| . Specific Gifts Of the Spirit
WHAT GIFTS ARE THERE?Scripture has many lists of gifts. They weren't meant to be used as definitive categories. They were used by the Biblical authors to describe what kind of gifts are present for those to whom they write. So, catch the thrust, the spirit of what is said, through what is written, and then look at today for the same kinds of things, even if they aren't precisely mentioned in Scripture. Don't be surprised if you discover not only that they're there, but that some of them are not at all rare. 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 : - words of wisdom;
- words of knowledge;
- faith;
- healing;
- miracle-working;
- prophecy;
- distinguishing of spirits;
- tongues;
- interpretation of tongues.
1 Peter 4:11 : - prophecy as from a prophet (oracle-giver)
- service, from strength given by God
Ephesians 4 : roles for people in the Church : apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers; for - equipping,
- building up, and
- maturation.
Romans 12 : attitude re gifts; gifts of Isaiah 11:1-5 : verse 2 speaks of the various things that the Spirit of the LORD gives to those it rests upon : the spirit of : - wisdom (also James 1:5),
- understanding,
- counsel,
- strength,
- knowledge, and
- the fear of the LORD.
According to the next two verses, God also gives such people : - a special force or effectiveness of words/communication (v.4b; see Romans 12 'exhortation'), and
- a gift for being just to the oppressed in an unjust world (v.4a).
(When Paul spoke of how the warrior of God is dressed (Ephesians 6; 1 Thessalonians 5:8), and when he said that we walk by faith and not sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), he drew from this passage of Isaiah.) Also, some of the things Scripture describes as gifts from God are not in lists : - James 4:6 -- grace
- Philippians 4:7 -- peace
- Hebrews 4:1,9 -- rest
- John 10:28; Romans 6:23 -- eternal life
- Psalm 127:3 -- children
- Ezekiel 11:19 -- a new heart
- 1 Corinthians 7:7 -- celibacy (without being ruled by lust)
".... if I enjoyed giving things to my children a thousand times more than keeping them for myself, so of course must He."
--------- Hannah Whitall Smith, in Logan Smith's *Philadelphia Quaker*
FURTHER, DEEPER, HIGHER, etc, etc.The Holy Spirit gives the gift of spiritual aim. We may have been raised to believe that if the struggle to 'get by' is so hard, then 'getting by' is all we can demand of anyone, including ourselves. And, in a way, there's something to be said for that, on matters where being good or doing good is not what matters (such as, for instance, 'salvation' or 'justification'). But God urges us on to more. We can be better than we are, we can follow Christ more completely than we do, we can use more fully the gifts we have each been given. God wants us to grow. But we can only grow because of the power God has given us to grow, the direction that the Spirit has sent us in. God wants you to be the best and truest you that you can be, a glimpse (but only a glimpse) of what you will be when time itself ends and the Kingdom comes to full fruition.
When you allow yourself to move in the Spirit, things just start to jell. Your service work, teaching, preaching, or witness somehow get a new coherence and/or energy. You give it just the right turn or angle for the Spirit to use in prying someone else open. It may touch people you don't know for reasons you have no way of understanding. That is a very special gift indeed -- and it is one that is available to every faithful Christian, in some way.
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HOPEHope is a gift of the Spirit, too; not a 'charism' in the sense Paul was speaking of, but it is something given by God. The evidence: one of the few things that one can say across-the-board about those with a high view of the Spirit is that virtually all of them are full of hope. The Spirit tells them about Christ. Christ makes forgiveness happen. Our relationship with God becomes that of being God's child, not that of a rebel. And nothing that the world can dish out can change that. Life becomes something to be savored, even to be dared (within God's purposes), even as the world around us destroys itself through its rebellion against God. The gift of hope shines light into our inner depressions and into the outer oppressions, saying that all is not so bleak, that God has already won, and in the end, so have we.
