God must make some of us hurt in order to get our attention and learn to trust Him. Are you having problems in your life? We are raised in and accept the world’s materialist goals and many Christian find it difficult to impossible in becoming separated from the ways of the world and allow the Holy Spirit to change them. God’s purpose for man was for him to love and worship Him and love others. If everyone was filled with love, there would be no need for police and armies.

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? When the Apostle Paul was writing to the Corinthian church he told them: When Christians said “Jesus is Lord” it meant that they gave to Jesus the supreme loyalty of their lives and with their hearts they worshipped Him.

Paul further says that no one should say ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless they are led by the Holy Spirit. Christ was not someone who people discovered for themselves, it was God, in His grace, revealing Himself to them. Those who received the Holy Spirit had a change of life. Paul told them that as a member of God’s family they would be given a spiritual gift in order to help each other. What about Christians who have never received or discovered a spiritual gift, are they missing the Holy Spirit in their lives?

I Corinthians 12:7 – 11 – “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.” NLT

Paul is stressing unity in the church and to have a healthy body every part is to perform its own function for the good of the whole. Unity does not mean uniformity and therefore within the Church there are “differing” gifts and “differing” functions. But every one of them is a gift from the Holy Spirit. A gift was not something I immediately detected. But as I grew spiritually, I found I had received the gifts of wise advice, a discerning of spirits, wisdom and faith. To a minor degree prophesy!

Paul says that all special gifts come from God and it was his belief that they should be used in God’s service. These gifts can be given to builders, carpenters, electricians, painters and others. They are not just preaching, teaching, writing, praying or healing.
When Paul refers to “the message of wisdom” it does not come from thought but from communication with God. Wisdom is our knowledge of God. Knowledge is being able to put God’s wisdom into practice.

When Paul talks about the gift of faith it is a faith that produces results. It is a passionate belief in a thing which makes people spend all that they are and have on it. Faith gives people the courage to take action. I would assume more Christians would have this gift than many of the others.

In the early Church healing was commonplace. A Jew who was ill would more than likely go to a Rabbi than a doctor. In all probability healing would result. When Greeks would go and spend a night in their temple to be healed, often they were. History proves this to be true. There is not the slightest doubt that there was healing in the early Church. Paul would never have cited them unless it was real. The Church has never lost the gift of healing. It seems to have been rediscovered in the 16th century. There were a lot of mental illnesses and it was attributed to the work of demons. It was a function of the Church to exorcise these demons. The Catholic Church continues the practice of exorcism.

We associate prophecy too much with foretelling the future. Prophets brought warnings, telling men and women that their way of action was not in accordance with God’s will. They brought advice and guidance, directing people into the ways God wished for them to go. That does not preclude Christians being able to see the future according to what Scripture provides.

He said some were given the gift to discern between different kinds of spirits. Some spirits came from God and some from the devil. We must observe and understand before making a judgment.

He ends with tongues and the ability to interpret them. Tongues were causing a great deal of perplexity in the Church. At a Church service someone would fall into a trance and pour out unintelligible sound in no know language. This was a highly coveted gift because it was supposed to be due to the direct influence of the Spirit of God. Paul never questioned the gifts of tongues but he was well aware that it had its dangers. To some it became a kind of self-hypnotism and very difficult to tell apart. Much of the New Testament does not mention or place much emphasis on speaking in an unknown language. If it was vital to one’s spiritual life, the Apostles would have made it a priority and they did not.

If a spiritual gift is given to each one of us who profess to be a Christian, then shouldn’t we know what that at least one gift is? When I was converted and accepted Christ, there was a tremendous desire to change my life-style. I was convicted of things that I knew had to change and the Holy Spirit made it possible to begin living as Christ had modeled for us. As Paul says I had to work out my salvation and learn what the Bible taught for new converts. I learned it was likely I would not change anything that I could tolerate financially, emotionally or spiritual. It would be difficult to change anything I deemed extremely valuable and was not a positive in a Christian’s life. Therefore, I had to accept some of my values had to change. Are you willing to change the world’s ways to Christ’s ways? If not—are you sure you are filled with the Holy Spirit?

Ephesians 4:17 & 18 – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

Galatians 5:16 -18 – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”