Testimonies
Romans 12 & 1 Corinthians 12
These two chapters in the New Testament stand out as beacons concerning the challenge topic of week 47. At least that’s what I hope it does among our Faith-Writers-Family. They are a clear guideline for what we can expect when we see the Holy Spirit operating among the believers in the body of Jesus Christ, His Church through the ages past until this very day.
Personally, I had and still have the privilege to see the Spirit working through spiritual gifts as well as gifts of service.
The spiritual atmosphere changed in our family when I was a young boy. My mother had some spiritual gifts from the wrong side - she was a clairvoyant, practiced telepathy and mesmerism and thought it was a gift of God. It was accepted by the pastor of our church as such. But the Lord saw her heart and directed her eventually to a church meeting where the gifts of the Holy Spirit were operating. She saw the difference and deliberately made a decision to stop. She was eventually filled the Holy Spirit and received several other gifts - the gift of speaking in tongues, the gift of discernment and wisdom. She became a woman of prayer and a spiritual mother to me and others.
One day our family doctor came to see her and asked her to pray with him for a lady patient who was dying of cancer but had lost her faith. They knelt together and prayed. The Lord showed her that it had to do with a spirit of unbelief! She took authority and rebuked this spirit to leave this lady. The doctor phoned back later and said: this spirit had left her and she was able to go Home in peace.
Once she prayed for a better place to live and felt that the Lord had answered her petition, but it would not happen that year. Things moved quickly though, and another house was found but the lady said, “We are not allowed to move this year.” Some impossible hurdles were moved and we packed up in January of the next year!
While still a young believer, I received several times words of encouragement via other servants of God which literally came to fulfillment until this very day. He gave me a desire in my heart to serve Him and gave me a helpmate with it.
We have been serving on many different levels in His body and we feel very privileged. Many a time we have been helped and encouraged too in God’s own specific and timely ways. The very fact that we are living and serving Him in Israel is a miracle in itself. God’s good hand has been upon us and we see it around us in the lives of our friends, the church we belong to and the organization we work for. He opens doors and sometimes closes doors; He gives or led us and others to give, sometimes to the very penny.
Yes, I have seen the gifts of healing and deliverance, I have heard words of great timely wisdom and discernment, speaking and singing in tongues and proper interpretation. I have listened to great teachings – I love it and appreciate this gift very much. One day a colleague of mine said in a devotional meeting, “We need to live the life of faith to the very end.” This is so very true!
Yes, I have seen great servants of the Lord, which does not always mean that they have great spectacular ministries. I love to read about men and women in the past and the present, which have put their lives on the line for God.
Recently the Lord directed us to the Faith-Writers-Family and again we see how many of us have gifts we never thought we had, that there is power and inspiration in the written word. A new world with windows of opportunity has been thrown wide open! Let us serve one another with pure, sound and healthy words, our hearts overflowing with a good theme, our thoughts like the pen of a ready writer. Psalm 45:1 (Paraphrase mine.)
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