YOUR GIFTS ARE WAITING ... I hope you received all the gifts you desires this Christmas. I especially hope that you will seek and covet the gifts of the Spirit because they are yours. Many Christians are baptized not knowing about the spiritual gifts. I was fortunate in that I was told that God would give me gifts and I should use them for the church. Twenty years later, lacking any discernible or useful talent, I was still searching for my gifts or the will of God so that I could know what to do. A pastor once told me that all the gifts were those listed in 1 Corinthians 12-13, Romans 12: 6-8 and Ephesians 4. By then I knew he was wrong. A lot of people are wrong about a whole lot of things. And it is because they dont have faith. >> GIFT TESTS I looked at one of these last year and it was ALL wrong. Absolutely revolting. I found a problem with every question. How can you measure your talent, desires and experience for a gift to walk on water or raise the dead? Jesus said we will have greater power than He did and that we cant even imagine what is in Gods mind for us. So how, pray tell, are you going to imagine that or test for that? They were using human wisdom in trying to measure talents using a modification of the personality traits test. In addition, their questions were biased towards the nonsense they have been teaching. This is why their spiritual healers are able to get away with fraud while they are embarrassing, dismal failures at healing or less successful than an atheist doctor. They also believe that they can teach you the gifts and bestow the gifts on you like Elijah transferring his mantle to Elijah. It is the Holy Spirit who distributes the gift to whosoever He wills among those who obey Him. So relying on a seminar and a self-styled gifted person is as useless as a Catholic going to a priest for forgiveness. Go to God for YOUR awesome gift. >>VERIFIED BY THE COMMUNITY I used to believe whole-heartedly that the community would acknowledge and confirm your gift. Wrong again! While this will eventually happen with a real gift, in truth what they are acknowledging is either your natural talent or jumping on the bandwagon of popular opinion. My experience is that when a real gift comes they will reject it and run away because it is not within the norms of their textbooks or understanding or psychological tests. Jesus said And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country (Luke 4:24) MY OPINION. Here is my experience. Miraculous, spiritual gifts are DIFFERENT from talents. So different that God appears to go out of His way to give you a gift that is different from your talents that you can never ever think that your hard work, genes, natural abilities or any effort on your part is producing the incredible results you have. Talents may be partially genetic, natural abilities that can be nurtured with the right teacher, persistent practice and environment. Although God can use your physical talent and may have gifted it to you through your genes, It is NOT a spiritual gift. So while writing my lessons on prophecy I decided to throw my two cents in. I relied on two books I read in the 1990s which helped me to categorize the gifts. When I was done I could not help but think that some ability I had was also a spiritual gift. So I opened my Bible, trying to think of a story that could reference this gift, and it fell right open to this verse. Exodus 31: 1-6 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship. And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee; God was miraculously confirming my suspicions. This had never happened to me before. I did not have to search. The Bible fell open to my gift. I had an extraordinary ability to design arts and crafts from anything and I thought it was more than love/preference or genetics. I also had what I called the Pied Piper gift. Despite my looks and appearance children seemed to be drawn to me. I noticed it for a long time and parents started noticing it as well. Once, when I volunteered to babysit during a fall Satellite prophecy seminar we had few help and I had at least 14 young children of several ages (about 4 to 8 years old) at my station. The Pastor wondered how I kept them so focused and quiet. One parent said that something happened to her daughter during the one week she was with me. She suddenly became smarter. I was frantic the whole time because I had no help,. I was asking God to help me design crafts, help children of such a range of ages and still capture their attention. My mess was apparently His success. I could sense it as I was teaching them. I wondered what was holding their attention and why glue, construction paper and scissors seemed so interesting. Last month I decided that this gift must be related to Jesus command to lift Him up and He will draw all men to Him (John 12:32). When we are ready with the final gospel push people will be receptive. I have seen it and am still in awe of it. God puts in the 98% to match your puny 2%. These 2 gifts appeared after God told me to Be patient I want you to be single for the sake of the church. I responded that He had to give me something to do because His desire to go and fight Satan was too strong in me. So in the next week I bumped into people who got me into Sabbath school, VBS and Pathfinders. Joy! Joy! Joy! I learned from this that when you have a gift nobody has to pay you, or confirm it. You will pay them for the privilege of doing Gods work and having so much fun/satisfaction. You wont have to wonder if this is Gods gift. IF such thoughts are in your head then you are on the plane of analyzing human talents. Even if my gift was going door-to-door for more and more rejection and humiliation I think that the joy of one acceptance will overcome 1000 rejections. This is just one component of the gift. Utter joy. Pure courage. Long-lasting awe! When my pastor said the gifts are only those in the New Testament I made a point of searching the Old Testament for more gifts. when I produced my article on Spiritual gifts I was able to find an old testament example of every miracle Christ did. Jesus also said that He did what He saw His Father doing. