Saturday, June 06, 2009
Zealous For Spiritual Gifts
Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. 1 Corinthians 14:1
The Bible wants us to pursue love and desire spiritual gifts-to have both the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. You need them both to live a healthy Christian life. Someone else once said that the spiritual gifts are like the nine feathers on one wing of a dove. The fruit of the Spirit is like the nine feathers on the other wing of the dove (Gal. 5:22-23). A dove needs both wings to fly.
There are so many anti-Charismatic Christians who make statements like: “Well, I got the fruit of the Spirit, I don’t need the spiritual gifts. I am going after love, I don’t need tongues!” That is absolutely illogical. That kind of “love” argument is just a whip to beat Charismatics up with. What are you going to do with all your “love” if you can’t supernaturally meet the needs of the people all around you? Imagine a mother sitting by a dying child saying, “Honey, I love you. But mommy is going to sit here and just quietly love you. I’m neither going to pray nor will I call a doctor for you. I’ll just quietly love you with all of my heart!” What kind of love is that? That is just superficial loving with words but not loving in deed. In order to show genuine love, you must have the means to make that love effective. And what are the means? The gifts of the Holy Spirit!
Divorce love from the gift, and the Bible says you are just a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal (1 Cor. 13:1). But if you only have love without the gift, then what are you left with? Abject frustration! Therefore, you need them both-the love of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit! When the Church goes to meet the Bridegroom in the last days, it will be adorned with the gifts (1:7-8). And the Church that does not wear the gifts disqualifies herself to be the Bride. Say a young man loves a young lady and saves up everything he has to buy her a beautiful diamond ring. He wants to show how much he loves her and mark her out as the girl he wants to marry. But what if that girl refuses the ring. She will never marry that young man! You can’t refuse the love gift and still claim to have love. You can’t scoff at the gifts of the Holy Spirit and still claim to love the Spirit!
There is not a single shred of evidence that the supernatural gifts of God have already been withdrawn from the Church. It is a deception really. If you love the Lord, you will accept His gifts, which marks you out as a member of the Bride, adorned in anointed splendor.
The Charismatic Gifts
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profi t of all. 1 Corinthians 12:7
There are nine different Greek words that are translated into the one English word “gift.” One of the nine is the word charisma. It is from this word that we have the English adjective charismatic.” In the Church world today, Christians who flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit are called “Charismatics.”
Charis means “grace” and charis-ma means “grace made specific” or the “manifestation of grace.” In 1 Corinthians, we have the largest occurrences of this word charisma. Although there were many serious problems in the Corinthian church, yet every charisma was manifested among the people. Did those Corinthians deserve such wonderful gifts from God? Of course not!
That is why they are called the gifts of grace-they are freely and sovereignly given, not based on the merits of the recipients. In 1 Corinthians 12:9-10, we have the nine charismata of the Holy Spirit. And Paul tells us to “earnestly desire the best gifts” (12:31). So the Bible takes it for granted that we are to be very familiar with all of them. The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are:
(1) word of wisdom, (2) word of knowledge, (3) faith, (4) gifts of healings, (5) working of miracles, (6) prophecy, (7) discerning of spirits, (8) different kinds of tongues, and (9) interpretation of tongues.
The key word that distinguishes these nine from all other gifts is the word “manifestation.” This means they can be clearly perceived by the physical senses. You can see it and hear it. And the nine gifts of the Spirit are precisely that-the manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit within a believer. Through these gifts, the invisible Holy Spirit shows Himself out of the believer. When we see these gifts in operation, they are the evidences of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside a Christian.
Many Christians hold on to a wrong religious notion that emotional feelings are bad. But nothing can be further from the truth. God created us with feelings and emotions. And Christianity is an experience with a living God. While God doesn’t want us to be emotional freaks, He nonetheless wants us to perceive Him, to feel Him, and to experience His presence among us.
The nine spiritual gifts are given “for the profit of all” (12:7). They are tools and not toys. They are for the edification of the church. Start earnestly desiring them today!
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