as we pray for their healing (Matthew 10:8).
Healing is in the atonement - in other words, Jesus paid the price for healing on the cross (Isaiah 53:5 - by his wounds or stripes we are healed). Divine health - where you never get sick - is not promised. Healing is.
Illustration#5: I have seen people healed but not many. I do not claim to have this gift. But I do think is is enhanced by compassion (Matthew 9:36; 20:34). I recall praying for a lady who had hurt her hand (there’s a lot more to this but not important). It was very swollen. I prayed with her until the pain went. She went to hospital the next day as it was badly bruised and wanted it checked out. The showed her X-rays where there was a break in the five metacarpal but it had healed as though it was years old.
The Gift of Faith:
The gift of faith is the gift to believe for the miraculous.
The gift of faith is not the general faith that God given all who believe.
Ephesians 2: 8-9: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Then there is the faith that grows as we mature as Christians
Romans 10:17: Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
It is the kind of faith that grows through experience and being taught the Word of God.
The gift of faith meets the needs of the moment or when supernatural faith is required. Sometimes God deposits that faith fro a set of circumstances or a future event.
Miracles:
Miracles are sometimes classed as healing's, but they are not always. Miracles call into being something that is not or changes the molecular structure of something that is (i.e. water into wine, John 2).
There can be miracle of financial provision, miracles of divine protection, miracles of guidance.
Sometimes we aware of these miracles and sometimes we are not.
I think for me miracles fall under the category of “signs and wonders”.
Hebrews 2:3b-4: This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
What is a sign? It points to Jesus.
What is a wonder? It makes you stop and go, “Hmmm”.
Archbishop William Temple: “When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t, they don’t.”
It can take courage to use these gifts, and especially outside of the church. But the Spirit gives boldness too!
The Spirit gave the early Chruch power:
- to overcome their fear of the Jews (John 20:19)
- Preach to thousands (Acts 2)
- face the Sanhedrin court that had condemned Jesus to death (Acts 4)
- heal the sick as Jesus had done (Acts 3 etc).
- fill cities of the then known worlds with their teachings (Acts 5:28).
Landing:
By the power of the Spirit we are to take the message out. We are to change the world. We are to proclaim the Good News. We are to win others.
Ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill you now.
-----
BLOG BONUS
The 4 Primary Biblical Lists of Spiritual Gifts
The New Testament contains four main passages where spiritual gifts are specifically itemised:
|
Biblical Passage |
Main Gifts Mentioned |
Total in List |
|
1 Corinthians 12:8–10 |
Word of Wisdom, Word of Knowledge, Faith, Healing, Miracles, Prophecy, Discerning of Spirits, Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues. |
9 gifts |
|
Romans 12:6–8 |
Prophecy, Serving/Ministry, Teaching, Encouragement/Exhortation, Giving, Leadership/Ruling, and Mercy. |
7 gifts |
|
1 Corinthians 12:28 |
Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Miracles, Healing, Helps (Assisting), Administration (Governments), and Tongues. |
8 gifts (some repeats) |
|
Ephesians 4:11 |
Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers (often called the "Five-Fold" ministry or leadership gifts). |
5 gifts (some repeats) |
Beyond these primary lists, several other character traits, roles, or callings are explicitly referred to using the Greek word for a spiritual endowment (charisma) or are described as special spiritual assignments in the New Testament:
- Hospitality (1 Peter 4:9–10)
- Celibacy / Marriage (1 Corinthians 7:7)
- Intercession / Prayer (Romans 8:26)
- Martyrdom / Voluntary Poverty (1 Corinthians 13:3).
Comments
Post a Comment