Be Led By The Spirit

We are continuing our series / / E2E: Encouraged to Encourage. We kind of took a turn a few weeks ago, going from just generally talking about encouraging each other to seeing how God has uniquely gifted each of us to be an encouragement to the body of Christ by looking at what scripture calls the spiritual gifts, or the gifts of the spirit.

When you become a Christian you don’t just become a Christian. You become a part of something. And you can’t separate the two. Now, if you’ve been here a while you know that my take on the church is that we’ve simply not got it right a lot of the time, and then sometimes we do. And I don’t mean our local church community, but I mean the church in general worldwide for the last 2000 years. The church has done some wonderfully fantastic things, and we’ve done some downright shameful, horrific, we don’t even want to talk about it things....

My personal opinion is that we can’t shy away from how we’ve messed up, and equally, we shouldn’t shy away from all that God has created us to be. The tension is living in the reality of both of those things.

That we are a part of something that has a good reputation and at the same time has a bad reputation.

And whether you like it or not, When you become a Christian you become a part of the body of Christ - and by “become a Christian” I mean this - this is what the bible says and I want to read two verses on this.

First Romans 10:9-13, this is Pauls interpretation of what it means to become a Christian, / / If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.” Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him. For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

That is sort of an expanded explanation of what Jesus says in John 3:16-17, / / “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”

ok, that’s what I mean by “become a Christian” You have done what Jesus said, believed in the Son of God, who is Jesus, or what Paul says, “openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.”

Here’s what I like about what Paul says, He says, confess with your mouth, believe in your heart. And I think that the word Jesus uses when he says “so that everyone who believes...” is a confessing and heart changing word. See, what Paul is doing here is making sure that we understand this is more than just paying lip service to a god somewhere out there, but that it is truly and literally dedicating our lives to the One True God of the Universe. Sure, you say you believe, but do you live like you believe?

Believe in your heart is not just a “Yes, I believe that Jesus is the savior of the world” But it is the same word Jesus uses in John 3:16 and it is the greek word / / pisteuo and it means to think to be true, “I believe Jesus is God the Son and came to earth as a human and died to reconcile me back to God and he didn’t stay dead he rose again proving once and for all that he is God and that his offer of eternal life is good because clearly death and the grave can’t stop him” Right, that’s what we believe to be true., BUT it also means, / / to commit to, to be committed to. This is why the early believers in Jesus were ultimately given the name Christians, it’s from Acts 11:26, / / It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.

The word Christian in the greek is Christianos, it comes from the word Christos, and means those who belong to, or the adherents of, or some even say it means we are “little Christs”. Meaning what? Meaning, to be a Christian is more than just a belief in our minds, but it is a decision to become all about this one we call the Christ, the Anointed One, Jesus, the Messiah, the savior of the world.

And we’ve looked at the word pisteuo before and it’s a much stronger word than just to believe, but really carries the weight of a wedding vow.

Now take that one step further, not only are we becoming this closely connected to Jesus, but now Paul is comparing us as a group, everyone who has made this decision has now become ONE body, connected to each other, needing each other, all with different purposes or functions.

1 Corinthians 12:12-26, which is right in between the two parts of scripture we’ve been looking at for these Spiritual Gifts, speaks really in depth about this idea of us being a body together.

vs 7-11 talks about spiritual gifts, vs 28-31 back to talking about spiritual gifts, but these verses in the middle, listen to how he describes what we are:

/ / The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some of us are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we all have been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?

But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it.

How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”

In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.

All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.

He really gets into it, doesn’t he?

But I want to make two points from all of this so far.

First, and I’m not saying this to you because you need to learn it, you are already here, but we all know someone that needs to be encouraged to recognize they are part of a body and have dismembered themselves. Because, anyone who says they are a Christian but doesn’t feel they have any need for the body is missing a major point and I would say is dishonoring and disrespecting the God they say they worship.

