The Holy Spirit Our Helper – Part Six

Gifting by the Holy Spirit

Once again it is Paul who makes it clear that every believer is given abilities or roles within the body of Christ for serving. In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 Paul details this. He even gives examples of the abilities and roles the Holy Spirit gives to believers, as representative of the Spirit’s help.

He mentions abilities such as

• a message of wisdom,
• a message of knowledge,
• faith,
• gifts of healings,
• miraculous powers,
• prophecy,
• distinguishing between spirits,
• speaking in tongues,
• interpreting tongues,
• serving,
• encouraging,
• giving financially,
• leading, and
• showing mercy.

This list is not exhaustive, in case you didn’t see your gift in there. Every believer has one or more gifts that Paul describes this way,

⁷ Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:7)

Your abilities are “manifestations” of the Spirit. They are His abilities manifested in you. And that means that He characteristically demonstrates His abilities through you in one or more particular ways on a consistent basis, so that you may be styled a speaker of wisdom or knowledge, a prophet, a teacher, a giver, a shower of mercy, etc., but the Spirit can also at various times demonstrate an ability of His through you that is not one He consistently does through you.

I doubt I am unusual in this way. I typically see the Spirit using His teaching ability through me. But there have been occasions when He gave me knowledge I couldn’t have known naturally, or felt mercy I would not have normally felt, or had faith that was not typically mine.

I had an experience when I was leading a Bible conference in a church in southern India. I had finished the teaching and the pastor of the church came to me and told me there were several in his congregation who wanted me to pray for them. I think this is typical with Indian Christians. They feel the teacher or preacher has more access to God than they do, or perhaps, than even their pastor does. And I thought, “Boy, they don’t know what they’re getting in me. They might be really disappointed.” But, you know, I wasn’t going to say, “Hey, guys, no point in my praying for you,” no, you know, I went to pray for them. I got a translator to tell me what their need was and the first one in line came and began explaining to the translator what her need was. As she was doing this in Tamal, I had the idea come into my mind what her need was about. Sure enough, when the translator told me her need it was what I had seen in my mind. I thought, “Wow, God, you want to minister to these people and You are giving me knowledge about it, so I need to pay attention to the thoughts You give me for praying.” That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. And I thought, why doesn’t this happen all the time. But it was apparently just a momentary thing He wanted to do, not a permanent gifting.

All that to say, this is one of the ways the Holy Spirit helps us, and though our gifts are ways we help the body of Christ and others, they are encouraging to us as well in our walk with Jesus.