The gifts of the Spirit

How to receive and operate the gift of the Spirit

Beloved, the Spirit of God wants to educate us on how we could effectively use our spiritual gifts for the advancement of his kingdom. We understand that the gift of the Spirit is given to as many that desire it, 1 corithians 12 vs 31;

''But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way''.

The word declares that we need to desire the gift of the Spirit before we could see its practical operations in our lives. Briefly i want to take you through basic points that will fully deliver to us the concepts behind the operations of the gift of the Spirit,

Desire

It takes a passionate person for God to receive certain gifts of the Spirit. God does not force his gift on his children, it is his children who show a strong desire for his gift through prayer and consecration that receives His gifts. The desire of a man is the foundation for any well meaningful achievement and the gift of God is no exception. I admonish my readers to dare to desire the gift of the Spirit, and watch the lord transform their desires into realities.

Receiving

One of the difficult aspect of this topic is receiving the gifts of the Spirit, most at times we pray on certain desires of our heart but we fail to understand when the  answers to our prayers has been released to us. The lack of that understanding broods doubt in our heart which in turn aborts the very answers to the prayers we have been seeking. How can we overcome this issue.

Firstly,we must understand that our Spirits are the point of reference to determine a released answer. The spirit of the regenerated man can sense Gods answer in three major ways;

Inward witness

This can be best understood with the concept of an inner knowing- At the point in our prayer when we sense in our spirit a certain peace which cannot be explained with words, we can confidently say that the answers has been released. Another indicator is an unconscious burst of an affirmative proclamation. It is always important for us to differentiate between a released answer and a received answer.  We have have been talking about the latter, its time to look at how we receive a released answer. Thanksgiving is the bridge that connects Gods released answers and our receiving of the answers. At the point where we have established through inward witness the release of Gods answer, we transcend to thanksgiving which delivers to our spirit the very answers that God has released. This thanksgiving can be in worship songs or praises. 

Inward voice

This is similar in experience with the inward witness but with the addition of a voice which we hear in our hearts. The voice we hear is the voice of our spirit man which is interconnected with the Holy Ghost. This voice we hear in our heart is very similar to our own voice. The Holy Spirit gives our spirits the inspirational wordings which we hear in our hearts.

The authoritative voice of the Holy Ghost

This is rarely experienced by most believers but its one of the ways God speaks to us. It is an independent voice of God which comes with such a command of authority that the listener often gets a little frightened especially if it is experienced for the first time. We should note that God uses this mode of communication when he needs to urgently get across important messages. We should not always expect the lord to speak to us in such a way but we should trust the lord to speak to us in the way which He best chooses. We cannot determine the mode God would speak to us.

Manifestation

The manifestation of the gifts we have received is the final dice which establishes us in the gifts. Gifts of the Spirit are like devices or gadgets which are put into our Spirit man by the Holy Ghost. Normally devices needs an external source of power to function. Take for example an electric fan, we know that for an electric fan to function we need electricity and also a bridge between the fan and the source of electricity, which we know to be wires. From the example, we can say that the electricity is the anointing of the Spirit, while the wire and fan stands for faith and the gift respectively. If we put all this pieces together we get a sound step by step process of the manifestation the gift of the Spirit. Just as the fan cannot work without electricity so is the gifts of the Spirit dormant without the anointing. This now brings us to this fact; it is impossible to manifest a gift on our own. Since the Holy Ghost is the source of the anointing and the gifts depend on the anointing to function, then we can rightly say that we only manifest the gifts as the Spirit wills. This is with exception of the gift of speaking in tongues( we will explain this in our subsequent article). watchout for the final part of this article. God bless you. you can contact me via my mail ejykoblastic@yahoo.com.