/ / It’s impossible to follow Jesus and avoid Christians.

And second, / / this is what Jesus says will be our greatest witness to those who do not yet believe. John 13:34-35, / / “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

So working together, learning to get along, learning what it means to be the body of Christ, I would say it is more of the mission than we’ve given it credit for.

And quite honestly, however long that takes is worth it.

I was out for coffee with a Pastor friend of mine the other day and I said this series is really challenging me because I haven’t see this operating in a church before, where people are dedicated to knowing what their spiritual gifts are and the church as a whole, everyone, is invested in using those gifts to encourage each other. I don’t even know how this works. That’s part of the figuring it out side of things. What does it mean to understand we are all gifted, and work toward having place for those gifts to be utilized?

And it’s incredible that God actually made it so that we need the gifts to figure out the gifts. Here I am teaching about the gifts because I have one of the gifts. But the administrators, leaders, apostolic thinkers, and all the parts working together are what we need to actually get all of the parts working together!

Kelley and I have often said to each other, speaking of some part of the church maybe we haven’t started doing yet, or wish we were doing better, “How do we make this work?” And sometimes we are left with, “I don’t know, we don’t have the right person for that yet.”

I was having a conversation once with someone who had been coming to our church for a while and they were telling me how we weren’t doing enough of one particular area. I could tell his intentions were really good. I could tell his desire was to see those things happening but I could also tell that he was passionate about it, and so I said, “Sounds like this is something you should really be investing in?”

Sometimes we see what should be happening because God is giving us a nudge toward being involved in that very thing.

I had a problem this past week I needed some wisdom and counsel on and I leaned on my buddy Tommy, and let me tell you, I’m so glad I did. Because I was really burdened by what I had to work through and he was able to give me reassurance and clarity on the way to move forward - which gave me the confidence to do what I needed to do. We need each other.

So, moving forward through these gifts. If you haven’t been here I encourage you, go back and catch up. This is really good information that isn’t just knowledge, but is opportunity to grab a hold of something God wants to do in and through you. That’s what’s so exciting about the Spiritual Gifts is that they are the Gifts of the Spirit. It is the incredible, powerful Spirit of God at work in and through each of us to build up and encourage the body of Christ! That’s pretty amazing.

In the last few weeks we’ve looked at 2 of the 5 categories we are breaking these up into. 21 gifts in total.

Two weeks ago we looked at the / / Leadership / Organizational gifts which were Administration, Apostle, Leadership and Pastor.

And last week we looked at the / / Speaking / Communicating gifts which were Evangelism, Exhortation, Prophecy and Teaching.

This week let’s look at / / Inspiration / Insight gifts, which are Discernment, Knowledge, Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues, Wisdom / Counsel.

We call these Inspiration or Insight gifts because there is a, let’s say, obvious connection between the direction and leading of the Holy Spirit in these. And we’ve talked about this a little bit, but whether the gifts we’re looking at lean more toward natural ability and some toward supernatural ability, they are all Spiritual, meaning, we are meant to operate in the spirit with the gifts, or at the very minimum recognize that the Spirit of God is at work in and through us about these gifts. And I would add to that, / / The Spiritual Gifts will expand, grow and have more impact in and through your life as you engage more with the Holy Spirit!

So, Inspiration / Insight gifts, we operate out of a seemingly natural intuition, that has the backing of the Holy Spirit in it. Let’s get into it.

/ / Speaking in Tongues & Interpretation of Tongues

These might be two of the strangest and most misunderstood or hotly contested gifts of the spirit that the church has. Because there are two ways to look at it.

First, we will look at these two together for obvious reasons because one without the other just doesn’t make sense. Without a language being spoken there is no need to interpret, and without an interpreter present there is no need to speak in a language no one else can understand.

The confusing, or contested part of these gifts is the question, / / Does speaking in tongues include more than just what we consider to be actual languages?

