Introduction

Paul wrote two letters to a large church at Corinth that was plagued by problems. They are the same kinds of problems that exist in assemblies today, perhaps because we are all human, descendants from Adam.

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

He struggled with the same issues we do and he overcame them, only to miserably fail time after time again until he received a revelation—“I am a dead man”.

He wrote extensively about that in Romans seven and eight and Galatians 5. He told a pastor named Timothy to flee youthful lusts.
When certain things confront us—flee from them! Speak to them. Put them to death and allow the Spirit of God to develop the life of Christ in us. This cultivates the fruit of the Spirit. Please take note that the Spirit is capitalized. 

We cannot create it. What we create ourselves are works of the flesh. His fruit is produced as we abide in the vine and Jesus spoke of that in John chapter fifteen.

I live in an area that is famous for its wine grapes. Farmers train and prune the vines every season, often cutting back to what looks like dead wood before training the new growth to ensure the best quality crop. Our part is to allow the Master Vintner to do that to us and it sometimes means a cutting way of the flesh life. It is not always easy. Neither is it a religious exercise in that we become legalistic or adopt certain codes of conduct depending on our church environments. When the Spirit of the Lord is at work within us, He makes us more like Jesus.

In his letter to the Corinthians, one of the issues he addressed was the way they misused and abused the Gifts of the Spirit as it is with many other matters. Paul told them how to “do it right”.

Testimony

At this point, it may be good to share part of my personal testimony to lead into the part about love.

I was raised in the Church of England in their better days, but never knew the Lord and that is a prevalent condition in many church groups today, regardless of their respective denominations.

When Jesus ministered to the woman at the well, He told her that she did not know what real worship meant.

She was “worshiping” God—but did not “know” God and I was like that despite taking part in all the church ordinances. My family was very involved in church life and my father was what was called the church warden. Many priests became friends of the family and after I met the Lord, the Bishop and I developed a great working relationship as he was keen on healing and very open to the Holy Spirit.

I also had some interesting meetings with a Catholic Bishop in his private inner office. After our last meeting, we prayed for each other and I laid my hands on him which is most unusual, especially as I am a protestant and we are “not supposed to do that”.

Despite my background, I had numerous unanswered questions. My reasoning was that if God never changed and His word abides forever and if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, what is recorded in the bible should still be happening today.

It seemed as if God had changed, that the bible was a mystery and that the miracles of Jesus ceased to exist as cessationists tell us.

I was crying out for reality. I did not know it yet, but I wanted a God I could touch and one who would touch me, who was as close to me as my very breath, not someone remote and distant.

When I married and started a family, I purchased my first home and my younger son, Gary, one of two, started school. He got sick and I had to admit him to hospital. The doctors wanted a consultation and showed me X-rays of his left hip. They pointed out shadows on the hip bone and told me that it was bone decay.

The bone was rotting and they had no answers. 

Newfound friends kept asking me to come to their church and I kept avoiding it. I make it a point not to do that. Instead, I think we should introduce people to the Lord and let Him work those things out with them.

They were holding a month long crusade at the time and kept asking me to the meetings, but I kept declining.

When I told them about Gary, they told me that they believed in Divine healing and would I like them to pray for him. I quickly agreed.

By the end of the week, Gary came home. Jesus had healed him and that—got my attention.

Such things seem to me to be how it happened in Jesus’ ministry and in the early church. We do not worship the “signs” but the sign giver, who at one time told people that if they did not believe what he said to at least take notice of what He did.

I decided to attend a meeting. It was the very last meeting held by that itinerant evangelist. He later became the senior minister of a large church in another city and we kept in touch for a long time afterwards. As they were singing the opening hymn and the chorus for the first time, a brilliant blaze of light appeared in the meeting and it seemed to bore right through me, just as it did to Paul. That was my first encounter with Jesus and there have been several since. It was September first, 1968 at 7:30PM.

Things got interesting after that. I started attending that church one week later and during the meeting, I heard people talking in foreign languages and in English, later discovering that they were exercising two of the Gifts of the Spirit that Paul taught about. They have not ceased, despite cessationist teachings they say otherwise.

God had started to answer my early cries for help and understanding and when I opened my brand new bible, it started to “open up” to me.

No one had yet taught me a thing about such matters. No one taught me their denominational doctrines as is the usual case. I had asked the Lord for the truth and nothing but the truth, asking Him to show me from His word what was happening.

This is not some strange doctrine, because Jesus told us—by way of promise that the Holy Spirit would do those things, which He does! 

