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When someone asks you why you’re a Christian be prepared to tell them. Unbelievers think all Christians are hypocrites because they see Christians still committing sins. Unbelievers mistakenly think once you become a Christian your actions should all of a sudden model Mother Teresa and you should never sin again.  Unbelievers think this because they themselves are not saved and do not know the Bible. Satan persuades the unbeliever that being a Christian is not something to strive for and God’s Word is easily snatched from their hearts by the god of this world.  I get this thrown in my face all the time. Satan is predictable, and why not? The devil’s wiles are still working. I don’t take offense anymore because I know where it’s coming from and from whom. What we have to do is explain to the unbeliever that all people sin, including Christians.

The difference is saved Christians are forgiven and will still inherit eternal life. Being a Christian doesn’t mean we won’t sin because we still have the sin nature inherited from Adam.  Being saved means as we mature in the faith we’ll sin less and less and when we do sin we’ll feel guilty and ashamed. We won’t enjoy sinning like we used to. God is faithful to forgive those believers who repent of their sin and ask for God’s forgiveness.  I sin every day and when I realize it I immediately ask God to forgive me. At night before bedtime I pray for God to forgive all my sins that day in case I missed anything. That way I know before my eyes close that the blood of Jesus has washed away my sins before the Father and when God looks upon me He sees only the righteousness of Christ Jesus. I have a clean slate before God and the peace of God.

The seventh gift of God is the discerning of spirits. This is the Holy Spirit giving us the supernatural ability to detect the presence of demons. We know from the Bible that God kicked Satan and his fallen angels (demons) out of heaven and threw them to the earth where they currently roam causing mischief.  The Bible has many stories about people who were possessed by demons. If demons could enter a person’s body back then they can so do today. With this gift a demon can be detected inside the body or outside the body.

The eight gift of God is knowing different tongues. I’ll be honest with you, I’m confused why this gift is needed. The Holy Spirit gives the supernatural ability to speak a foreign language which then becomes our personal prayer language to God through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has the ability to offer up the perfect prayer to God on our behalf and this new tongue we have somehow gives us a more direct path to God.  I personally think English works just fine. I’ll pray to God for enlightenment on this. The ninth and final gift of God is interpretation of tongues. Although some can speak in tongues they can’t understand what they’re saying to God without this additional gift of interpretation. I would expect these two gifts to be given together, much like knowledge and wisdom are given in conjunction for better effect.

The primary benefit to believers of knowing the gifts of God number three through nine is just knowing they are available. I’ve never had any of these gifts or known anyone else who did. Certainly these gifts are not used very much. However, we do see examples of them all in the Bible so they are real. Pray for them if you see a need.  The first two gifts of God, the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom are a different matter. These are the primary gifts of God to man. They are in use constantly in every circumstance in life. We needs these gifts as much as we need water and food. Without them we perish.  The Bible commands us to study God’s Word diligently and pray continuously for knowledge, understanding and wisdom. If we do that then God’s gifts of knowledge and wisdom will continue to flow through the Holy Spirit into our spirit. Never stop praying and growing in Christ Jesus.

The fifth and sixth gifts of God are the gifts of healings and the working of miracles. We’ll cover them together because all healings are miracles but not all miracles are are about healing. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. In biblical times we know God supernaturally healed many people as documented in the Bible.  Since God is unchanging He can and does heal people today in response to prayer if it’s His will. God can heal anyone of sickness and disease if asked and God can also heal others on your behalf based on your prayers and the prayers of other saints. Some healing is done on a case by cases basis and some people are anointed to lay hands on other people and heal them.

God doesn’t publicize His miracles but they are real nonetheless. Let me give you a personal example. A few years ago my son was struck be a vehicle going 50 mph and he was thrown 40 feet. At the hospital the doctors gave my son no chance to live. Word went out to his church and all the church elders arrived at the ER to hold hands and pray for my son’s life.  My son’s condition immediately started improving. My son had 19 broken bones and spent a month in ICU but he did fully recover which is a miracle that few people realize. Miracles happen every day around us and go unnoticed except to those who receive them based on their prayers and the prayers of others. How many times does God have to say it before you believe it?