Does the gift of speaking in tongues include languages that don’t exist? Or what we might call “heavenly languages” - languages we don’t speak on earth? That might sound strange if you’ve never been in a church that’s talked like that, and I hope I won’t confuse you more, but I’ll do my best to explain things here and as always, if you feel a leaning toward these things, there is a world of resources out there and I am more than happy to help you find something that might help in your own personal study.

So, these gifts are only mentioned in just one of the scriptures as a gift of the spirit, but then is talked about in other places. 1 Corinthians 12:10 says, / / Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.

Sounds pretty straight forward, doesn’t it?

Acts 2 is a great example of this gift as the Spirit of God moves on the early believers. The disciples have been waiting in Jerusalem as Jesus told them to, and the Holy Spirit suddenly shows up in dramatic fashion, and scripture says the people in the city hear something going on, a commotion, and so they all come running, and Acts 2:7-8 says, / / They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! …And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.

Well this is an open invitation at this point, Peter gets up and says, “I’ll tell you what it means. Remember the prophet Joel said that in the last days God would pour out his spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters will prophesy? This is it. This is what he was talked about. And remember Jesus, the one who y’all just crucified? Well this is because of him. He was truly the Messiah, he didn’t stay dead, we all saw him alive, raised from the dead, and now we’ve received the Holy Spirit of God.”

They’re all like, “How do fix this? What do we do next?”

Peter says in Acts 2:38-39, / / “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away - all who have been called by the Lord our God.”

Bamm, 3,000 people added to the church that day.

Why? Because they heard someone who they knew didn’t speak their language, speaking in their language by the power of the Holy Spirit. That was what convinced them. So cool.

Jeff Carver says that this gift can also be called, and some believe more accurately called the gift of languages. And the reason for that is that the greek word used for this gift “speaking in unknown languages” or what some translations simply say as “tongues” is / / glossa, which means two things, first, it means “the tongue”, the physical part of your body, and second it means / / “a tongue” the language or dialect used by a particular people distinct from that of other nations.

I think some of the confusion has come from Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 14:2, / / For if you have the ability to speak in tongues, you will be talking only to God, since people won’t be able to understand you. You will be speaking by the power of the Spirit, but it will all be mysterious.

And also in 1 Corinthians 13:1 he says, / / ...if I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

It’s 1 Corinthians 14 that Paul really talks about it, and he says in vs 18, / / I thank God that I speak in tongues more than any of you. But in a church meeting I would rather speak five understandable words to help others than ten thousand words in an unknown language.

Where does the confusion come from? Because when I read all of that I think it sounds pretty clear it’s talking about actual languages that I don’t talk, but suddenly can, only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But, how many of you grew up in a charismatic or Pentecostal church where speaking in tongues, and I dare say this, but here goes, simply sounded like gibberish?

I shared a few weeks ago that when I was a child we were at a church that a guest speaker came in and prayed for people to receive the Holy Spirit, and then we all were standing at the front of the church waiting to be able to speak in these holy languages that no one could understand to confirm that we were now filled with the Spirit. It didn’t make sense to me, and nothing happened and I went back to my seat with this feeling of, “Better luck next time, sorry you didn’t get the Spirit today because you didn’t talk gibberish...”

Now, I am going to be very candid here. I understand that I am a very analytical person. I want things to make sense. I study things and research things so they do make sense. And tongues as it was taught to me as a child did not and still does not make sense. And I am 100% open to be 100% wrong on this one.

I also know, and I say this cautiously, but that without interpretation nothing is proven and brings no glory to God.

Paul says as much, 1 Corinthians 14:13-14, / / So anyone who speaks in tongues should pray also for the ability to interpret what has been said. For if I pray in tongues, my spirit is praying, but I don’t understand what I am saying.

