Gifts are forever

Every mature believer should be familiar with the workings of the gifts of the Spirit. This is the specific means through which God has chosen to channel His power through His people, and He expects us to learn to move in His supernatural power.

In first Corinthians 12: 1 Paul warns: "I do not want you, brothers, to be ignorant about spiritual gifts." God specifically chose the prophetic gift, for example, to inform, instruct, encourage, and correct us (see 1 Corinthians 14: 3). That gift, as well as the other gifts of the Spirit, was continually manifested in the Old Testament, and has been manifested throughout the history of the Church. And it continues to manifest itself in our times wherever there are people willing to believe that God moves in the same way through the centuries, and that his gifts were not only for a limited time, but for whatever time his miraculous intervention is required. to fill a need in the midst of his people.

During his first great sermon after Pentecost, the apostle Peter declared (Acts 2: 38,39):

38 Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

39 For the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far away; for as many as the Lord our God will call.

The strange idea that the gifts stopped manifesting after the establishment of the Canon of Scripture is a contrived confection of some theologians that has nothing to do with the reality of the spiritual world. The gifts were designed and poured out to meet needs that are still manifested in the lives of God's people, and that will continue to be felt until Christ comes.

Where there is no expectation that God still manifests himself explosively and with power, the Spirit will be grieved, and the manifestation of the gifts will decline. The only ones who benefit from this sad state of affairs are Satan and his demons, who are left free to move unhindered amidst an ignorant and spiritually weak people, unable to mobilize divine intervention when the Enemy swoops down on them.

Study the Bible and learn about the correct functioning of the gifts in the life of the believer. Receive by faith the fullness of the Holy Spirit within you, for that is where the movement of gifts begins, whether in ministry or in daily life. And begin to cultivate by faith those wonderful spiritual resources that God has given you as an inheritance. As you use them, even if it is very imperfectly at first, they will awaken and develop within you, until they become an indispensable resource for that new life of power that you will begin to live.