Test Everything

As I often say, at the necessary risk of repeating myself, do not believe everyone, including me, because there are many voices around vying for your attention. Jesus and Paul told us that deception would be rife which it is, so test the spirits. Open up your own bible, ask the Lord to speak truth only and do what the church at Thessalonica did to see if Paul was telling the truth. See  Acts 17:11. It does not matter who it is—test them.

I did that and discovered that the Gifts of the Spirit are very real and still very necessary today. When I started to read about them and came to the place where Paul told us to covet the best gifts, I did not know what the best gifts were. The answer is very detailed, but the Lord told me that the best gift is the most appropriate one for a given situation and circumstance.

As a simple example, if someone is very ill, healing may be required—a miracle of healing as happened to Gary. A word of encouragement, such as a prophecy would most likely not be appropriate at that time.

Those who advocate that the gifts are no longer required often argue about the “best gift” and usually say that the best gift is love—but they do not know really the word of God. Love is not a gift—it is a fruit of the Spirit.

The more we spend time with the Lord and sit at His feet, the more we can become more like Him and we should know by now that God is love.

The debates often revolve around speaking in tongues and that should not be surprising, considering the power of speech.

God spoke and everything in existence came into being and is upheld by the word of His power. He has also given us His word that is designed in such a manner that it must be spoken. There is much to learn about the power of words and it should not be surprising to discover that the devil has done everything he can to undermine it and nullify it. For such reasons, speaking in tongues has been attacked as much as it has and it need not be so.

Paul mentioned this as follows:

But, brothers, I do not want you to go on being ignorant about the things of the Spirit.
You know that when you were pagans, no matter how you felt you were being led, you were being led astray to idols, which can’t speak at all. Therefore, I want to make it clear to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, “Yeshua is cursed!” and no one can say, “Yeshua is Lord,” except by the Ruach HaKodesh. 
Now there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit gives them.
Also there are different ways of serving, but it is the same Lord being served.
And there are different modes of working, but it is the same God working them all in everyone.
Moreover, to each person is given the particular manifestation of the Spirit that will be for the common good.
To one, through the Spirit, is given a word of wisdom; to another, a word of knowledge, in accordance with the same Spirit; to another, faith, by the same Spirit; and to another, gifts of healing, by the one Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the ability to judge between spirits; to another, the ability to speak in different kinds of tongues; and to yet another, the ability to interpret tongues. One and the same Spirit is at work in all these things, distributing to each person as he chooses.  1 Corinthians 12:1-11 emphasis mine

God does not want us to be misinformed. You will see how often speech is involved. One of the gifts is a word of knowledge. It is not “knowledge”, but a word that reveals things. The word of wisdom is not natural wisdom, but a word that imparts something that is necessary at certain times for certain things. I have a very in-depth study on the Gifts of the Spirit and will be more than happy to share it with you on request, or look at that page on my web site.

Why speaking in tongues has been attacked so much is a mystery until we look more closely into it. Perhaps one reason is that it enables us to “tap into” God’s dimension of the Spirit. For example, consider your own prayer life. Is it really effective? Are you sure that God both hears—and answers your prayers?

Often times we feel as if we do not know what to say when praying.

Similar questions arise concerning worship. Can you honestly say that God accepts your worship? Do you know how? The woman at the well was worshiping God, but the Lord told her that she did not know what she was doing. When He told her about her life in what I believe was a word of knowledge, she then realized who He was and ran to tell everyone. True manifestation of these gifts ultimately reveals Jesus.

Let us look at Paul again. In Romans chapter eight, he said (notice the capitalization of Spirit):

...For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the matters of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the matters of the Spirit.
For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.
Because the mind of the flesh is enmity towards Elohim, for it does not subject itself to  the Torah of Elohim, neither indeed is it able, and those who are in the flesh are unable to please Elohim.
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of Elohim dwells in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Messiah, this one is not His. Romans 8:5-9

There is no comparison to functioning in the Spirit and in the flesh—the natural intellectual nature of man.

From what was stated, unless we operate in the Spirit, we can never please God. I am not sure about you, but I am not smart enough or “know enough” to know what to do without the impartation of the Spirit. I do not know how to pray. I do not know how to read scripture without His help, because He inspired the words. I do not know how to live without sinning without His help and in the tenor of this message, I do not know and am not able to love because God is love. His life residing in me gives me what I need to be able to do that. If you read that entire chapter and count how often Paul mentions the word Spirit. I think that you would agree with what I said.

Putting it to work

Let’s put theory into practice and a good place to start is with prayer. We once developed a prayer manual, based on scripture and our faith declarations until the Lord told us to stop doing that.