James 5:14-15 – Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint his head with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

James 4:2 – You do not have because you do not ask.

Mark 11:24 – Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Luke 11:9 – So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

1 John 5:15 – And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.

It’s easy to see why the word of Knowledge and word of wisdom are the most received gifts of God because they pertain to problems we face in our daily lives, like how do we witness to someone, what does a Scripture verse mean or what plans does God have for my life.  God’s wisdom is needed for more difficult problems such as family problems and financial difficulties. Ask God for specific answers to all your problems because all saints have access to God through the Holy Spirit. Pray about anything and everything and at all times.  The third gift of God is prophecy. I’m not referring to Old Testament type prophecy where you foretell future events like the prophets did. The gift of prophecy is where you get a direct word from the Lord usually to give to someone else.

When the Lord is giving direction to someone’s life they may be unsure if it was actually God advising them or their own conscience. God usually confirms his direction to someone and maybe twice to make sure the message is received. Sometimes someone in the process of making an important decision will go to God’s Word and the Bible will be opened at a verse giving God’s answer.  Other times God will give a word for word answer to another believer to be delivered to the person needing an answer. On occasion God uses this gift to confirm what He has already told you to do about some issue.

The fourth gift of God is faith. All of us are born with a certain measure of faith so we can be saved by grace. Our faith grows in proportion to our personal relationship with the Lord. Sometimes we need greater faith than we have or we can get without help. The Holy Spirit has the ability to manifest His own divine faith through you for His purpose. Anything God asks of you that you are too weak to accomplish the Holy Spirit can give you the faith to do it.  Lets say God asks you to make a paraplegic walk and you don’t have the faith to believe you can do it. The Holy Spirit will manifest His faith in you to accomplish this miracle. When the Apostles raised people from the dead there was no way they had the faith on their own to make that happen. The Holy Spirit manifested His faith through them to do this.

Nothing is more credible than eyewitness testimony spoken with conviction. That’s why the Apostles who knew Jesus were so effective gaining converts to Christianity. I have a personal testimony about the Holy Spirit I hope you find as compelling. Many years ago I decided to settle once and for all whether or not there was a God.  I decided to read the Holy Bible from cover to cover, not once but twice, so I wouldn’t miss anything. In my arrogance I thought I could pick up on inconsistencies in the Bible that might disprove it in my mind. My plan was to sit down afterwards and make up a pros and cons list and use logic to figure out if God was real or not.

At some point in my Bible reading, I don’t recall exactly when, I came to the realization that the Bible I was holding in my hands actually was written by God and everything in it was true. There really was a God who created the universe and me. God really does love me and wants me to live with Him in heaven forever.  It was quite a shock. I suddenly knew it all was true without a doubt in my mind. There was no internal debate about it. I also became acutely aware that God’s salvation plan for man was sheer perfection.

Romans 8:16 – The Spirit Himself will bear witness with my spirit that we are children of God.

I puzzled over how this happened so quickly and I came to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit, which is always present when God’s Word is read or spoken, communed with my spirit to confirm the validity of God and His truth in my heart, the very spirit within me. What else could it have been? One minute I didn’t believe and the next minute I did without thinking about it.  Ever since then I’ve told everyone it’s impossible to read the Bible all the way through twice, with an open mind, without the Holy Spirit convicting the reader of their sin which, in turn, will lead to their belief in God and accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior.

I based this statement on my personal experience. I have also mentioned this in two previous blogs. I remember reading a story once about a radical Muslim who thought he would read our Bible so he could disprove it and confirm Allah as the one true God.  A funny thing happened.  The Muslim came to the realization that Jehovah was the one true God and Islam was a fake religion.  The Muslim converted to Christianity and had to emigrate to America so his family wouldn’t kill him for leaving the faith.  I saw it on one of the cable  news channels and I think he wrote a book about his experience.  I’m throwing down a challenge for anyone to do the same thing and prove me wrong.  I won’t be holding my breath.

