| by Betty Schatzle (West Chester, Ohio) |
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| In order to have and use the spiritual gifts that God gives individual persons, we must first have the Holy Spirit within us. To receive the Holy Spirit, you must first believe there is only one God and that he created all things in heaven and on Earth. Acts. 2:38 says “Repent and let everyone of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to His believers only, not to the whole world. (Rom 8:9). “Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Even though we have the Holy Spirit we still have to depend wholly on Jesus for our Salvation. We do this by prayer and being the Christian His spirit makes us. We must also have the fruits of God’s Spirit in our inner most being, they will guard us against abusive use of our spiritual gifts. Gal 5:22-23 says, “the fruits of God’s Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” The fruit analogy is reminiscent of Jesus teachings on vine, branches, and fruitful harvest. Jesus said in Acts 1:8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in many places even to the end of the Earth.” All who have the Holy Spirit in them are to witness. Our actions speak louder than words. The purpose of Spiritual Gifts is to enable believers to do the work God has called them for. To help people to find Jesus to let them know He is a loving God, and He wants each and every one of us to make it into His Kingdom. We should never boast in what we do or think too little of ourselves. We are all important to God and we all have a specific mission here on Earth. To be a witness is one of the primary responsibilities one has when he receives the Holy Spirit. Our gifts enable us to serve Jesus Christ and to bring more people to believing in him. We must be very careful to guard against making a statement or speaking a message that is not the truth of God. We are only human, and God knows we are going to make some humanly mistakes, but we need to be as Christ-like as we can, and we will be rewarded in the end. Since we all have different gifts, we are to use them accordingly, willingly, and humbly. Eph 4:11-12 shows us some of the different ways we can use our particular gift. There are many places in the Bible where you can find out about the various spiritual gifts. We need to prayerfully study God’s word and ask for His guidance of the Holy Spirit to figure out which one God has given you and use that gift to the best of your ability. It will be nice for God when he comes back to this Earth to find out that his children have perfected the gifts, he gave them. |
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