Kelley and I were in a meeting a bunch of years ago, and I don’t say this to put anyone down, but this has got to be one of the greatest examples I have ever seen of how this can go wrong. We were in a side room where all the speakers and worship people for the event were hanging out between meetings. And there was a gentleman there who told us that he had the gift of speaking in other languages, that when the Spirit of God moved on him he could speak Hebrew… And we thought, “wow, that’s pretty amazing” and then he got up and walked away and a lady who was at the table with us, who we knew speaks Hebrew said, “Ya, that guy hasn’t said a single recognizable word in Hebrew.”

Without interpretation the gift of speaking in tongues, or other languages, simply does not function with purpose.

I would also say that this is different than not having words to say when I am in my own personal prayer time with God, where the bible says with deep groanings and wailings I pour out my heart to God. I’ve had those moments too, where I just don’t know how to express what I am feeling toward God. But to Paul’s point, that’s to God, and serves no purpose to man.

Now, where this gift would be super cool, and I have not seen this personally, but imagine a scenario like Acts 2. Imagine being in a part of Miami where they speak a language you don’t and you suddenly, by divine inspiration, the power of the Holy Spirit moving in and through you, you begin to speak the language. Maybe that’s Spanish for me… sure, super simple for some of you because you speak it, but if I suddenly am fluidly talking in Spanish and making sense and declaring the good things of God, you know that the Holy Spirit is at work in and through me.

So you’re in an ethnically diverse part of town and don’t speak the language and suddenly you’re speaking to someone and they look at you and go, “How do you know that?” And you say, “I think God just kind of did that in and through me.” And they say, “I woke up this morning asking myself if I could go on living, and told God to give me a sign that he cared…and here you are.”

That would be pretty amazing, wouldn’t it?

Now, to give a brief definition of Interpretation of tongues, that would be the opposite, Either someone speaking in tongues, glorifying God, and someone else understands, and neither of you speak the language, or independent of it, you understand someone you shouldn’t.

Kelley and I know a guy who was down in South America at a very large crusade, thousands of people there in this stadium, and he was on stage speaking, and suddenly he knew that the interpreter was not translating what he was saying correctly. He wasn’t just getting it wrong, he was changing it and changing the message. And suddenly our friend could understand. And he turned to the interpreter, who was not a follower of Jesus, and said, “I know you’re not translating what I’m saying, tell everyone you got it wrong and tell them the truth.” The guy turns his life over to Jesus. Of course he does. He knows this guy can’t speak his language, that’s why he’s there in the first place. God moving in and through you to either speak a language you don’t speak, or understand a language you don’t understand.

Now, I want you to hear me on this. Because I am not an authority on this and can’t speak to the breadth of it. I can not say with any certainty or not that anything outside of that is or is not the Spirit of God. Maybe what I grew up being told is absolutely true. I’m ok with that. And regardless of whether I personally saw fruit from it or not does not change what is or is not and whether God can or cannot use something.

I also recognize that God honors people’s hearts WAY more than their perfection. If you intend to worship God, and speak a bunch of stuff that isn’t a real language, God still hears the worship coming out of your heart and honors it. I 100% believe that. And it may just feel like to you that talking was divine in some way shape or form because it was part of your connecting to God in that moment. I can personally attest to that. Where I have had moments, whether caught up in the Spirit of God in the moment, or caught up in the emotion of the moment, I am speaking in most definitely an unknown string of sounds… and yet I knew God was with me. My brain fought it the whole way through, Because it made no logical sense, but God honored the posture of my heart.

I also know that we don’t know it all yet. And I’m certainly ok with that. So I won’t say it is or is not that, I will simply say that for sure, 100% it is speaking and interpreting actual languages for the sake of someone else encountering the goodness and love of God.

And this is a great segue into our next Inspirational / Insight gift:

/ / Discernment

Listed only in 1 Corinthians 12:10, but really talked about all through the bible, / / He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit.

And this is separate from the gifts of languages and interpretation of languages because they are in the next phrase.

I’ve said this often, and I would say increasingly more and more, I think discernment is the #1 lacking gift in the body of Christ.

