Thanks for joining our bible study tonight as we start to wrap up our discussion on the Holy Spirit as regards His role in our pursuit of life under the New Covenant. This is the ninth article about His ministry and I invite you to access the previous eight through the Archives link at the top left of tonight's article so you can go back and re-study in closer sequence the full range of perspectives we've considered. I'm not representing this group of bible studies to be a complete study on the Holy Spirit because they were developed as part of a particular exploration on how life under the New Covenant ought to be lived. But certainly in that context, we've covered quite a bit of information and I hope it will help some of us to more fully appreciate that life under the New Covenant is supposed to involve an active and intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Within that framework, a main take-away I've wanted to make available is that the Holy Spirit wants to LEAD Christian believers in the making of our decisions and choices (Romans 8:14). He does that from His TEMPLE located deep within ourselves where He's taken up residence (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19) so that we can more easily discern and respond to His counsel. In fact, the Holy Spirit is a SPEAKING Spirit and He leads by SPEAKING to all believers 24/7, but we have to learn to HEAR Him by FAITH and then apply and carry out what He tells us. Along with His leading is a VERY important point to be made: since it's impossible to please God except by faith (Hebrews 11:6), the Holy Spirit is working to lead us into decisions and choices in life that we can make by faith. In other words, when faced with a decision or a choice to be made, the PROCESS is supposed to be that we consult within ourselves with the Holy Spirit, He SPEAKS to us what to do and then by faith we carry out His instructions.
A Particular Problem Area
As we've previously discussed though, there's a problem for most believers and it's that we tend to IGNORE the Holy Spirit so that we wind up making MOST of our decisions and choices in the Flesh instead of by the Spirit. That makes life more complicated than it should be because nothing arrived at by the Flesh is ever going to work out to our satisfaction. In fact, a lot of Christians have pressure-packed lives at times precisely because they didn't consult with the Holy Spirit and take action in their lives by Faith. Many of those believers are the very ones who can often be heard saying: "life is hard but God will never give me more than I can handle" which isn't what the Bible actually says at all. What it says is that God won't allow us to face more TEMPTATION than we can handle and that there will always be a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13). Moreover, what the Bible actually DOES teach is that God will ALWAYS give us MORE than we can handle on our own so that we'll HAVE to depend on the Holy Spirit for His leading and involvement. Indeed, the pressure in our lives is caused by us, not by God who's actually working to LEAD us around and out of the pressure and trouble we've created for ourselves by the Flesh.
We've also discussed that the overriding work of the Body of Christ is to establish God's New Covenant and to fill the whole earth with it. Each of us has been called to participate in that process in a variety of activities and callings and ministries that are unique to each person. And the Holy Spirit equips and EMPOWERS us to accomplish our callings which can only be done by the Spirit instead of by the Flesh. So far then, we've discussed in previous articles our authority to RESIST the Adversary who's constantly working against us in the fulfillment of our assignment. We also talked about the FREEDOM that comes by the presence of the Holy Spirit as an empowerment. And last week we saw that the FRUIT of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 are in fact another type of empowerment we can use and that they're not just some personality or character traits we want to take on so we can act more holy. In sum, what we often fail to understand is that all of these biblical empowerments are available to us for the primary purpose of achieving our particular and unique assignment toward the overriding goal of filling the whole earth with the Gospel and Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
The Empowerment of the Spiritual Gifts
The final group of Holy Spirit-led empowerments to discuss in this series is what the Bible calls the Spiritual Gifts and they are referred to in particular in Romans 12:6-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:1 through 14:40. Keep in mind that all of this was written by the same author so while the two books express them a little differently, they're talking about a group of special supernatural GIFTS that the Holy Spirit has made available to Christian believers. The first thing to note is that the word GIFT is NOT talking about "presents" like birthday presents. It's also NOT talking about "blessings." It IS talking about GIFTINGS, which could have also been translated as SPECIAL ABILITIES or EMPOWERMENTS, that the Holy Spirit makes available to accomplish His plans and purposes. Another word that could have been used is GRACE which is in fact used in Romans 12:6 adding the concept of being "undeserved" to the definition of GIFTING. Thus, the spiritual gifts referred to by the Apostle Paul are "undeserved empowerments" that will make it possible for believers to accomplish their assignments for the Kingdom of God.
