What wonderful food!

God is so good to me!  This trip to Honduras or Job or missions opportunity or whatever you may please to call it, has been just what I have needed.  God has shown me so much grace through this opportunity and He is daily reassuring me of His calling upon my life.

This morning (and many times as of late), I have been focused on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and what the Bible says about them as apposed to what we humans have said (consciously or otherwise) about them.  So often we are quick in thinking that the Holy Spirit "manifests" itself in certain predictable ways.  Where does this come from?  Where does the "Doctrine of Falling out in the Spirit" come from?  I can assure you that it is nowhere in the Bible!  It is not listed among the gifts of the Spirit or any such place in Acts or any of the epistles.  We make things up.

Please don't get me wrong; I completely affirm that many of these "manifestations" that we have mentally categorized and even canonized in our pentecostal upbringing are from God (or at the very least started that way).  But often times we have so separated the gift of Baptism in the Holy Spirit from it's job and purpose and fulfillment in our lives that we have such a purposeless and meaningless Christianity.  Pastor Cymbala (of the Brooklyn Tabernacle) writes much about this in his book Fresh Power.

First of all, where does this gift come from?  (And by gift, I'm speaking of any manifestation of the Power of the Holy Spirit, whether spoken of specifically in the Bible or otherwise)  Without a doubt it comes from God if it is good and not false!

Secondly, for what purpose is it given?  FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE KINGDOM!!  These gifts are not in anyway for ourselves and our own selfish gain!  How selfish and piously self-righteous of us to say that the very Power of the Kingdom of God is for our own purpose or to make ourselves feel good, and yet have no change in the very character and nature of our church body?   How utterly foolish!

How can we possibly divorce this Power from it's specific, unalterable purpose in the Kingdom of God?  If we are Baptized in the Spirit, where is the fruit of that encounter, that indwelling?  We can rest assured that God's Power is not something that is purposeless.  I submit to you this test when someone claims to have been Baptized in the Spirit or filled with God's Power:  Where is the fruit of that Power?  What is that Power for?  And how can someone have (or exhibit) power without it being for some purpose?

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This is what I have been begging from God.  I so greatly and desperately want this power!  And God forbid that I should want it for the same reason that many in the American Pentecostal church have wanted it.  God forbid that I want it for the same reason that Simon (the former sorcerer), who was a Christian, wanted this power!  I want it for the very purpose that it was first given out; to expand the Kingdom of God.

I don't have to wonder if there is some gift that God has for me that might help me as I do my best to fight for His Kingdom... I know so!  I know that there is a Power which is real and genuinely supernatural which God does want to give to me.  So many times we want to lesson this Power and say that it is nothing more than the Power of the conviction of sin which all sinners must have before they are brought to Christ.  And for sure, that is a part of this Power; and for sure, that is supremely supernatural.  But what else is there?  Doesn't the very definition of the word "Supernatural" denote something so much deeper and stronger and higher and wider and even more tangible than that?  Love is a very wonderful and Holy thing... but when I look in Webster's dictionary or do my best to study some foreign, Greek term... doesn't the word mean more than that?  Doesn't it have some better significance than a simple encounter?  I have to admit that even the most "simple" encounter with God is most definitely supernatural, but I also am forced to believe that the supernatural doesn't stop there.

And I so desperately want it.  I so desperately long for the fullness of the gifts of the Spirit and all of them!  Not for my own sake, but for the very sake of God Himself!  Isn't it His kingdom that I desire to preach?  Isn't it His Kingdom that I am [hopefully] working so hard for?  If I have something for myself, what good is it?  What possible purpose can it serve?  Only a simple, finite, minute purpose which diminishes to nothing in the grand scheme of eternity.

No!  I refuse to believe that I am worth anything apart from God Himself.  And likewise, there can be nothing in my possession which is of any use or any purpose large or small when it is serving some purpose of my own.  Things are only worthwhile when they are in service to my Lord and Savior.  What other purpose is there?  What else is there to live for?  Nothing!

But at the same time; what wonder and majesty and mystery and bliss there is in the service of Him who calls us!  Oh how beautiful and grand a purpose for which we are made!  How wonderful He is, and how blessed we are to be allowed in His service!