Gifts of the Holy Spirit

There are more gifts of the Holy Spirit than just speaking in tongues. These gifts include the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.

Many people refer to these as the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. However, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. The Bible also says that people will have dreams, visions, and even cast out demons.

The point is that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not limited to these nine—they are actually limitless. The reason they are limitless is because they all come from God. Every gift is given by the Spirit of God.

These nine may be the ones listed here, but all the power of God Himself is behind a Christian if He chooses to work through them—whatever the purpose may be.

The Difference Between a Talent and a Gift

Sometimes people get confused about the difference between having a talent and having a gift.

A talent is something you happen to be good at. You work at it and perfect it. Whether it’s singing, art, or anything else, it’s something that may come naturally—but it’s developed and refined through practice.

A gift, on the other hand, is something that is given to you. It isn’t something you work for, practice, or perfect. That’s why those who claim they can teach people how to speak in tongues or insist that prophetic gifts must be practiced to get them right are false. You can’t improve upon a gift from God.

With a talent, you can simply turn it on and off. At any moment you might burst into song or pick up a pen to write a masterpiece. You control it—you work at it.

When people say a person is “gifted” at something, they are often using the term incorrectly. God may bless your efforts as you learn and grow in your talents, and He may even allow you to use a gift or two in the process—but there is a clear difference between talents and gifts.

Take Samson as an example:

God had gifted Samson with great strength. He didn’t have to work out to improve it. But when his hair was cut off (as you can read in Judges), he was no longer allowed to use that gift.

Samson thought his strength was his own. So he said to himself that he would go out and do what he had always done. But he quickly discovered that what he believed to be his own talent was actually a gift from God—one that had been taken away.

The point is that we do not practice using the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We do not gain skill in them through our own effort. We can’t simply “shake ourselves” and begin operating in them whenever we choose. These gifts come directly from God for specific purposes and at specific times.

What we can practice is a talent. We can learn to be better speakers, improve our art, or grow in whatever area we want to excel.

And God uses both our talents and our gifts! He allows us to do what we can and gives us gifts to make up for what we can’t. For example, preachers can prepare their sermons and speak to an audience, but they can’t know exactly what someone in that audience needs to hear. That word comes from God as He gifts it to them in that moment.

If you remember in a previous study, we talked about what it meant to be a prophet. We said that the gift of prophecy “bubbled up” inside of them. This is how the other gifts work as well—they “bubble up” from within as the Spirit takes command.

But, you can’t force that “bubbling up” to happen. You can put yourself in the best place to be sensitive to the Spirit’s direction. But you can’t make God tell you which way to go.

So, let’s take a look at the kinds of gifts the Bible lists.

Words of Wisdom and Knowledge

There is a big difference between having knowledge and having wisdom. A short explanation is that knowledge means you know something, but wisdom means you know how to use that knowledge.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you know how to make a starship that can travel faster than light (yes, I like Star Trek—stay with me here). Congratulations, you have knowledge! But what good is that going to do you? If you run around telling all your friends and strangers about it, they’ll probably dismiss you—or even have you put in a hospital, thinking you’re delusional.

Knowledge without wisdom can be dangerous. But if, instead of acting like a madman, you write your thoughts down and send them to the right person at NASA, then you’ve acted with wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how to properly apply what you know.

When the Spirit gives you the gift of the word of knowledge, it means He has informed you of something you wouldn’t otherwise know. I’ve experienced this gift before—quoting Scripture I hadn’t even read yet—because God was in me, gifting me that knowledge.

When the Spirit gives you a word of wisdom, He is gifting you the ability to know what to do with that knowledge. For example, you may know everything in the Bible but not be able to explain any of it to others without sounding judgmental or harsh. But the Spirit can give you wisdom to properly deliver that knowledge when the time comes.

If you look at the life of Solomon, you’ll see that even when he lacked knowledge, he still had the wisdom to know what to do.

I used to be a substitute teacher in the public school system, and I would often tell my students that they didn’t have to know all the answers—they just had to know where to find them. That’s wisdom.

Wow! He had no knowledge of who the child belonged to, yet in that moment, he had the wisdom to know how to proceed and find out.

This is what it means to be given the gift of wisdom—and again, this gift is given when needed to make up for what you lack.

Faith

The Bible says that each of us has been given a measure of faith:

Faith is only as strong as the reality of what you hope for.

If you hope you can take down an entire army by yourself—but God didn’t tell you to—then you’re going to die.

That’s why we sometimes see people saying, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” and then failing at what they’re trying to do. It’s because Christ didn’t tell them He was going to strengthen them for that particular task!