The nine gifts of God:

1. The word of knowledge
2. The word of wisdom
3. The gift of prophecy
4. The gift of faith
5. The gifts of healing
6. The working of miracles
7. The discerning of spirits
8. Different kinds of tongues
9. The interpretation of tongues

According to my reference material from bible-knowledge.com the gifts of God are not as important as the fruits of the Holy Spirit but I have to disagree on that one. While it’s true the fruits come with the indwelt Holy Spirit and are always available for sanctification they are not used all that much on a daily basis by nearly as many people as are the first two gifts from God, the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom.  These two gifts are often used in conjunction because by the word of knowledge you receive supernatural knowledge and insight directly from the Holy Spirit that you wouldn’t have been able to know otherwise and the word of wisdom is supernatural insight from the Holy Spirit how to apply the knowledge you have received for the best outcome. Knowing something is one thing and successfully using that knowledge is another. Used together these two gifts give sensational results.

Knowledge, understanding and wisdom are needed by the saints in every area of life and are therefore the most requested by prayers to the Father. Probably 90% of the requests for Gods gifts fall on word of knowledge and word of wisdom while the other seven gifts get only a scant 10% of the requests. People are more concerned about the daily impact on their lives than they are on the lives of others.  The Bible makes 9 direct or indirect commands for the believer to study God’s Word and there are 17 commands in the Bible to pray to the Father for what you want so the Bible is directing our attention to these two gifts in particular. In my daily prayers to god I pray for the same thing most people do, the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God’s Word.

How does the Holy Spirit transmit this knowledge and wisdom to us? The primary way the Holy Spirit shares knowledge in through “inner knowing”. Suddenly you just know something without a doubt. Sometimes I’ll read a verse of Scripture and the knowledge and understanding of it are so clear it jumps out at me.  The Holy Spirit is transmitting His specific knowledge directly into my spirit. The Bible confirms the Holy Spirit will “bear witness” with our human spirit. This Spirit to spirit witness results in the “inner knowing” of the truth of God’s Word.

Those of us who are saved are never alone. Upon salvation the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside us, as promised by God, to be our helper, guide, counselor, and our source of heavenly power while on this earth. The Holy Spirit is our seal from God that we are His possession, which proves we are saved and heaven bound.  When we die both our spirit and the Holy Spirit have to come out of our body, at which time the Holy Spirit escorts our spirit to Jesus. We never have to worry now about how we find our way home.

2 Cor 5:6 – Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.

As mentioned in my last blog, the Holy Spirit comes to us bearing the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are the nine divine attributes of God that define who He is. God will make these fruits available to us in our walk with Him for the rest of our lives here on  earth.  These fruits of the Holy Spirit are the tools God uses to sanctify us. Let’s review these fruits again; they are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  These are the tools, the heavy artillery, that God uses to make us more like Christ over time. These fruits of the Holy Spirit never leave us but the believer must be aware of what the fruits are and then work with the Holy Spirit to develop them.

There are nine gifts of God given to the believer that are separate from the fruits of the Holy Spirit. While these gifts also come from the Holy Spirit too they are not as important as the fruits and they aren’t inside you. They come from God and are manifested by the Holy Spirit as He sees fit.  These gifts are more of a one time use weapon of God or over a limited time frame. Think of these gifts as small arms in God’s arsenal. These nine gifts are normally given to the believer individually by the Holy Spirit and usually in response to prayer to the Father.  The believer must first of all, be aware of these gifts in order to ask for them. The believer must have a valid reason to request a gift from God and make the petition to God by prayer. The Holy Spirit may or may not honor the request by the sovereign will of God.

