How Can We Receive Spiritual Gifts?

 

Each believer HAS BEEN GIVEN, at least, one spiritual gift: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7 NIV). Thus, the burden is on us as believers to discover our spiritual gifts and put them into use. If you don’t know the gifts the Holy Spirit has given you, you must ask Him to reveal them to you. 

In your prayer, if you desire a particular gift, and your motive for that desire is pure, you must tell the Holy Spirit you desire that particular gift. “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps. 84:11 ESV; emphasis mine).

If you want to discover your spiritual gifts, the first thing you must do is develop the attitude of humility. God gives His gifts to the humble (James 4:6). You can’t receive anything from God if your heart is haughty and you want to use the gift to show off. Your motives must be right and pure. Because the human heart is deceitful, it is important to ask the LORD to examine the motives of your heart (Prov. 16:2). If He reveals any impurity, ask Him to cleanse you and make you pure within.

Next, understand that you must receive spiritual gifts by faith. Like salvation, spiritual gifts are gifts of grace and grace comes through faith (Eph. 2:8). You can’t work for them. If the invisible Holy Spirit regularly manifests Himself outwardly through you in terms of a particular gift, then that is your spiritual gift. In other words, you will know you have a particular spiritual gift if that gift manifests in your life regularly. For example, if people receive their healing whenever you pray over them, then the Holy Spirit has given the gift of healing. If you are regularly given the interpretation to messages spoken in tongues, then you have been given the gift of interpretation of tongues.

Finally, the baptism in the Holy Spirit opens the floodgate to spiritual gifts. Both in the recorded account of Scripture and from personal walk with God, it is clear that when people receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues; they begin to manifest the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That means the surest route to receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit is to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In other words, the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a short cut to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It’s a package. When you receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, you open the floodgate to the supernatural, which includes the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

 

 

Read Part One Here.