The most complete listing of the spiritual gifts can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and nine of them are identified there as follows:
Word of Wisdom
Word of Knowledge
Special Faith
Gifts of Healing
The Effecting of Miracles
Prophecy
Discernment of spirits
Speaking in Tongues
Interpretation of Tongues
This part of our wonderful New Covenant has probably experienced more controversy than any other part of the Bible except for who has the correct end-times theology (aka eschatology). So here's what I recommend: try to set aside everything religion and men have taught you in the past on this subject and do two other things: read the Word and believe it for what it actually says, and secondly try to find the scripture(s) that clearly tell you that these empowerments were reserved only for the first century apostles and that you don't need them to accomplish your current-day assignment in the Kingdom of God. Before you spend any time on #2, don't bother because you won't find any.
When I was a new Christian 32 years ago there was a certain denominational church around the corner from our church in Miami, Florida that taught that not only were the Spiritual Gifts (empowerments) cut off after the Apostles departed in the First Century but that the famous Gift #8 called "Speaking in Tongues" was of the devil. I was shocked to find out that Christians would make up stuff like that but I've since found out it's quite common around the Body of Christ to make up stuff that has no basis in the Word. And by the way, I've been speaking in tongues since September of 1984 and I don't know how I would have gotten by without that particular empowerment in my personal arsenal. I thank God for it. In fact, at various times in my Christian walk I 've experienced all nine of these GIFTINGS to varying degrees and praise God that I never tried to put the Holy Spirit in the box we talked about in an earlier article so that He could fully and freely express Himself in my life. Of course, if you don't want to access them then you don't have to, and that's really your business.
Now a newsletter format like this doesn't lend itself to such a complicated subject and a full review of the gifts. Indeed, whole books have been written about them and my assignment here is simply to call attention to them for what they are: empowerments for Christians to exceed their natural abilities in pursuit of the Kingdom of God on the earth. Here are a couple of pointers though that might help your study: 1) Read 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12 as the Apostle Paul's instructions for how the Spiritual Gifts are supposed to manifest during church services; 2) do NOT read Chapter 13 as Paul's instructions for disregarding Chapters 12 and 14 which is so contrived by some denominations that I dislike even having to mention it. Chapter 13 is only saying that there's an empowerment that's higher than the nine listed in Chapter 11 and that special empowerment is LOVE. In fact, without LOVE, the Spiritual Gifts won't work to their full capability. 3) Do NOT read verse 13:10 as a reference to the coming of the Bible because it isn't referring to a book that finally came together in the Fourth Century in a never-ending number of translations. The PERFECT in that verse is Christ and we haven't come yet to the "glorious Day of the Lord (Acts 2:20). 4) In 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14 notice in particular that Paul is telling the Corinthians how to use speaking in tongues in the church service, not in private. And notice verse 18 where Paul tells us that he spoke in tongues more than anybody which confirms that all the regular people in the church also spoke in tongues and not just the Apostles. Where could he have done all that tongue talking? Certainly, it had to have been in private because he took two chapters to tell us to limit that particular manifestation in the public church service. 5) Notice that there's a purpose for the orderly speaking in tongues in a church service which is that it's a SUPERNATURAL sign to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 14:22).
In conclusion, if you're missing a bit of power in your Christian life, it might just be that you need to focus more on developing your relationship with the Holy Spirit. As we all mature in that, He will lead us to VICTORY every time but it's pretty much a full time job to keep yourself plugged into Him so you can hear His speaking. He almost never speaks audibly because He's chosen to make FAITH the main thing after LOVE. Above all, try to avoid trying to put the Holy Spirit into one of your boxes. He doesn't like it in there and He'll jump out every time you think you've got Him all figured out.
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on March 27. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
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Jesus, I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
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Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
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