The ESV says this,/ / ..to another the ability to distinguish between spirits...

So, discernment, or distinguishing, the greek word is / / diakrisis and it means a judicial estimation, literally making a judgement call. You are the one judging the situation because you see what’s really going on.

The english definition of / / discernment is the ability to judge well.

Peter Wagner says this, / / The gift of discerning (or discernment) of spirits is to know with assurance whether certain behaviors purported to be of God are in reality divine, human or satanic [demonic].

Let me tell you, it would be really really good if we had a revival in the church of people who by the power of the Spirit of God would say, “Look at this, this is of God. Now look at this, this is human emotion coming through, and look at this, this is the enemies work in the earth trying to distract, confuse and distort what God wants to do.”

Why do we need this? Because Jesus said in Matthew 7:15, / / “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves.”

He also says in John 10:1-2, 14, 10, / / “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep… I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me… The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

Who’s calling you?

Who’s speaking to this generation?

There are a lot of people out there. The media, the news, politicians, actors, sports superstars, and even preachers in pulpits saying things are of God that are not.

1 John 4:1 says, / / …do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.

Current example: We live in a time where there is a very real agenda to turn the definition of love into whatever makes us feel good, removing from love the fact that scripture says God is love. There is an agenda to make love a god, rather than God being love. And when you don’t see that. When you don’t test what is being called ‘love’ against what the truth of God is on love, you can be deceived into thinking that if it’s love, it must be of God.

But just because I want something to be true, because I like it, I enjoy it, and my sinful flesh even craves it, doesn’t ever mean it was of God. It simply means humanity desires that which is not of God and we must have discernment to see what is of God and what is not of God.

And the enemy is working overtime to convince people of what he wants. Don’t be fooled. 1 Peter 5:8 says, / / Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

And maybe you’ve sat there and said, “How do others not see this?” So, let me ask you, “Do you think maybe God’s given you a spirit of discernment?” And if so, then maybe he’s given that to you to aid in the encouragement and help of other believers who don’t yet see.

But here’s what I will caution any of us who may have the spiritual gift of discernment, knowing something isn’t of God does not give you automatic place to tell someone they are wrong, AND more importantly, without the right knowledge, tact and wisdom, your words run the risk of causing more harm than good.

I think there are some people with really great gifts of discernment out there, but they just haven’t been trained to properly use them, and it ends up coming out in memes or arguments or simply just sitting back and being frustrated with what’s going on around them because they can see it while others can’t. And for lack of submitting that discernment to the Spirit of God their voice has either been silenced or used in a way that doesn’t produce the fruit God intended.

I’ll finish this thought with an encouragement from Hebrews 5:12-14, talking about spiritual maturity. / / You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

Through training have the skill...

If you more easily see what is wrong and what is clearly misleading, and evil, in the face of what is good and what is of God, then give everything you have to training in how to use that gift well to keep others from the pitfalls of the enemy.

We could say this, / / The gift of discernment needs discernment to be used most effectively!

We all know the sign in the airports, if you see something, say something. But as Paul says, I can have all the knowledge and special powers in the world, but if I don’t speak in love, I have nothing.

Speaking of having all knowledge...

/ / Knowledge

All 5 of the gifts we’re looking at this morning are in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, and this one is in verse 8, …to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge.

For this we need to look at a couple of the words here:

Message & Knowledge

The ESV says it this way, / / …and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit...

/ / utterance, or message from the NLT is the word ‘logos’ and is most often translated simply as “word”. It’s used a lot - 330 times in NT scriptures and it basically means the entire communication process. Be that a written word, a spoken word, some sort of communication, and the receiving of it.

So, what this verse is saying is that / / by way of communication, the Spirit of God is delivering knowledge to someone.

The second word we need to look at is knowledge, or the greek word / / gnosis and literally means the act of knowing.

So, this is by the Holy Spirit’s power working in and through you, you know something that you wouldn’t normally know. Basically, God’s giving you a heads up.

