Category: 1Corinthians

Posted in 1Corinthians

Spiritual Gifts

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Pursue love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts.” 1Corinthians 14:1

Part of God’s increased Presence among us is the manifestation of spiritual gifts. God wants us to love people so much that we want more for them than what is humanly possible.  He wants us to desire what only He can do for them.

In 2013, I was on a team that went to Belize and was in charge of a “Healing Service” we had announced. Before the service, a group of us were praying and earnestly desiring spiritual gifts. The only way it would actually be a healing service was if God did something beyond our preaching and praying. Only Jesus heals!

As we were worshiping, I had a dim picture in my mind’s eye of a woman holding an infant on her hip accompanied by a feeling of compassion. I asked for more, and somehow instantly knew two facts about this woman: she was a mom, but old enough to be a grandma, and she had a horrible back problem that made every day miserable.

At the end of the service I asked whoever this was to come forward, and it turned out to be our missionary, Linda. Her and her husband, Ron, had grandchildren but also had an infant they had adopted. Linda’s back was so bad she was afraid to sit down because she didn’t know when she’d be able to get up again. When we laid hands on her, Jesus instantly healed her so she gave testimony to the group. (She was still healed the rest of the week and three months later when she came to our mission’s conference!)

Then I asked our team if God was showing them anything. One of our leaders said he saw someone’s right arm in an x-ray and there was a crack in the bone. A young man named John came up and was instantly healed by the power of God. I found out his story from his mom a few days later when we were taking a bus to a region-wide prayer event.

John was 24 and had fallen away from God and the church. His mom kept begging him to come back to church, so he made a deal with her – “You stop nagging me and I will go back one time.” John had an ongoing problem with his right arm, so this was the service she chose.

I was stunned by her story of his healing and told her I’d love to talk to John himself about it. She said that would be easy because he was on the bus heading to the prayer meeting! God hadn’t just healed his arm; He had restored John’s faith.

Posted in 1Corinthians, 1Thessalonians, Ephesians

Concerning Spiritual Gifts 

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Pursue love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts.” 1Corinthians 14:1

The world needs more than what you’re good at; it needs what only God is good at. God has placed each of us in His body (1Corinthians 12:18) just as He pleased. We don’t choose our part; we can only, at best, discover and embrace it. This is called our ministry. Paul said there were a variety of ministries (1Corinthians 12:5) and a variety of expressions of similar ministries. (1Corinthians 12:6)  God loves to reveal Himself through our differing, unique contributions to His body, so we must accept our part and learn to honor everyone else’s part.

But the supernatural gifts are different from our ministries. These work “as the Spirit wills” (1Corinthians 12:11) and are dependent on His moving, not ours. Whereas your ministry has already been set, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are dynamic. Every believer has the potential of being used in any one of the nine supernatural gifts Paul lists. We are to pursue loving people so much that we want more for them than what we can do. While loving them, we are to “earnestly desire spiritual gifts,” those things that require the supernatural.

Paul gives nine gifts and each is powerful when meeting the needs of the person we’re ministering to. The gifts can be divided into three general categories:

The revelation gifts: Word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and discerning of spirits. (1Corinthians 12:8, 10)

The power gifts: the gift of faith, gifts of healings, and the working of miracles. (1Corinthians 12:9-10)

The oral gifts: prophecy, diversity of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. (1Corinthians 12:10)

When we cease to love people, we grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30), and when we don’t make a place for the manifestation of God’s power, we quench the Holy Spirit. (1Thessalonians 5:19) God wants both His beauty and His power revealed through the church.

Jesus is so great that He can use flawed, normal people to do His amazing works through. This was His plan! We can’t do His works without Him, and He won’t do them without us. He’s calling us into an adventure of walking with Him. Let’s say “yes” to the beauty of His character and to His desire to use us in power.

Posted in 1Corinthians, 2Corinthians, Psalms

Beholding the Glory of God

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” 2Corinthians 3:17-18

Whatever we behold we eventually become. If you behold, or “keep before your eyes,” your worries, you will become anxious. If you keep anger before your eyes, you will become bitter. If you keep pornography before your eyes, you will become lustful. But if you and I keep the glory of the Lord before us, we will be transformed from one level of glory to the next. It sounds easy but there are a few problems.

“As in a mirror” is a problem. The mirrors back then were made of brass and the image they gave was very dim. Paul says earlier in Corinthians, “we see in a mirror dimly.” (1Corinthians 13:12) Even though we have nothing between us and God (unveiled faces), in this current time we live more by faith than sight. Yet even now a glimpse of His glory will transform us. Are we willing to behold Him even if it isn’t always powerful or instantly rewarding? Are we willing to spend time in His Word and prayer seeking to behold Him even when it seems like He’s hiding Himself? Will we prioritize church over a thousand other things we could do on the weekend even though it’s kind of boring to us? The more we behold Him, the more others will be able to behold Him through us.

The other problem is the abundance of other things to look at. Hollywood and the internet are filled with images that you can easily behold without doing any work at all; excitement and entertainment at the click of a button. We were made to behold and our hearts will always behold something. Even as a Christian, the only way you and I will behold the Lord is if we make it our priority. The man after God’s own heart said, “One thing have I desired and that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.” (Psalm 27:4) It isn’t enough to desire, we must act on that desire by actively seeking or something else will easily creep in.