GOD WORKS WONDERS IN SOCIETYThere are many people (especially in the 'mainline' churches) who believe that Christians can somehow build or help build the Kingdom of God by doing good things here on earth. To them, anyone who is working for peace, human dignity, and good will are working for God and thus may well be covered under 'salvation', even if they don't believe in Christ. I think it's true that God may be working through them (just as God worked through the pagan Cyrus in the Old Testament), and may even be trying to show us something through their actions (as I think God was doing with Gandhi). But in the end, that does not rescue us. It is instead a sign of God's continuing mercy on the scarred world of today, a world that God loves. Mere peace, justice, good will, etc, are not the same as the Kingdom; they are characteristics of the Kingdom, among countless other characteristics, each of which have meaning only as part of the bigger reality of a creation reconciled to and living with God. Those sort of characteristics tend to get stripped of their moorings in Christ, and thus become merely human concepts (good and potent, but still scarred and human). Then they get stripped of the specifics of living tissue and turned into abstract concepts which lack the breath of life. In the end, God brings in the Kingdom by transforming parts of our world and sweeping away the rest -- including that which we have done, even done by God's power. For the time comes when the temporary has to clear the stage for the permanent, and the wispy greatnesses of our world pass away for the solidity of that which is created by the Ultimate Reality.
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The Believing Community"Waste of power is a tragedy. God does not waste the great power of his Spirit on those who want it simply for their own sake, to be more holy, or good, or gifted. His great task is to carry on the work for which Jesus sacrificed his throne and his life -- the redemption of fallen humanity."
Alan Redpath, *The Life of Victory* Christians are gifts to one another; every person is, or at least is potentially, God's gift to everyone else and to all collectively. Not always. Not necessarily. But potentially -- when within our feeble lives we reflect the kingdom of a most un-feeble God. And even when a person is not being a gift -- for instance, the guy who murders your children -- (a) God can give gifts of insight that will help one go on with life; (b) God might even perform a miracle of change in that person -- you might be called on to be a gift to your enemy, and the resulting changes may be God's gift to you. None of that makes the murder or the murderer a gift, but it does mean that God makes a way out of no way, makes lemonade out of lemons, and makes flowers arise from dung heaps. Community itself can be said to be a gift, though I'd want to see that worked out some more before saying that, since if we don't, the statement comes off way too glib. The Spirit brings to believers the gift of feeling like they are a part of something big, that they belong, and more, that wherever they go there are others who belong. The Spirit gives them a common vision and a common joy about that vision. The Spirit gives them the tools to spread the gospel and thus bring others into the community. The tools are given in so many different ways that fellowship becomes a balanced harmony, with body and character. The gifts are used in a mutual ministry. There are those that state bluntly that gifts that do not promote community are not from the Spirit. But the Spirit's task is not merely to create and promote 'community', or even create and promote the Church as an organization. It is to further that specific vision of community in Christ that we call the Kingdom of God -- a Kingdom that has already begun, and awaits its full fruition. This can be furthered by an intensely personal, private, and individual effect, IF that is the crucial step for that person to go further down the road of serving God's community later on. (Remember: we can be gifts to one another. Thus, the Spirit can give something private that will make that person a more effectual gift to others in other ways. But such a gift is always a lesser gift, because its value as a gift comes from whatever blessing the community gains from it thereafter.)
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EMPATHYConnected to the gift of community is one of the 'spectacular' gifts, that of empathy, of being uniquely able to get fully in sync with what is going on in the mind of another person. Here, I am NOT talking about 'mind-reading', which is a power and not a gift, which by its very nature undermines the peer-ness and independence needed for real human relationship, and thus is un-Christian. Nor am I talking about the usual knowing of someone that comes through friendship or relationship. I am talking about a special sensitivity, caring, and knowing beyond what a human being can do naturally, the ability to literally feel the depression, pain, joy, or confusion of another person (even a total stranger), to enter into it in ways that can't be explained. I find empathy to be one of the most special of gifts in an age that is as compartmentalized and lonely as ours is. I have met people who have a gift for this. It's one of those things that it's best not to shine a spotlight onto, lest it create the one thing that can effectively block the gift : self-concern. Even healthy self-concern can be a problem for empaths, because empathy involves demolition of many of the usual barriers of identity, a self-surrender which is in many ways blind. Thus, like many spectacular gifts, it can be a curse as much as it is a gift. Mercy sometimes functions as a gift, in that the Spirit enables us to give it away to another. When it happens, it's a less mystical side of an impulse not unlike empathy, but without the 'inner radar'. Mercy 'as a gift' is being given the effectiveness in doing things in a loving manner that softens the suffering of others, in some direct way.
Back THE GIFT OF GIVING BLESSINGS"When a man falls in love, he almost instinctively seeks to present a gift. Even the gift of tenderness, kisses, and time which he spends without measure. Every beautiful thing he finds he feels the need of offering to her, and without hesitation : He knows that she, too, will find it beautiful, for every gift affords infinite pleasure when we are in love."