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. (John 5:20) So I looked at all the works of God to see what He has done that might be done as a miracle. So while reading Psalm 20 I heard God ask me If you had to make plans to reach the world quickly what would you do? Knowing that He expects me to use all that I had been taught and what has been prophesied and what has caused failure before. I made a plan. I knew that Babylon would fall over 2 years (Jeremiah 51: 45-47). I also knew that one year would be plagues (Revelation 18: 8) when no more evangelism can be done (Revelation 15: 8). I also knew by law that He waits until year 3 to 4 for results (Leviticus 19: 23-25). So I figured that we would have 12 to 18 months to prepare. One year of intense evangelism and then the plagues. I dont know if the trigger will be the latter rain, but I suspect that if we get together and try to organize around the impossible through faith then the Latter rain will fall. The Latter Rain wont fall so that we can get faith. It will fall when we act on faith. It is not like the Charlton Heston movie where the waters parted then the people walked over. The priests had to step into the river before the waters would part (Joshua 3). So I made plans to reach 7 billion people in one year even if the local church was unfaithful. As the years went by I learned to cast aside restrictions ingrained into me by the experts and really looked just at what God did. Without relying on what I can also imagine I made plans that were my minimum requirements. It can be done successfully with the God of the impossible. >> THE SPIRITUAL GIFTS Practical Spiritual Gifts by James W. Zackrison is a good book. He organized the gifts into these major categories. This year I took those same categories and used Gideons army to shed more light on them. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. (Judges 7: 20) 1. Church Planting [Blowing The Trumpet]. These gifts allow you to declare war and go out into uncharted, hostile territory to establish a foothold and create a garden for God, remove weeds and obstructions, plough the ground and plant the seed. These gifts are: (Apostle, Evangelist, missionary, martyr, strength and courage) 2. Community Building [Break The Pitcher.] Once a garden is established, you have to feed and Grow the plants (Church). This image of being broken by Christ (Matthew 21:44) shows that if we are the people made of clay then, in this context, being broken means that our light will be exposed for the purpose of driving the enemy to defeat at their own hands. Be careful that when you are broken that you are not found without a light like the 5 foolish virgins. A part of growing means that we absorb the word of God, are filled with the Holy Spirit, are growing in grace, knowledge and wisdom. We are being filled and lit up from within - becoming a spring of life and light. Then when we are broken we will be a beacon on a hill. Until then our task is to plant, sew, water, fertilize, feed, prune, weed, watch, protect and grow. These gifts are: (Pastor, teacher, music, Administration, helps, serving, arts and crafts, voluntary poverty, scribe, celibacy, hospitality, mercy, intercession, encouragement and giving) 3. Guidance [Sword Of The Lord] (Training and Pruning the Branches). There are all sorts of critters trying to destroy the crops. So you have to build fences to keep out predators, pull weeds and get rid of corrupting influence and be a watchman and a guide to divert problems. We may have to prune some dead branches and remove some obvious weeds. At the end of time the weeds will so resemble the good plant that our instructions are to let the wheat and tares grow together and the Lord of the harvest will separate them. These gifts are: (Faith, Wisdom, knowledge, distinguish spirits (discernment), prophecy, seer, watchman) 4. Proof of God [Hold Up The Light]. We display the flowers and advertise the Garden so that we can attract more bees and butterflies which will help us fertilize and bear much fruit. These supernatural gifts are like instant weed killers. Guidance gifts are internal evidence with external proof. People can still call you crazy and delusional because they dismiss the proof or refuse to listen. Proof Of God gifts are external evidence and external proof. By then the nay-sayers can say that you are working for Satan because they cannot attribute a clearly supernatural event to the evidence to mental illness and ignore it. At the appropriate season God will send such strong evidence that our garden will be attractive. Then all our planning, preparing and growing will produce fruit we never dreamed of. No education or tests will prepare us for these. These gifts are: (Tongues, Interpret tongues, Interpret dreams, Healing, Miracles, Exorcism, Teleport, Fruit of the Spirit) MY EXPERIENCE. When I first wrote this article I barely had a few community building gifts. After quitting my job to do this full time without any idea of what I would do in the future when my money ran out I noticed that I was receiving the church planting gifts. By 2006 I thought I had all the guidance gifts or precursors to them. I was shocked! The gift of discernment so far is a fascinating gift. I will say no more. By May 2014 I thought I had my first proof of God gift even though it was not in my official list. Based on my Bible Science proofs and how I got them I could only conclude that since the ultimate accomplishment of this work will be logical, unemotional, reproducible, scientific proof of God then it belongs in this category. Then I felt afraid and concluded that Satan will try to kill me for this. I ended up in the hospital about a week or two later. When I made my plans to reach the world in one year. I thought that I should start with a BANG! A proof of God gift that would cause a paradigm shift long enough to make people question their long-held beliefs. If I had realized how much the theory of evolution had invaded Christianity and that there are Christians who are comfortable with believing that God created through evolution and Genesis 1 was a myth I would have sought more power for this first proof. The rest of my plans were structured on proving that the timeline of Genesis 1 is possible. But I was still limiting the realm of possibilities to His prior acts and laws, my knowledge and science fiction. You cannot expect a world where everyone only knows black and white to describe color or a planet of the blind to conceive of sight. So, I asked God to Wow me with something greater than I could dream. He did. In the end God will appeal to reason first, not miracles - but you cant imagine the miracles that He is preparing.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:02:09 +0000