Such things are good tools of course, but as He explained, we created a list of things that He had not told us personally. We quoted the well known “prosperity scriptures” or ““healing verses” often used, but in essence copied what other preachers were doing, not with what the Lord was telling us.

Your call of God is different to mine.

Although there are principles in the word of God that never change, the application may vary simply because we are all different. I know a pastor in Pakistan and others in India, the Philippines, several countries in Africa, some in Nepal, some in Europe and others in North America. Our cultures are different. Our food is different. We drive on different sides of the road. The laws of the land vary. Therefore, what “works for me” might not “work for you” and this is why each of us needs to precisely ascertain the specific mind and will of God for ourselves.

I have been on Benny Hinn’s platform several times in his better days (not that I am endorsing him) and seen certain things happening, but I cannot and will not try to copy him because it won’t work for me. I’ve witnessed the Lord’s healing miracles including raising of the dead in my ministry, but they happened in different ways.

One day many years ago, I developed a sore on my left forearm that would not heal. I “claimed the healing promises”, made my declarations of faith, anointed myself with oil, spoke to that thing, laid hands on myself and all but stood on my head over it, but it never went away. I saw an ad in a local newsletter placed there by a skin clinic and called the number. The doctor answered and told me to come to him immediately.

As I replaced the handset on my telephone, the Lord told me that He was pleased I did that.

The doctor operated and removed a Carcinoma. I later had a Melanoma removed from my cheek. If I had not done that, it would have been fatal.

When I asked the Lord about this, He said that He wanted me to speak to that doctor and that would never have happened otherwise.

I believe in miracles and have witnessed many, but have learned not to preempt anything with God.

I have recently had more excisions and did not concern myself, knowing that there must be a reason for this. As a result, I have created a great working relationship with another doctor whose family is from Seventh Day Adventist background. His brother in law is a pastor.

He is Australian / Chinese. We conversed much and I was able to talk with him not to him, about the things of God.

If I had not been open to the leading of the Lord and maintained my “religious affirmations”, we would never have met.

I am sharing this to illustrate that you must seek the Lord for yourself about His mind and will on every matter.

As for prayer, we can “follow the script” and still miss the mark, or keep doing what worked once and think it will happen like that every time

It doesn’t always work like that. Repetition does not necessarily give the answers. Jesus spoke about that in a negative sense. 

Therefore when we do not know how to pray or what to pray about, the best thing we can do is to stop trying and struggling and allow the one who know best to do all that for us. I speak of course of the Holy Spirit.

This is where speaking in tongues comes in. We can stop trying to fathom it out, stop praying with own natural and limited understanding and allow the Spirit to pray through us, in “His language”. It bypasses our intellect and He prays what really works. Romans 8:26-30 states:

...the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words. God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings yet he also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, his holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny.
So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together to fit into God’s perfect plan of bringing good into our lives, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose.
For he knew all about us before we were born and he destined us from the beginning to share the likeness of his Son. This means the Son is the oldest among a vast family of brothers and sisters who will become just like him.
Having determined our destiny ahead of time, he called us to himself and transferred his perfect righteousness to everyone he called. And those who possess his perfect righteousness he co-glorified with his Son! Romans 8:26-30

Interestingly, afterwards, we can sometimes start speaking in our own native tongue what was spoken in the Spirit. That was what Paul spoke about in 1 Corinthians 14:14-15

...if I pray in a tongue, my spirit does pray, but my mind is unproductive.
So, what about it? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind;
I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. Emphasis mine.

There are numerous valid expressions and benefits such as:

We speak to God and do not curse Him or do anything untoward.

Paul said that we can pray in the Spirit AND pray with the understanding. Often times our prayer life falters because we do not know what to pray about or how to pray.

We worship in the Spirit. For example one couple who befriended me approached me after service one Sunday and the wife was a first generation Australian born Greek woman. She was excited and a little overawed, saying that she overheard me talking to God in perfect fluent classical Greek telling Him how wonderful He is. I had not learned Greek.
My mentor as a young believer was a Chinese man also born in Australia and he told me that I sometimes spoke in a Chinese dialect. He understood many of the words, telling me that I was talking to the Lord.
One of the men in my first church went on vacation and took in several countries including Russia.
He told me that he heard me speaking in what sounded Russian. I can cite other instances.

We do not speak gibberish, but in the tongues or languages of man and of angels.

We edify ourselves.

We can pray effectively by praying in the spirit (tongues) AND in our own native language.

We can gain greater understanding, or receive “revelation” when speaking in tongues. The understanding can then follow.

Paul told us that he spoke in tongues “more than ye all”. 

