It seems like gibberish to the non-believer and this is
something worthy to take note of. God
does promise His people certain gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the most powerful and
meaningful promises in the entirety of scripture. And it is important we realize what receiving
one of these gifts means to us as unique individuals. First, a gift from God is not the same thing
as being granted superman-style abilities.
Herein is the biggest obstacle believers face, and the reason why so few
are given these important gifts – we forget they are NOT ours – they are truly
gifts, given to use for the glory of God, NOT for our glory.
Too many of us, would perform or use a gift, and immediately
turn to our neighbor and say “look what I did” – emphasis on “I”. We do it all the time with what we have
already been given. We claim our
victories over evil and temptation as “ours” instead of giving God ALL the credit
as He alone deserves. We claim our faith
as “ours” instead of recognizing even faith is a gift from God. We have a history of taking credit for every
religious benefit we discover from serving God, so how can we be trusted with
more? We do the same with our strengths
of character and body. We believe the
traits we excel at to be a result of our hard work, or genetic predisposition,
rather than ponder whether they too were gifts from God.
We make self-centered statements like “promising” to do things
(as if we could predict or control the future to allow us to fulfill our
commitments). Instead we are told simply
let your “yes” mean “yes” and your “no” mean “no”. We make vain statements like saying “I would
NEVER do that.” This is a statement that
works out to a virtual guarantee we in fact WILL do the very thing we
disavowed. It is not in our power to use
words like NEVER. Even when we are
referring to ourselves and our actions, this word is not something we can
control or predict. Our ideas change
over time, our actions reflect them. I
think God teaches us important lessons, reminding us of our use of the word
NEVER in our lives. It always comes back
to haunt us, to remind us of what humility is.
If we could learn to put away our selves, and constantly
offer God ALL the praise and ALL the glory for the good in our lives, we would
then be ready to accept the responsibility of the gifts God wants to bestow on
use through His Holy Spirit. These gifts
are for the building up of His church.
The actual “gift of tongues” was considered to be one of the least of
the gifts we are given. It was designed
to accommodate the multi-lingual culture of the early Christian church. There were people who spoke Hebrew, Greek,
Aramaic, Egyptian, and Roman just to name a few, on a regular basis in and
around Jerusalem. In order for everyone
to understand what the early followers of Christ were saying, they were offered
the “gift of tongues” (the ability to speak in a single language, and be
understood in many at once). Sometimes a
person “interpreted” sermons for large crowds without ever having studied the
language (this too was a variation of this gift). The idea of speaking gibberish was not what
was intended for the use of this gift.
Heaven’s language is effectively universal. It is the ability to have your audible sounds
interpreted perfectly in your mind regardless of whether the spoken words
reflect English, Latin, Hebrew, or an unknown language.
But the ability to communicate was considered low on the
scale of gifts given by God. To some
(i.e. those who have the character, skills, interests, humility, and
preparedness) He gives the ability to prophesy, to teach, to discern between
truth and error, to comfort, to heal.
All these gifts are waiting for the believer who prepares himself by
giving up all credit for his strengths, giving over total control to God,
yielding the idea of self-gratification to that of service for others. These gifts while supernatural, do not ever
cancel the counsel given in the written word, nor do they negate the character
of God. To employ them with the intent
to do harm, or for self gratification, would be only to employ evil as the
source. Yet the promise remains.
We do not need to attempt to imitate the actions of others
who appear euphoric or who seem to speak random gibberish. This is not the goal of the servant of
God. Our goal is to serve others, to
love others, to accept and forgive others – even those who wish us harm. To this end we are promised gifts of the
Spirit of God. It is not for us to turn
our focus inward, and spend our time seeking to be happy and joyful in our
worship, by entertaining a euphoric state of nonsense. Rather let our euphoria come in the rejoicing
over the sinner who repents and comes home.
Let our joy ring out loud as we learn to forgive those in our family who
have wronged us. Forgive those who have
hurt us. Let our forgiveness bring us
true freedom, and become happy in our worship as we realize the joys of these
much more simple gifts. Perhaps as we
embrace humility further we will learn even more the true power of our God…
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