I Have Been Painting

I have been painting the living room, dining room and hallway, so far. That kind of thing tends to cause delays between posts. The fact is I had decided the painting was a priority and if the blog had to wait, the blog had to wait. I did not expect to be writing this post tonight. I know some of you think the blog is more important than painting the house. Truth be told I would like to think the blog is more important than painting the house too. It certainly is a whole lot more enjoyable. I really do not even like painting, but it is one of those things husbands have to do sometimes. We moved into this house nine and a half years ago and most of the interior has not been repainted at all. The carpet was in pretty bad shape when we moved in. We decided we needed new flooring, but of course the walls needed to be painted first. That is what I have been doing.

As I was saying, I had decided the blog would just have to wait. Now I do not know if this happens to you or not, but sometimes the Holy Spirit sneaks up on me in the middle of some other activity. I neglected to mention that along with deciding the blog would have to wait, I had made up my mind to keep my spiritual ears open, you know, just in case the Holy Spirit had anything to say to me. (It just occurred to me that might be the topic for the next post. I could almost do two in the same week if it is. It has been awhile since I did two in the same week, I think.) As I mentioned, He did have something to say to me. What can I do? Obviously, whatever He says. This time it is kind of interesting. I am going to do my best to explain it to you all.

To make it simple, the Holy Spirit said, "Write." What would you do? I asked what I was supposed to write. No answer. But, that bumped my spirit into action. This is sort of how that went.

(Holy Spirit) Write.

(me) Write what?

(my spirit upon hearing that) Sometimes we need to operate by faith. We do not need to know what we are doing before we do it. That is why many people fail to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They will not get started.

I had one of my men ask me about speaking in tongues the other day. He was not sure how to phrase the question, but I correctly surmised he wanted to know why he had not been able to speak in tongues since he had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I gave him my stock answer. More often than not, the problem is we are waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak through us rather than doing the speaking ourselves. He said nothing was coming to mind except random syllables. Hello? Last time I checked languages are formed from random syllables put together in intelligible ways. The thing about speaking in tongues is that it is the Holy Spirit who is putting the syllables together. They do not have to make sense to us, or to anyone else listening to us and, in fact, they usually do not. Just start speaking those random syllables and let the Holy Spirit turn them into whatever it is He wants to say.

That is fine for tongues, but what about the other gifts? I am so glad you asked. We know that when we exercise a charismatic gift of speaking in tongues in public there needs to be someone present who can then exercise the corresponding gift of the interpretation of tongues. (1 Corinthians 14:27-28) Since the person exercising the gift of tongues has to operate in faith by speaking out random syllables, it only makes sense the person interpreting the message would also have to use some measure of faith and start speaking words, trusting the Holy Spirit to form them into a message intelligible to the people present. How about the gifts of prophecy, or word of knowledge, or word of wisdom? What if it is time to exercise a gift of healing? You get the point.

It looks like I have written something like a blog entry when I had not planned to. I know I am awesome, but of course it is not me. The Holy Spirit gives the gifts. You probably did not know one of the charismatic gifts is blogging. It is listed right there in 1 Corinthians 12. Check out verse 8. "for to one is given the word of wisdom (blogging) through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge (blogging) through the same Spirit," Maybe neither of those fit. Maybe both of them do. Maybe there are more of you out there who could exercise spiritual gifts, but for whatever reason just have not done it. I am pretty sure I have said this before. If not it might be printed on the box that last pair of sneakers came in. Just do it!