Most of the gifts of the Holy Spirit look familiar. We see them every day - people administrating, teaching, sharing hospitality, showing compassion, and serving. When choosing a life vocation the ideal is to wind up in a profession that integrates one’s gifts with one’s work.
A teacher, for example, may or may not have the gift of teaching. Yet when a professional teacher has the spiritual gift of teaching it is a win-win for everyone: the students really grasp the content in a deep way and the teacher is fulfilled in his or her chosen profession.
While many of us may believe in the more so-called “dynamic” gifts of the spirit, few of us have seen these gifts in action. Many of us have seen these gifts used in abusive or satirical situations. There are abuses with all the gifts. With the revelatory gifts, however, there seems to be more a a stigma involved. A Mad-TV episode will much more readily take a shot at a faith healer than a person who sits around all day crunching numbers. A bit of that stigma has crept into the church as well. We need to be cautious not to through the baby out with the bath-water!
So let’s spend some time taking a close look at the operation of the revelatory gifts - specifically how they work. We’ll look at a few myths associated with them and try to even them out on a level plane with the other gifts of the Spirit.
The revelatory gifts are called, “revelatory,” because their operation depends solely on information that is given, or “revealed,” by God in order for the gift to work. Revelatory gifts include words of knowledge, visions, dreams, prophecy, the interpretation of tongues, wisdom, and discernment of spirits. People with a revelatory gift(s) often tend to have complementary, or accompanying, gifts in the areas of healing, miracles, and exorcism. God works through the revelatory gifts in powerful ways to get under what is seen, to address the heart of the matter - whether it be a nation, a group of people, or an individual.
Let’s take a look at two myths commonly generated about the revelatory gifts of the Spirit.
Myth #1: People who have revelatory gifts are superhuman. They have it all together. Rainbows follow them wherever they go.
While I have always believed that God reveals insight, visions, directions, and other supernatural directives to people, I have always also believed that the person receiving these directives had to be some sort of super-Christian. You know, the kind of person who fasts 40 days twice a year, never watches T.V., and never dances.
But that isn’t true. Like all spiritual gifts – indeed, even as the Grace of God itself – we are working within the realm of gifts, unmerited favor, and nothing that we can strive to attain or even deserve. (That’s why highly gifted people can do equally highly creepy things.) Of course we can grieve that Spirit to point where we become dull and hard of hearing. But, the gifts of God are irrevocable and have a reputation of leaking through us, even in spite of our humanity.
It’s very easy to see a person who is praying for the sick, for example, as a superhuman kind of guy. There he is, eyes shining, sharing words of knowledge that no one else in the world could ever know, laying hands on you and filling you with divine electricity – after which you from the floor and return home literally shaking in your shoes. You stare at yourself in the mirror because you can’t believe you’re the same person you were when you left earlier that evening for the service. You float into your bedroom and fall to the bed into a deep, peaceful slumber that night, knowing you’ve had a life-changing encounter with the Almighty God of the Universe.
Days pass and you see this same Divine Faith Healer – no, let’s just say it this way...“You see this guy who has the gift of healing” at Target. At once you want to worship him. But, as you rub your blurry eyes to see the real picture, you see a much different man. There he is, hunched over the counter at the register, shirt half-way hanging out of his torn blue jeans, patting down his pockets looking for his reading glasses, fumbling around with loose change which is clanging on the floor and rolling in every conceivable corner of the room - all the while holding up a long line of frustrated shoppers.
What’s with that? Wouldn’t you think someone you linked you with the Almighty God of the Universe and spoke into the very threads of your spiritual DNA would have known how much money his shopping would cost and would have somehow supernaturally arranged his cash-flow before he even walked into the Target department store?!!
No. Not really. Not really at all.
Remember: A person’s personalty, skills, and mental state - can be quite different from that same person’s spiritual gift. Contrary to popular belief, people who operate in the revelatory gifts do not have a corner on the spiritual market. They are just ordinary people like you and me. Sure, they’ve been graced with gifts that perhaps seem more extravagant than the others, but they are using their gifts in the same proportion of faith that someone else may have when using their gifts, say the gift of helps, for example.
Let that level the field.
Myth #2: A person with revelatory gifts can look through your vulnerable eyes, peer into the deepest chambers of your soul, and know everything about you - past, present, and future. They know your secret sins. They know about that time in high school when you and whats-his-name locked braces at Walden Pond. And, then, there was that other thing...
They know everything.
This is another common stigma associated with these guys - akin to Myth #1. It sounds something like this, “If this mighty man of God is so accurate in addressing this particular issue in my life, then they must know every particular issue in my life.” This is easy to believe - as God shoots for the bulls-eye every time - and hits it. People gifted in revelation speak with such pinpointed, prophetic, accuracy that it is easy to assume they know all about everything.
Again: simply not true.
When I minister in the revelatory gifts, for example, it’s not like I look into the eyes of the victim and do perform a Spock-like mind-meld of the spiritual interior of the person – as if I was a mechanic looking over the inside of an engine – and then, after filtering though all the gunk, determine what’s best and move in to pinpoint the precise cause of the problem. It’s nothing like that at all.
This how it works: God will show me a picture of something - one thing - one thing only. I share with the person what I think I’m getting, and we pray. It’s always very limited. It’s the only thing seen. There are times I need to really look at the vision for a while and seek to decipher and sort of piece together what it all means before I say anything. Other times, I get something and share what I’m getting and - in the process of speaking what I’m getting - the picture fills in and the interpretation of the revelation sort of forms on my lips as I’m describing it in faith.
God rarely violates spiritual integrity and preciousness of one of His children - even when it would be easy to do so. If he does, it’s usually done in private. He’s not out to embarrass us, only to heal, encourage, deliver, and bless us.
In this chapter we’ve looked at two myths regarding those who have revelatory gifts and a bit on how the gifts work in a ministry situation. Next chapter we’ll talk a bit more about how a person discerns what God is doing or saying in any particular ministry situation.
For now we need to understand that revelatory gifts are no greater, or lesser, than any of the other gifts of the Spirit. There are no more, or no less, “extravagant” gifts of the Spirit. All gifts are equal in footing and require proportional amounts of faith to do them. We’ve seen that people who can have life-changing gifts fumble around at cash registers and even struggle with their own issues. Some even have their laundry aired on prime time television.
After all, they are only human.
Next chapter we talk about the business of “how a person can discern what God is doing or saying in any particular ministry situation.”
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