The Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Part 2
Continuing from the last message, we are talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are all a blessing and a help to the church and to our lives. We already talked about the first two, the words of wisdom and knowledge. Here, we are going to continue talking about the other gifts.
The third gift mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 is the supernatural gift of faith. The Bible says in Romans 12:3, “according to the measure of faith that God has given you.” (NVI.) Thankfully we all have some faith in God. Romans 10:17 says, “So, faith comes because of hearing the message, and the message that is heard is the word of Christ.” (NIV) This shows us that our faith can grow through the word. But this is not the gift of faith. This gift of faith only comes through the Holy Spirit and is something supernatural to help us perform miracles and special signs. It’s interesting that the next two gifts are healing and miracles. To do these
things, we need this gift of faith that is beyond our faith to perform these miracles. It comes when we need it to do the impossible through God. We need this gift today. We need to see the wonders of God today that are beyond our faith, and that is why we need this gift of faith.
I believe it was this gift of faith that helped Philip when he traveled alone to a city in Samaria in Acts 8 and preached. From this, a great revival came with many miracles, with many paralytics and lame people healed and many delivered from demons. Obviously, he received this gift of faith to do all this during persecution. Thank God for this gift of faith, and we can trust that if a time comes when we need to believe for something great and impossible, God will give us this supernatural gift of faith.
The next gift is that of healing. What a blessing this gift is today. Medicine and technology have helped us a lot, but there are still diseases and conditions that only God can heal. How good it is that 2 Peter 1:24 says, “By his wounds you have been healed.” (NIV) God is a healer, and he has given us this gift of healing. And this is seen a lot in the Bible, and we have seen it a lot in the church. And just like the gift of miracles, it is almost always connected to the gift of faith. This supernatural faith comes, and this gift of healing. God can heal any disease. Take the early church, for example. They saw many healings. Look at Acts 5:15-16: “Such was the crowd of men and women that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. 16 Crowds also came from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.” (NIV.) Thank God for this gift that is still operating in the church today.
The next gift is the gift of working miracles. Healings are miracles, but this speaks of other miracles as well, not just healings. We need this today in this world of much sin and deception and unbelief. We know that Christ is coming soon and there are many problems in the world, and that is why we need miracles to see the gospel growing with power. The Bible is full of these miracles, and so was the early church. A miracle is something very unusual that can only happen by the power of God; it is far beyond what we can do. Many times, it is beyond nature and natural things. For example, this gift was present when Peter prayed for a woman named Dorcas. She had died and had probably been dead for almost two days. In Acts 9, Peter prayed for her, and she came back to life. What a miracle! I imagine that the gift of faith was also at work there. There is a gift of miracles when the church needs it. With our God, nothing is impossible. He is a God of miracles, and how wonderful that He still has these gifts in the church. There was a great revival in Indonesia and the island of Timor in the 1960s. A man named Mel Tari wrote a book called Like a Mighty Wind, which talks about the miracles in this revival. One miracle involved some men who wanted to take the gospel to a certain place but were unable to do so because of a great flood. So, they prayed, and just like Jesus and Peter, they walked on water to preach the gospel. This is because of the gift of miracles.
By now, we talked about three of the nine gifts. We talked about the gifts of wisdom and knowledge, and in a later lesson, we will continue talking about other gifts. But today’s gifts have to do with the power of our God. All three—faith, healing, and miracles—show the power of God to the world and to the church.