But when He does tell you to do something, He will give you the ability to do it. That’s how the gift of faith works: God tells you to do something, and you believe Him. But you may not have the ability to carry it out—so He grants you what you’re lacking to make your faith complete.

When you have belief without an action that corresponds to it, that’s not faith. Faith is belief that produces action.

A good example of God giving someone the gift of faith for a certain task is Moses.

Moses believed God had told him to go to Pharaoh and command him to let God’s people go. But while Moses believed God, he didn’t yet have the ability to do what was asked. So God gave him what he needed to turn that belief into faith.

Of course, if you know the story, Moses chose not to act on it at that moment—and made God angry.

But that’s another subject.

Discerning of Spirits

The discerning of spirits is a gift where God grants you the ability to see past the outward appearance and into the spirit. While others around you may be impressed or amazed by someone, the Spirit allows you to see the evil spirit behind them. It can also reveal the good in someone that others cannot see.

Being given this gift can take a great toll on a person. I say this because I know what it’s like. Sometimes it’s emotionally difficult when you know things that people try to hide.

There are times when a person can come to you and say all the right words. They can make you truly believe that they are a child of God. But God gives you this gift, and suddenly, you know they are not.

Peter used this gift when dealing with Simon in the book of Acts:

Healing and Miracles

It’s obvious what healing is, and we’ve already talked about tongues and prophecy in another study. So let’s get into the subject of miracles as a whole.

The gifts of healing and miracles are not used as often as we sometimes think they should be. Neither are the other gifts. That may leave us wondering if they are even meant for us to see today. So let’s look at what the Bible says about it.

There are five general reasons God has performed miracles in the past:

• To Make God known
• To Protect
• To Provide
• To Confirm
• To Judge

From the very beginning, the creation of the universe and of mankind had a purpose—to make God known. The flood in Noah’s day and the plagues in Egypt were acts of judgment, but they also made God known. The manna that fell from heaven was provision, yet it also made Him known. Even the miracles performed by the apostles served to confirm the gospel and make God known.

Do you see the pattern? Every miracle, every demonstration of power, every display of God’s intervention—was never just about the event itself. It was always about revealing who He is, so that through it all, God might be known.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are no different. They each serve different purposes for the moment, but they are all ultimately about revealing God. They exist for the purpose of being witnesses of God—of making Him known.

Why Miracles Are Rare

You might think that if God wants us to know Him, miracles would happen far more often—but that’s not the case.

Sometimes we’re tempted to think miracles happened constantly in the past. But the truth is, God has never been in the habit of performing miracles just for the sake of it—they have always been rare.

If you divide the number of miracles recorded in the Bible by the number of years from the beginning, you’ll find that it has always been rare to see one. Especially when you consider that miracles were usually performed in clusters—during certain time periods—rather than being evenly spread out.

So why is that?

Let’s imagine God performed a miracle every time someone asked Him to. What would that teach us?

First, it would teach us that we can control Him. That’s what people tend to do. They looked at Jesus and said, “Put on a show for us.”

They thought they could command God. Even today, people design “tests” for God to prove Himself. If He doesn’t answer a prayer or perform as they ask, they say He isn’t real. But they don’t consider that perhaps God doesn’t like being manipulated any more than they do.

Expecting miracles also teaches us to rely on them alone for confirmation of truth. But even illusionists and birthday-party magicians can trick people into believing they can perform the impossible.

In 2 Thessalonians, we see that the Antichrist will also perform miracles. What happens to a world full of people chasing signs and wonders when the devil begins performing them?

They follow him.

If you think about it, a lack of miracles is actually one of God’s ways of protecting us. It forces us to learn discernment—to see past trickery—and to search deeper for the truth. That’s why Jesus said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” Because when we love truth, we don’t need miracles to find it.

Not everyone needs to see a miracle to believe. In fact, most people wouldn’t believe even if they did see one. So if miracles are for the purpose of making God known, they may not always be the most effective way to accomplish that purpose.

That’s why God doesn’t perform miracles all the time. Doing so wouldn’t accomplish His ultimate goal—and might even hinder it.

Because of this, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not used on a whim, as some believe. They are limited to being used for a certain purpose, at a certain time, in a certain place, in a certain way, and for the ultimate goal of making God known.

These gifts are given to us when we need them—not when we want them. They haven’t been done away with, as I explained in a previous study. But they aren’t used as often as some pretend they are, either.

There are many people who have deceived themselves into thinking they are using these gifts when they are simply using their own imagination. That’s why we see the gift of tongues used improperly, prophecies that don’t come to pass, and “healings” that are unverifiable.

That brings us to the next subject: How do you know what gifts you’ve been given? We’ll talk about that in the next study.

Continue To Unit 4:13 – What Are My Spiritual Gifts OR

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