Spiritual Gifts - How to Grow Them

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Gal.5:22,23

As we spoke about this last Sunday, I thought it expedient to write about it for this article, as well as the fact that it is a time of the year that we are considering gifts to each other and other people that we know. Spiritual gifts are gifts of yourself, which God’s Spirit has brought about in you and your heart.  Gifts like this require us to dig deep within our hearts and cultivate the right atmosphere for them to grow.  When there are no roots, or in shallow soil, it may initially sprout and look good, but it doesn't last. The plants wither quickly because they don’t have roots. This is readily seen in Jesus’ statement regarding the parable of the sower.

“The seeds that fell on rocky ground are the people who gladly hear the message and accept it. But they don’t have deep roots, and they believe only for a little while. As soon as life gets hard, they give up”

 Luke 8:13

Many times we hear God’s Word and may even get excited about it, but we don’t allow it to change us. But we don’t take the time to let it sink in. How do you develop spiritual roots? There are two ways that I am aware of 

1. Taking daily time with God and His Word 
2. A weekly (or even more often) small group time with other believers.

These are the only ways that the roots can reach your spirit and at the same time find the nurturing food required to produce the fruits that the Spirit can bring forth.

If you’re not spending time with God on a daily basis, you’re going to dry up and blow away when Satan comes around and applies pressure. Satan knows your weak points and targets them with stealth - you won’t be able to handle it. You've got to make a daily time with God to listen for Him and His voice. Whatever it takes to keep the focus on God, do it! Crucial to this is spending time with people who Love God! Nobody has a complete perspective on life. Every one of us has blinders on. The people in your weekly gathering can see things in your life you can’t see. That’s why we need each other! You learn from the people God’s family as you encourage each other and your roots go deeper. You want to be a person with deep spiritual roots so that when a spiritual recession comes and lasts several years, you’re able to keep bearing fruit and people will find in you a reason for hope.  

So, some questions to ask yourself may be:

• How does your schedule need to change so that you can spend more time with God?
• What things do you need to follow through with that will help you not only grow deeper but grow richer in God’s Spirit?

Jim

On The Cause of Pain and Suffering

I had a friend write me recently and ask the following question, "... why do we pray and ask Him (God)to protect us and keep us from harm and to take care of our loved ones...if He does not heal us then why do we pray for Him to heal?"

This is a good question. God's plan for us all along is to make us Holy, so that we can have the fellowship and relationship that he has designed for us from the beginning. It is we who have made a mess of things, not Him. So, we need to remember (because we were the ones that messed things up) …

• That Holiness comes before personal happiness.
• That making us Holy is hard work for God and for us

That said, man often understands and preaches that misunderstanding and makes the mistake of underestimating the energy and nature of UNHOLINESS in the human heart. God is love (1 Jn.4:8), but while there is the goodness of God, there is also the severity (Rom.11:22) of that love.

God loved the people of Israel when be brought them out of Egypt and set their direction for the Promised Land. When they started out (as Numbers indicates) there were 603,550 men (not including women, children and elderly), but when they get to the brink of the Promised Land 603,548 of them don't make it. In their hearts, they became presumptuous and unbelieving. They never looked into their own hearts, and they wouldn't believe that God could overcome EVERY problem including their own presumption and unbelief (Heb.3:12-19). What does all of this teach us?

1. That God hates sin and will punish the sinner.
2. That everything in us that is bad, God destroys in order to bring out and release in us what is good.
3. Goodness is in us because God put it there and revealed it by His Son.

How does that apply to the question? Bad things happen to us in life, not BECAUSE of what God has done, but because of what WE do or have done, or others like us have done. When a person such as you that has had cancer, goes to a doctor - the doctor did not cause the cancer. It is sin that has brought the consequence of human decay and disease into the world, because MAN chose to eat of the fruit in the Garden (Gen.3:3,6). God cannot "coddle" us any more than a good surgeon could coddle the cancer in a patient. However, just as a surgeon can remove the cancer, so God can remove and purify that which keeps us from eternal life.

The world's way of thinking assumes that life should be more comfortable and much easier, and if it isn't, then it must be God's fault because He made it all. Just like Israel in the wandering, they forget that God didn't make it that way! Man's choice did. Man made the mess, and then we want God to clean it up.

Why then do we pray and ask Him to protect us and keep us from harm and to take care of our loved ones...if He does not heal us then why do we pray for Him to heal?

Because like Job, we feel that we did not warrant what happens to us and that I shouldn't suffer because of someone else's wrong. We feel that we deserve an answer from God, and that the answer should be what WE want.

• We ask God to keep us from harm - Jesus taught that we should pray " lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" (Mt.6:13)
• We ask to God take care of our loved ones à Jesus taught that we should pray " Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Mt.6:10)

Once Job understood this, read Job 42:1-6.

If He does not heal us then why do we pray for Him to heal?

Jas 5:15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

God will often make these the means of recovery; but there just as often cases where faith and prayer are both ineffectual - because God sees it will be prejudicial to the patient’s salvation or spiritual growth to be restored (2 Cor.12:8,9). Faith and prayer on such occasions should be that if it is best for God's glory, and the eternal good of that person's soul, then let him be restored. This goes back to Matt.6:10, that we should submit all things, prayer and faith to God's will, and not presuppose that what I want is the will of God.

There is much to human suffering and pain, yet, it is a mistake to blame God. It is our mess and our (mankind's) own doing. We should appreciate as did Job, when he came to understand ,that God looks upon us with grace and mercy even though we do not deserve it.