Gifts of the Spirit
Exploring the various spiritual gifts and their operation
"I don't want my life to be explainable without the Holy Spirit. I want people to look at my life and know that I couldn't be doing this by my own power."
Ever since Jesus returned to his Father, the Holy Spirit has lived in every Christian—educating us, showering and empowering us with divine gifts and fruits, conforming us to our Father. In The Prophetic Path, I explained what the spiritual gifts are. But what are they for?
Understanding the Gifts
Faith, for example, is a lot more than assent or belief. It is unshakable knowing and trusting. Faith in God is a "Yes, Lord" life that is at peace with leaving everything in his hands and at rest in his love, like John reclining beside Jesus as they shared a meal.
Healing, in addition to physically curing us of diseases and infirmities, keeps us aware that Jesus healed each of us spiritually when he suffered our punishment for all the sins we commit. Healing should also cause us to eagerly anticipate the day when he will re-create the world we broke.
While Miracles dazzle us, they also enable us to experience a unique fellowship with our Father as we're invited to participate with him in supernatural activities.
Words of Knowledge miraculously clear away obstacles, answer questions and offer solutions. Words of Wisdom, on the other hand, are not God's response to who, what, why, where, when and how. Rather, they are divine discernment. Knowledge tells us what to say; wisdom tells us whether, when and how to say it.
A Personal Testament of Wisdom
My greatest encounter with the word of wisdom came when I was still trying to get a handle on all the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
I was attending a conference and, after the meeting, all the guest speakers went to have lunch at a restaurant. The server came over to take our drink order and as she got to me, the Holy Spirit gave me a word for her. When she left, I asked everyone at the table if they minded if I shared it with her. They all heartily agreed.
When she came back, everyone kept silent (a miracle in itself).
"Young lady," I said, "may I share something with you that the Lord gave me for you?"
"Yes! Please!" she said.
"The next time you're involved in a knife fight, take a gun with you."
She dropped to her knees and began to weep.
We comforted her, and she told us her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend had waited for her one night as she was coming home from work. When she arrived, the girl attacked her from behind, stabbed her thirty-nine times in the back and left her to die. As she lay bleeding, she begged the Lord not to take her, since she had a little boy at home who wouldn't have a mother.
A neighbor found her and called 911, and she was rushed into surgery. She eventually recovered, and in the meantime, police found that a CCTV camera had filmed the attack and arrested the ex-girlfriend.
By the time she finished sharing her story, the Lord had given me another word for her.
"Take your son and move back to San Diego where your family lives."
She told us that was her plan, and she was working extra shifts to make enough money to go.
When she left to place our orders, we decided to do what we could to help. We came up with $4,000. And when she came back, we prayed with her and told her to quit right away and go!
I'm still not sure which of the Holy Spirit's gifts were at work that day. All of them, it seemed. What I do know is that a couple of lives were profoundly changed.
This was an excellent reminder that not every revelation that comes from God is prophetic. As he has been restoring the prophetic, some have mistaken themselves—and been mistaken by others—as prophets when they are simply proficient in words of knowledge and wisdom and perhaps the discernment of spirits.
Discernment and Tongues
Frank Peretti's first two novels offer vivid illustrations of this supernatural gift, as he enables the reader to view the stories through spiritual as well as physical eyes, to see angels and demons interacting with his human characters. The discernment of spirits is like a rifle scope, making demons easier to identify…and easier to hit.
As for tongues and the interpretation of tongues, if you didn't know about the other spiritual gifts, you might think there was only one, because tongues is arguably the most controversial and difficult to understand.
Few people who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit regularly speak in tongues, despite the fact that it is the one gift that is always available to us, the one gift that enables us to pray perfectly and the one gift that strengthens us spiritually the more we use it, like getting six-pack abs without sit-ups, leg tucks and hanging knee lifts.
Unfortunately, many view tongues as less powerful or significant than the other gifts, apparently forgetting that tongues was the gift that jump-started the church.
"Suddenly they heard the sound of a violent blast of wind rushing into the house from out of the heavenly realm. The roar of the wind was so overpowering it was all anyone could bear! Then all at once a pillar of fire appeared before their eyes. It separated into tongues of fire that engulfed each one of them. They were all filled and equipped with the Holy Spirit and were inspired to speak in tongues—empowered by the Spirit to speak in languages they had never learned!"
After this, they left the upper room and began preaching the gospel to Iranians, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Turks and more, and each heard them in his own language.
"Those who believed the word that day numbered three thousand. They were all baptized and added to the church."
Little wonder that sometime later the apostle Paul, at the conclusion of his dissertation on this spiritual gift, grinned and said, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you."
Prophecy and Love
The ninth spiritual gift is prophecy—a personal, supernatural interaction with God himself. But perhaps the most important thing Paul said about it and the rest of the spiritual gifts was in his first letter to the church in Corinth.
And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God's hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing.
John defined almighty God simply, yet perfectly, as love.
Love is listed first among the fruits of the Spirit, perhaps because love reveals how much or how little of God has rubbed off on us.
"But the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
Comparison and Worship
Clearly, God wants us to compare ourselves with him instead of with one another, because comparison can be made only by assigning values. And when we compare ourselves with other people, the values are mostly focused on appearance, ability and achievement.
If I judge that I am superior to others, I distance myself from all who I judge to be inferior or treat them as such when I'm with them. On the other hand, when I judge others to be superior to me, I idolize them. And those I judge to be my equals, I ignore, take for granted or try to surpass, because I view myself and wish to be viewed by others as unique.
But when I compare myself exclusively with the Holy Spirit, he is always superior, which helps me keep my place—not seeing myself always as inferior but seeing him always in worship.