I shared that to lay a foundation. If you look at what Paul said you may see familiar sounding words.

glōssais tōn anthrōpōn kai tōn angelōn.

Speech is not neutral. As stated, God created everything by speaking and He places His words in human mouths through prophecy.

Then Adonai put out his hand and touched my mouth, and Adonai said to me, “There! I have put my words in your mouth. Jeremiah 1:9.

Genuine prophets do not speak of their own volition, only doing so when the Holy Spirit motivates them.

God first revealed Himself to Israel through an audible voice rather than a visible form or a written text as we see  in Deuteronomy 4:12. His spoken word was later written, when inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Berakhah (blessing) is spoken. Curse is spoken. Covenant promises are spoken aloud, ratified through an exchange of words and then with corresponding actions.

In Numbers 6:22-27, the priestly blessing, when the priest pronounces that blessing, God’s Name is placed on the people.

What this means is that the Divine Name is transmitted through speech in such a way that it does much more than describing relationship—it enacts it, or activates it.

When angels stand in His presence and speak, it is a sacred language that is directed God-wards and thus holy. When we speak in tongues, we can enter into a spirit dimension as if we are talking similarly.

When Paul was talking about the gifts, he emphasized that we are to operate in–and by love. Without being motivated by that love, we can then sound like clanging bells and jarring symbols. The words are then chalkos ēchōn (hollow and irritating, resonating bronze, and kymbalon alalazon, a clashing cymbal.

These are not instruments of melody. They produce volume, not music. Much modern worship is volume but not genuine worship.

Paul’s point is that spiritual speech is not dangerous, but when devoid of love it becomes noise.

The expression remains, but is devoid of meaning.

One form of spiritual authority is prophecy, the insight into mysteries, knowledge, or faith capable of reshaping reality itself, prized in Jewish and early Christian communities as signs of closeness to God. Mysteries (mystēria) are something that God reveals in His time, hidden, then unveiled. To understand mysteries is to be entrusted with divine disclosure. He does not “hide things” from us but for us.
Prophecy is not prediction, but faithful transmission of God’s word. Knowledge, in biblical terms, is never mere information; it is relational and moral and is tied to responsibility.

The Love Factor

Paul then spoke about faith that is capable of “removing mountains.” A “mountain mover” was regarded as someone of extraordinary interpretive or spiritual authority, but he said that all of that was as nothing if not motivated by love.

...But do not have love, I am nothing

It was not “I fall short” or “have nothing”—but “I am nothing”. That was not false humility. It was a statement of fact. To the Jewish mind, wisdom, knowledge and faith are never self-validating. They are there to serve what is called Hesed. It refers to covenantal love that is expressed through faithfulness, justice, mercy and commitment. Without love, the best gifts have no weight to them. They are hollow. Love gives real faith its reality.

There is a deeply rooted assumption that cost automatically proves love, but sacrifice is never self-justifying. Israel was repeatedly reminded that religious observances, offerings, fasting and even suffering do not substitute for covenant faithfulness. God does not measure devotion by how much is surrendered or done—but by what animates or motivates the person. Love therefore in this sense is not intensity, but orientation. Sacrifice without love can still be driven by pride, fear, obligation, or the need to be seen. It can look holy but remain empty.

Paul’s claim is not that sacrifice is meaningless, but that without love, it fails to participate in God’s life-giving economy.

Speech, knowledge, faith and even sacrifice can all exist without love and when they do, they produce noise, emptiness and loss.

According to Paul:

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 1 Corinthians 13:4

In the Greek it is: hē agapē makrothymei, chrēsteuetai (ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται).

The words are verbs, not adjectives. This means that love does not possess patience—it practices it.

It does not contain kindness—it enacts it. From the Hebrew perspective, love is never an internal state. Love is what you do. God’s covenant love ύύύύύύύύύ“ (hesed) is revealed through sustained action, remaining faithful, bearing with failure and continuing to give life even when the relationship strains.

It is a fact of life that relationships can be strained, even in “perfect” marriages. I emphasized “perfect” because a husband and a wife are two different personalities. They are indeed one flesh in Gods eyes, which is why a marriage should be ordained by God. Living together is not God’s plan, but it is now being more acceptable today, as it goes against God’s plan for us.

An increasing number of church attenders live together without marriage and, despite any emotional bond that can develop, including the arrival of children. God dislikes it.

He deems it to be none other than pure lust and His full blessing cannot come. It is a real problem today.

Marriage is a symbol of the love expression between Jesus and His church and this is one reason why marriage has been attacked by the enemy.