This is where we really see this inspiration or insight at play.

How many know that 10 people can read the same thing and walk away with 10 different understandings. The same 10 people can hear the same thing, and pick up on something different. Some will walk away with zero understanding, while others seem to hear or see something that the rest of us go, “Really, you pulled all of that from that?”

Divine inspiration. You know something we don’t know.

This is a gift to work with information in a way that others might not be able to, to see things others might not see, to understand things others might not understand. And the reason that is so important is because it also lends itself to explaining those things.

Peter Wagner says the gift of knowledge is / / the special ability to discover, accumulate, analyze and clarify information and ideas that are pertinent to the growth and well-being of the Body of Christ.

Some people are just simply gifted at working through the information. And when you match that with one of the communication gifts, a gift of teaching let’s say, then that knowledge gets handed down to others in a way that makes sense. And that’s not always the case, I’ve met people that understand things for themselves, but their delivery of that information isn’t always the best. And that takes work.

Jeff Carver says this gift is / / to bring about understanding and to inform the church or individual believers.

This is more than a natural ability to know stuff, or being smart, but I would also suggest that the spirit works in people of that natural ability to develop the spiritual gift of knowledge. Having information isn’t always helpful, but knowing when and how to deliver that information is absolutely a gift.

Now, this might be the most important part of this gift. Proverbs 1:7 says, / / Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

I would suggest these three things are absolutely crucial when it comes to the spiritual gift of knowledge.

/ / It starts with the fear of the Lord.

By that we mean honor and reverence for God. Not being afraid of, but being in awe of.

/ / You have to want to learn.

Humility is key, you have to want to learn. You can’t walk into the situation and say, “Well I think I’ve got the gift of knowledge, so I’m good.” No, you have to want to be constantly learning, taking in knowledge and growing in understanding as the Spirit of God works in and through you. Reading the rest of Proverbs 1 really shows that. Pay attention, listen, learn, so you can understand.

/ / You have to be led by the Spirit.

Knowledge is only as good as the moment it is needed. Ever met someone that seems to be full of useless information? Sure, they have the knowledge, but people are asking what the point is? Proverbs says, let those with understanding receive guidance… why? Because God wants to lead you to where this information is most needed.

As a side note in some charismatic and pentecostal circles there is what people call a “word of knowledge” and that is an in the moment, by the revelation of the Spirit, some sort of insight into a situation. You’ll see it mostly in times of ministry where someone will say, “I have a word of knowledge, I feel like God showed me there’s someone here who is dealing with pain in their right knee.” As an example. Sure enough, there’s someone with pain in their right knee, they come forward and because God has already highlighted this through the Spirit, faith is already built up in the room. There’s now an anticipation for God to work a miracle. And I’ve seen this happen countless times, it’s absolutely wonderful.

Peter Wagner says, and I would 100% agree with this notion, is that the word of knowledge is not the gift of knowledge, but actually is the gift of prophecy - You are hearing the word of God for someone in that moment.

The gift of knowledge is a working in someone through the spirit to learn, understand, research, dig into and really go after the deep things of God with the intent to be a relevant source of that knowledge for the body of Christ.

/ / Wisdom

Similar to the gift of knowledge, Proverbs 9:10 says, / / Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.

I think these often work together, but not always in the same person. But, I do believe they work best together. Knowledge and wisdom. It’s interesting that Proverbs 1:7 says, Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

and Proverbs 9:10 says fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom, and then references knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgement.

So, what’s the difference? I would say it is this:

/ / Knowledge is knowing something.

Wisdom is knowing when and how to use that knowledge.

I think wisdom is knowledge with experience. Wisdom is knowledge at the right time, the right word for the right moment. Wisdom is less concerned with the information and more concerned with how to work through it.

When you read the Proverbs there’s so much about the Wise person and the Foolish person, and it seems it’s more about how they do things than what they know.