1 Cor 12:7-11 – But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

Scripture says we are to live for Christ; to do our best to emulate Christ. What does that mean? How do we do that? God gives the Holy Spirit to us as a helper, a friend, a counselor, to help us in our walk with God to become more like Jesus over time.  This sanctification process is to be accomplished using the nine fruits of the Spirit. This is the heavy artillery God will use in our lives as we confront this fallen world.  The arsenal of God is unstoppable. The problem is most Christians are still on spiritual milk and are not aware of the weapons at their disposal. Those who are aware of God’s divine attributes inside them have no idea how to release the power of God to their benefit. They fail due to lack of knowledge.

2 Cor 4:8-9 – We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

The above verse is life in a nutshell on this sin-filled world, if you’re a Christian. For the unbeliever I can’t imagine the horror they must be going through with no hope.

2 Cor 4:17 – For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

God will do the work of sanctification Himself using the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but He won’t do it without your free will acceptance and participation in the process. God’s power of the Holy Spirit can only be released through saints with a knowledge and understanding of God’s Word and that requires personal reading and study of the Bible.  You can’t ask for what you don’t know? You can’t ask if you don’t know how to ask? With the knowledge and understanding of God’s Word comes the wisdom necessary to unleash the power of God within us.

Gal 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

Col 1:27 – Christ in you, the hope of glory.

James 4:2 – You do not have because you do not ask.

James 5:16 – The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

I know we’ll never know the true magnitude of God because our mind’s can’t begin to comprehend an omnipotent and omniscient God. That will be true when we’re in heaven and even more so here on earth where our mental acuity is severity restricted.  We don’t have to guess who God is because He tells us. In His love, mercy and grace God has revealed Himself to us in His Word, our Holy Bible.  God is a person. God has a personality. God has a way of doing things according to His divine nature of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. God has done this because He loves us and wants to fellowship with us in heaven forever.

Eph 4:30 – Do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, He has identified you as His own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.

Phil 2:13 – It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

Mt 19:26 & Mk 10:27 – With God all things are possible.

Next to salvation, the greatest gift God gives a saved Christian is His Holy Spirit to indwell us. This means God’s nine fruits of the Spirit, the divine attributes listed above, are inside us. God does this for a reason.  Satan is the god of this fallen world and he is bent on our destruction. We are weak and defenseless against the powers of darkness on our own. Our blessed hope is the power of God through acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Rom 8:26 – The Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Col 1:11 – We are strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.

Phil 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

We know from Scripture that God wants to change every believer so that they are more and more like Jesus over time. God wants us to emulate Jesus, the perfect and sinless Man. We know that God Himself will bring about this change in us through the indwelt Holy Spirit.  God will pour our His divine fruits, His nature, who He really is, directly into our heart, soul, mind, spirit, and personality. The nine fruits of the Holy Spirit bear repeating. They are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  However, God will not ram His attributes down our throats. We must make the free will choice to let God change us. Some people think they can just sit back and let God do His thing without them having to do anything but they’re wrong.

The sanctification process is and always will be a two way street between God and us. Once we know the what, the why and the how of this process we can do our part by starting to walk and operate in the spirit by our thoughts, words and actions.  We have to keep these divine attributes of God at the forefront of our minds and make a conscious effort to apply them in our lives. Our daily prayers to God should be about implementing God’s divine fruit in our lives with the help of the Holy Spirit.  God will be faithful to do His part because it’s who He is. That is comforting to know. The Holy Spirit will work with you and through you as much as you ask for and can handle. But God will pull back if you don’t do your part.

The sanctification process is slow and painful at times so just keep moving forward with determination and constant prayer. Eventually God’s attributes will shine forth from the inside of you and God will notice. People will notice and be drawn to you for your witness of Christ.  Remember that this sanctification process is the ultimate, highest aim and goal with God for our lives. Scripture says the Holy Spirit is with us to be our counselor and helper and God is referring to sanctification. process.