Am I saying that it’s wrong to enjoy a movie, a game, or other legitimate pleasures? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that when we make beholding the Lord our first priority, everything else takes its proper place and won’t become an idol.

Posted in 1Corinthians, John

Understanding the Anointing

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“He who is thirsty let him come to Me and drink…and out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:37-38

I once heard the late German evangelist, Reinhart Bonnke, tell a story that made a great impression on him when he was a boy. A barge had become stranded on the beach when the tide went out and he and his friends contemplated how impossible it would be for anyone to move it. Yet when the tide came back in, he found he could move this massive rig all by himself. He realized that the laws all change when the tide comes in.

The first crusade he led in Africa was in a city named Gaborone. He only had one pastor join him, yet Reinhart had rented a stadium. The pastor questioned this, “If my whole church came, we would only have 40 people.  Why have you rented this stadium?” The answer was, “Because God told me to.” The first night, 100 people attended, but while he was preaching the blind began to see, crippled people came off their mats, and the deaf began to hear. Reinhart said the stadium was filled the next night. The success he had in Africa since that time is one of the greatest miracles of our time. There were over 73 million recorded conversions; 58 million since the year 2000.

Jesus wants us to do more than our best for the people around us. He wants us to come and drink of Him, so that He can do His best for them. Paul said to “pursue love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts.” (1Corinthians 14:1) This world needs more than our love; it needs to experience heaven’s love and in a way that they know God is alive.

Posted in 1Corinthians, Galatians

Should We Expect Miracles?

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you have heard?” Galatians 3:5

The early church was “filled with awe” because of the “many wonders and miraculous signs” done in their midst. (Acts 2:43) From the text above, we can see that miracles continued in the midst of the local church, even in the church at Galatia which was struggling to stay true to the gospel.

A miracle can be defined as an intervention of the immediate presence of God that changes the natural course of things in such a way that transcends human explanation. It is understandable that awe, wonder, and surprise would be the human response to this level of grace. Does God really still want to move in this way today?

If we take the Bible seriously, there’s nothing in it that suggests that somehow the Holy Spirit would stop working in these ways in the future, or would in any way change who He is and how He acts. If this is true, why don’t we see more? I’m reminded of the old song: “Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.” God is moving today by His grace in ways which we need to celebrate, but I am convinced we also need to contend for more. The Bible tells us to “pursue love, and desire earnestly spiritual gifts.” (1Corinthians 14:1) Maybe we don’t see more because we haven’t earnestly desired more?

Posted in 1Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Hebrews, Romans

Walking in the Spirit

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” 1Corinthians 2:14-16

Beware of one facet of the carnal nature in you Scripture calls, “the natural man.” The natural man wants to believe and obey only what he understands completely. He won’t do anything until he knows that he won’t look stupid or foolish in front of others, therefore our natural man is incapable of living by faith and cannot please God. (See Hebrews 11:6; Romans 8:8)

It is easy to be born of the Spirit at some point in the past, but not walk in the Spirit today. When that happens we are miserable as Christians, kind of like fish out of water. Our proper habitat is the spirit realm, so when we go back to living like those in the world we become spiritually choked.

Signs of a Christian living in the natural man include anxiety, joylessness, cynicism, discouragement, and feeling spiritually drained all the time.  The answer is not complicated; put off the old man and walk in the Spirit. (Ephesians 4:22-23; Galatians 5:25) Start by asking God to forgive you for trying to live the Christian life by the natural man, then remember that your rightful breath is the Holy Spirit, your proper food is the Word of God, and your sure hope for eternity is heaven no matter what happens down here. You have only God to please, so it doesn’t matter whether others approve of you or not.

The language of the Spirit does not contradict our minds, but it does transcend it. His many ways of whispering to us must be spiritually appraised, so we must stay alert to the spirit realm. God is in charge of planning, protecting, providing, and guiding.  We are in charge of trusting and obeying. It’s a nice arrangement when we do our part and don’t question His!

Posted in 1Corinthians, 1Kings

The Spirit of Revelation

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God.” 1Corinthians 2:11b-12

In all of our seeking of God we must always remember that any progress we make is not because we’re good seekers, but because God is a generous, and merciful revealer. If we don’t keep this posture of deep humility, spiritual growth will stop simply because God resists the proud, even if they are His children.

We need to develop a close friendship with the Holy Spirit if we want to seek God in a way that we will find Him. When you fully trust Christ for salvation the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your Spirit. You are, according to the Bible, born again. You have a capacity to know God, hear His voice, and experience His love that an unbeliever doesn’t have. But the key is learning to live more and more by, and with, the Person of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you.

He will speak to you through the Scriptures, so devote time each day to reading. He will speak through circumstances if you will only listen. He will speak through whoever’s speaking and church friends, so make church a priority. He can also speak in a number of supernatural ways according to the Bible, including: dreams, visions, trances, and through angelic visitations.

Many people wish God would speak louder, but that is not usually His way. When Elijah was waiting to hear God a tornado came, but the Lord wasn’t in the wind. Then an earthquake came, but the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. Then a fire, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire. It was in a still small voice, a whisper, that God spoke to him. (See 1Kings 19)

If a person yells they can communicate to you from far away. But if they whisper, you have to come very close or you won’t hear them. That’s what God wants more than anything else, you and I to draw near to Him.