That’s why this gift is also called the Spiritual gift of Counsel. Peter Wagner says this is / / to know the mind of the Holy Spirit in such a way as to receive insight into how given knowledge may best be applied to specific needs arising in the Body of Christ.

Right off the bat I’ll add that sometimes people will say they have a “word of Wisdom” similar to what I described as a “Word of Knowledge” and me and Peter Wagner agree, again this is the gift of prophecy at work.

Jeff Carver explains the word for wisdom in 1 Corinthians 12:8, / / To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; is the word / / sophia and refers to the intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments which results in holy and upright living.

Basically what he’s saying is this is knowing something for the purpose of your life being lived for God. What does Jesus say, “What’s the point of gaining the whole world and losing your soul. What’s worth more than your soul?”

Go for it, be smart, have all the knowledge, but let that knowledge lead you to a life lived for Christ!

And now think of that in the context of the gift of counsel. What’s the best counsel? It’s turning someone back to God, right?

If Proverbs 9:10 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

and Psalm 111:10 says the same, / / Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom. All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.

Then there is a leading back to the awe and reverence of God that rights our paths and brings us back into focus.

I was just reading this past week in 2 Kings 22, the nation of Judah has not been doing well in regards to following the word of God. And the high priest, while sorting through things in the temple stumbles across the book of the law… he gives it to the king’s secretary, who brings it to King Josiah and reads it to him. The King’s heart sinks. He realizes all that they have not been doing to honor God, they humble themselves and repent. He has the book of the law read to the entire nations elders and then goes on a mission to destroy every false god, every idol, every thing of worship that was not of God. Completely ridding the land of anything that would stand in between them and God.

That is the fear of the Lord. That is the awe of who He is. It is knowledge that leads to repentance that leads to right living. As I’ve been reading through the OT this year one of the things that has stuck out to me the most is there’s really 3 different types of kings in Israel and Judah.

There’s the kings who did evil in the eyes of God, whether that was more evil, or just regular type evil.

Then there were those who did what was right in the eyes of God, but did NOT remove the evil, the idols, the altars to other gods etc… and so in leaving them there the people continued to use them.

And then there were very very few who not only did what was right, followed God’s commands for themselves, but they righteously destroy and remove all traces of any other form of worship from the nation and as the leader of the people bring all of them back to focusing on God.

It’s hit me so hard. How do we live our lives? Do we remove all traces of what draws us away from God? Do we give ourselves the best shot possible at following the things of God, or do we play the edge? Do we ride the line between full devotion to God and maybe giving in to our own way just a little bit? How far are we willing to go to honor God? Where is the fear of the Lord in our lives?

Is it about works and about perfection? No, but if we truly fear the Lord, and again, I don’t mean afraid of, but I mean revere him as God of our lives, wouldn’t we want to give him all?

That’s true wisdom. Not just knowing what is right, but following it. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t use it, implement it into your life, through wisdom, apply understanding, then it will do you no good.

I’ll finish this with a thought from Jeff Carver: The Holy Spirit gives some the spiritual gift of wisdom to not only impart the truth and understanding to believers, but to invoke a response of holiness and worship lived out in the world and amongst God’s people. Wisdom doesn’t end with knowledge, but is expressed in transformed hearts and lives. Those with the gift of wisdom have a deep understanding of the holiness of God and the lack of holiness in their own hearts. They can recognize this in others a swell and have the compassion and boldness to share that truth with them. They are able to take from their own life experiences and share what God has taught them through those things. They can easily recognize where a decision or action may lead and can warn against those that may be harmful or unfruitful. They can often see through the confusion of a situation and can give direction that would help an individual or group obtain a God-glorifying goal. The church needs those with the spiritual gift of wisdom to guide her through uncertain or difficult times.

So, the inspirational or insight gifts. Having been given something of knowledge, wisdom, discernment and understanding that others may not have, for the benefit of the whole body!