Paul Tournier, *The Meaning Of Gifts* (SCM, 1964) p.51. There seem to be some people who are given a gift of imparting spiritual blessings. They are people of prayer who leave themselves open to God as listeners. As they are listening, God tells them of the blessings that are already being given to people who are present at the time (or will be present shortly) or are in the person's circle of acquaintance. When the gifted pray-er comes to that person, he/she will give a verbal prayer of blessing which mentions what the blessing or gift is for that person.
The related, traditional gift of 'helps' is about putting what we have into the task, the mission, or the spiritual life of another. It's about furthering other peoples' gifts.
DREAM and VISION INTERPRETATIONOne gift that should also be listed as a Scriptural gift (but usually is not) is that of dream interpretation. In the Old Testament, Joseph (Gen 37 & 41) and Daniel (Dan 2) were given this gift, related to prophecy but less directly connected to a 'word of YHWH'. In our times, the field of psychoanalysis has once again raised new attention to our state of dreaming. We now know that dream interpretation is not as reliable and important as a way of climbing past our mind's defenses as Sigmund Freud proposed. Yet Freud and those who came after him did remind us that our dreams do tell us something, more often than not something true about ourselves and our frame of mind. While many dreams are totally unfathomable by way of reason, and many (perhaps most?) dreams don't mean anything that matters, sometimes a dream is a window on the soul's torments. In such cases, the skill of dream interpretation becomes important and instructive.
Where the gift of interpretation shows itself most as a gift of God, however, is in those rare dreams that are a mirror of that which lies beyond ourselves. Carl Jung tried to account for this scientifically in his psychoanalytic theories, with a level of success that even he knew was spotty. He then stretched his theories into an area that runs alongside that which is beyond mere nature, through his theories about the collective unconscious and synchronicity. He saw that there is a connection between people's minds (the collective unconscious), and that things can happen together that have no natural explanation but work together in the same direction or feed off of each other (synchronicity). In our time, M. Scott Peck (especially in *The Road Less Traveled*) has written wonderfully about the 'supernatural' angle of what Jung described. But I suspect that even now, Ezekiel could tell us a thing or three about such things, being that he worked a lot closer with the Source than Freud, Jung or Peck.
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THE 'LITTLE GIFTS'The 'little gifts', such as the 'words', are mostly specially empowered forms of what we are to be doing in our daily life to express our love for people. For instance, the difference between a 'word' of encouragement specially given by the Spirit and the ordinary course-of-the-day encouragements we give to those we care about is very subtle. The difference lies in comforting someone over something you doesn't know about, or in having an uncanny sense of timing you couldn't have by your own effort, or even just the sudden disappearance of fears that may have held you back from saying a needed something.
There are a small number of large churches where supposed 'words of knowledge' have acted as a means of social control. The 'words' come out of designated 'prophets' and pass along supposedly divine information about taking on a church duty, or how to handle your children (usually as a strict authoritarian), or about business decisions (always so you can give to the church), or choosing boyfriends, or such. Then, when you don't follow what is said, you're not 'in submission' to church authorities and you are told that you're rejecting the Spirit. This is a lot of crock. God's authoritative word comes from Scripture, and is about the Gospel. That doesn't mean that the Spirit doesn't tug on you in other ways or through the people around you. It's just that it's loving guidance not divine command.
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Some Links : QUOTES"Fellowship among the spiritually-gifted people exists because of their common possession of the one gift, Jesus Christ. Christ himself is the one who really 'has' the spiritual gifts..... As head of the body, he is the source and bearer of all spiritual gifts. They function at his behest."
Edmund Schlink (*The Coming Christ and the Churchly Traditions*, p. 164 in the German edition) "Unless the role of community is grasped one has failed to understand what the renewal is saying. It seems to me that the primary consequence of the resurrection and of Pentecost is not the exercise of gifts but community formation."
-------- Kilian McDonnell, *One In Christ*, v.16 #4, p.331 "Communion is strength; solitude is weakness. Alone, the fine old beech yields to the blast and lies prone on the meadow. In the forest, supporting each other, the trees laugh at the hurricane. The sheep of Jesus flock together. The social element is the genius of Christianity."
-------- Charles Spurgeon Let thy living Spirit flow
through thy members all below
with its warmth and power divine;
Scattered far apart they dwell
yet in ev'ry land, full well,
Lord, thou knowest who is thine. |
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