God also uses the other spiritual
gifts to communicate with us.
Gifts such as words of knowledge or words of wisdom come to mind. These occur when God drops a piece of
information or an idea into our minds that we would have no natural way of
knowing.
One example
comes from Tony’s days as a doctor in London. One day, a patient who was the wife of a local pastor who had
just moved into the area came to see him.
Since Christians were few and far between in that area of London, he was
very interested to meet her. She
had come for a prescription, and so Tony had examined her and given her the
prescription, but as she stood up to leave, he noticed that she was looking a
bit depressed so he asked her if everything was OK. She immediately brightened up. “Everything’s fine, Doctor,” she said with a smile. Before Tony could stop himself, he
responded. “Oh no it’s not. You’ve
just had an abortion!” If he had
time to think, he would never have said such a thing. She dissolved into tears and the following story came out. She had become pregnant just before she
and her husband married, and to avoid the embarrassment of admitting their sin
as they entered their first pastorate, they had succumbed to the “convenience”
of an abortion. Tony was able to
minister forgiveness and healing to her.
Although this
is a more dramatic example than usual, we often find God speaks to us in these
ways. For example, when we were
trying to make ends meet during our early time here in the States, we quite
often would pray from Deuteronomy 8:? which says, It is God who gives you the power to create wealth that He might
establish His covenant.” For
many months we prayed over this verse asking God to give us a creative idea
whereby we could support ourselves.
One day, an idea just came to us that resulted in the business that now
provides for us and has freed us to spend time working more directly in the
Kingdom. Was it just a natural
idea? Maybe—but we are convinced
that God provided it through a word of wisdom.
2 replies on “God communicates through spiritual gifts”
so funny, I was sitting in a restaurant and a young girl, around 10 was waiting on us (family place) my husband commented on how she was such a talented waitress and that one day she we be working as on. I chimed in “No, she’s going to be a doctor.” Her eyes popped out, “How did you know that? That is what I want to be.” I told her that Jesus told me and we smiled and at each other.
Awesome, Camille!