John Michael Talbot - Exploring the Gifts of the Spirit: Discovering the Power God Has for You

ALSO BY JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT AND STEVE RABEY

The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality into Your Daily Life

The Way of the Mystics: Ancient Wisdom for Experiencing God Today

The Music of Creation: Foundations of a Christian Life

2020 John Michael Talbot and Steve Rabey

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Epub Edition March 2020 9780785233053

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CONTENTS

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

ACTS 2:4

I t was a confusing time for the disciples. Jesus violent crucifixion had left many of them fearful and heartbroken. After he rose from the dead, he appeared to some of them, encouraging them, and teaching them over the course of more than a month.

Then, suddenly, he was gone again, ascending gloriously into heaven. He promised his followers that the Holy Spirit would guide them, but they didnt have a clue what that meant.

They found out on the day of Pentecost, when they wound up in the middle of a divine commotion.

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:24)

Speaking in tongues was only one of many gifts the Holy Spirit poured out on the men and women who followed Jesus. The Spirit empowered these disciples to make crucial decisions, prophesy about future events, heal the sick, discern the presence of evil spirits, and spread his message throughout the world.

These events were supernatural in origin, not a result of overexcited crowds, and the Spirits gifts also provided evidence that the fledgling Christian movement was more than merely another new Middle Eastern religious movement. The Christians God had real, supernatural power on their side.

St. Basil the Great, a fourth-century church father, described the Spirits role in his classic work On the Holy Spirit:

Just as a sunbeam, falling on light and transparent bodies, makes them exceedingly bright and causes them to pour forth a brilliance from themselves, so too souls which bear the Spirit and which are illuminated by the Spirit become spiritual themselves and send forth grace to others. Hence comes to us foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, discernment of what is hidden, sharing of good gifts, heavenly citizenship, a place in the choir of angels, joy without cease, abiding in God, likeness unto God, and that which is best of all, being made God.

THE FIRE COOLS

Apparently not everyone shared Basils positive appraisal of the Spirits ongoing work in the church. St. John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople, lived during the same time as Basil, but his report was less positive. He complained that the Spirits work wasnt as powerful as it had been in the good old days.

The present church is like a woman who has fallen from her former prosperous days. In many respects she retains only the symbols of that ancient prosperity. She displays, in fact, the repositories and the caskets of her gold ornaments, but she is, in fact, deprived of wealth. The present church represents such a woman... only the tokens of the charisms remain of those ancient times.

St. Augustine, one of the leading Christian theologians of all time, acknowledged that while he and his fellow theologians had spent much time developing a rich theology about Jesus Christ (known as Christology), they had devoted little attention to the theology of the Holy Spirit (known as Pneumatology). As he wrote in Faith and the Creed:

The subject of the Holy Spirit, however, has not yet been sufficiently nor so diligently treated by the great and learned commentators on the Sacred Scriptures, that we can easily understand what is proper to Him.

Over the centuries, some church leaders quit depending on the Holy Spirit to guide and grow the church, turning instead to administrative abilities, or government power, or marketing techniques. It is as if we tried to dress up the Spirit in an attractive suit and tie to match our cultural preferences. But the Spirit resists such efforts.

Sociologists say such drift is typical of how organizationsreligious and secularlose sight of their founding vision over time. Organizations go through life cycles, and thats why they need reformers or turnaround CEOs.

The fire of the Spirit that fell at Pentecost has never been extinguished, but has cooled at times over the ages. Today, many people in Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, and Orthodox churches have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the active and powerful presence of the Spirit is often missing from their daily Christian experience.