FEBRUARY 4, 2016

AS YOU WILL

MEMORY VERSE: 1 Corinthians 12:11 “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills”

The Holy Spirit is a gift. It is very important for us to understand the gravity of that statement “He is a gift”. The word “gift” is taken from the Greek “Charis” which means an endowment of grace. It is a free gift given by God to men and once given; it is never recalled, never restricted and never controlled by the giver. The person of the Spirit is described as a gift or rather as The Gift. Acts 2:38 “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost”, Acts 10:45 “And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost”. He is the one given to us as a free endowment of God’s grace. He lives in us and we are born of him. In fact, the new creation in Christ is born of the nature, the substance and the character of the Spirit of God. This means that in the nature of the man born again, there is no difference between his will, desires and that of the Holy Spirit. There are many scriptures that point to our oneness with Him 1 Corinthians 6:17 “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”; John 3:6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”.

Now, we have previously seen in days past that there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit. I must add very importantly that the nine classes of gifts described in God’s word present in the one Holy Spirit becomes gifts only when they are bestowed on the believer. The question would now arise; How frequently would the Spirit want the gift manifested? Is it possible that there could be a need for the gifts demonstrated and the Spirit would withhold himself? The best place to find answers to these questions would be to look at Jesus. If we study the life and ministry of Jesus properly, we would see that there was never a time when the supernatural was needed and wasn’t supplied. Every single time Jesus wanted to be a manifestation of the supernatural, there was a manifestation. Another thing to notice is this: if we study the way the gifts of the Spirit work, we see that there is a strong connection between the gift demonstrated and the will of man. For example: for speaking in tongues to occur, men must open their mouth to speak, same goes with prophecy. Without the cooperation of the man, there cannot be a demonstration of the supernatural. We also even find that the gifts of the Spirit can be abused and also misused. That tells us something very important that the will of man is involved in dispensing the gift. We can always get the gift of the Spirit to occur in increasing frequency to the degree to which we have learnt how to cooperate with the Spirit to do so. We will continue along this line in the coming days.

CONFESSION: I flow with the Spirit, I yield to him. Day by day, the influence of the Spirit over me gets stronger and stronger.

FURTHER BIBLE READING: 1 Corinthians 6, Ezekiel 2

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