Paul spoke of this love in Ephesians 5, saying:

...be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes. And don’t live foolishly for then you will have discernment to fully understand God’s will. And don’t get drunk with wine, which is rebellion; instead be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  And your hearts will overflow with a joyful song to the Lord Jehovah. Keep speaking to each other with words of Scripture, singing the Psalms with praises and spontaneous songs given by the Spirit!  Always give thanks to Father God for every person  he brings into your life in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And out of your reverence for Christ be supportive of each other in love.
For wives, this means being supportive to your husbands like you are tenderly devoted to our Lord, for the husband provides leadership for the wife, just as Christ provides leadership for his church, as the Savior and Reviver  of the body.
In the same way the church is devoted to Christ, let the wives be devoted to their husbands in everything. 
And to the husbands, you are to demonstrate love for your wives with the same tender devotion that Christ demonstrated to us, his bride.
For he died for us, sacrificing himself to make us holy and pure, cleansing us through the showering of the pure water of the Word of God. All that he does in us is designed to make us a mature church for his pleasure, until we become a source of praise to him—glorious and radiant, beautiful and holy, without fault or flaw. 
Husbands have the obligation of loving and caring for their wives the same way they love and care for their own bodies, for to love your wife is to love your own self. No one abuses his own body, but pampers it—serving and satisfying its needs. That’s exactly what Christ does for his church! He serves and satisfies us  as members of his body. 
For this reason a man is to leave his father and his mother and lovingly hold to his wife, since the two have become joined as one flesh. Marriage is the beautiful design of the Almighty, a great and sacred mystery—meant to be a vivid example of Christ and his church.
 So every married man should be gracious to his wife just as he is gracious to himself. And every wife should be tenderly devoted to her husband. Ephesians 5:15-33 

By building a marriage on such lines, those differences between individual personalities can be turned around. When my wife and I first met, we were friends only. There was no intimacy but mutual respect.
Our first date was a picnic in a park and the Lord told me even then, “you look after her and treat her right”.
He told her not to never hurt me. We had no intention of getting married.She was a widow and I was a preacher getting over a divorce, wondering what happened. The Lord had to do some healing there.

A lot transpired but in simple terms the Lord commanded us to get married, telling us both separately and simultaneously that we should have met decades before. We had married the wrong people! When we told her pastor, he arranged a compatibility test in a multi choice questionnaire in his office. When the results returned, he said that if he had not been sitting with us to supervise, we could have cheated as the answers were 99.9% identical. We differed slightly in one question only. He arranged our wedding and everything that the Lord told us has happened.

Have we had differences of opinions? Of course, because we are human, but those differences are so minor and trivial, they are not worth mentioning. We are so much alike it is uncanny. The love relationship Jesus desires for His Church is infinitely more and better.
He came here to express God’s love to us even whilst we were not worth it. Paul said in Romans 5:8:

... But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly!

In Romans 13, Paul told us to owe nothing to anyone—but love.

It is all but impossible to love others the way God loves us. His love is perfect. His love is total and complete. Ours is finite and clouded by the sin principle we all inherited from Adam. The Second Adam came to bring restoration and completeness.

He has given us the ability and hopefully the desire to love as God loves and this is only possible when we abide in the vine.

If God is love and we abide in the vine, we draw sustenance from that vine. When we “draw from the sap” of the vine, we produce that fruit and that fruit is love. A fruit does not need to do anything else. When it grows and draws sustenance from the hidden roots, the kind of fruit is eventually revealed. It may start from a small shoot, then a bud emerges, then opens up into a pretty flower. The flower is pollinated and eventually becomes something recognizable and desirable—the fruit.

Often times we think that the more we do and the better we serve, we gain God’s favor, but He has already demonstrated that favor. 

Jesus told us very plainly that we are known by the fruit we produce. This is why I believe that love is not a gift.

Love comes by abiding in the vine. The fruit we produce is the fruit of the Spirit, but there is something we must do to allow it to develop and grow. To bring this to a conclusion, let us see what that is.

... Above all these, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together perfectly; and let the shalom which comes from the Messiah be your heart’s decision-maker, for this is why you were called to be part of a single Body. 
And be thankful—let the Word of the Messiah, in all its richness, live in you, as you teach and counsel each other in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude to God in your hearts.
That is, everything you do or say, do in the name of the Lord Yeshua, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Colossians 3:14-17

There is something we have to do to allow this love to grow and develop. We must clothe ourselves with love and we must let certain things happen as Paul revealed. Love therefore is not a gift, but something we learn and experience; share and reveal and live...

I trust this has been inspirational.

Robert