I'm glad to be here too. Not every church I've known matches an emphasis on spiritual gifts with clear-headed and thoughtful leadership.
Perhaps the Corinthian church had developed an unhealthy obsession with speaking in tounges leading to chaotic worship meetings. So Paul urges them to look to the other gifts.
I too am glad to be here and thankful that you are as well. And like you, I am blessed to have found a spirit-filled church whose leadership "gets it right!"
I grew up in a denominational church. For most of my life, I must admit that my pursuit of the Lord and of righteousness was less than half-hearted. Unfortunately I was in a church filled with "good" and decent folks who preached and taught from God's Word and who at least openly claimed love the Lord. Unfortunately, the church/denomination we were in were cessationists who simply would not believe that God would still empower believers through His Holy Spirit the same way He did 2000 years ago. They taught that that kind of power and that those "miraculous gifts" were only for the Apostles and that somehow that Holy Ghost Power had ceased to work the same way in and through believers today. They hinged this belief on (the misinterpretation of) one scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. "
Everything they believed regarding spiritual gifts hinged on that one phrase "when the
perfect comes."
Sadly, the church I attended, and so many still today, have become essentially powerless (spiritually speaking) because of believing a misinterpretation of that one simple phrase. What is the perfect? Even as a young man, half-heartedly seeking God, I just KNEW something was wrong. God wouldn't have given us His Holy Spirit and the power and authority that came with His baptism and indwelling and then 100 years later, just severed that access that the Holy Ghost gave. Why would He? The Gospel still needed to be spread. Churches still needed to be planted and built up. The enemy was/is still on the prowl seeking whom he may devour. That power....that access to the Gifts.....would still be needed.....until Jesus returned. Even I saw that.....felt that....believed that.
Sitting in that dead church....I felt that we were "missing something" important. I didn't know at the time what it was. I read God's Word and wanted to believe that God was still a healer......that miracles were still possible.....that people could still be miraculously delivered.....that God's people still had the authority in Jesus' Name to cast out spirits and to pray with power and authority as He had promised.
Long story short, for many years I continued on with my very comfortable "relationship" with the Lord....which really wasn't a relationship at all. My faith had not been activated......I said I believed....but really didn't have much belief that God could do anything at all to visibly change the lives of people....because I didn't see it happening....even in church....among those who were supposed to be believers. All I saw was a bunch of people who "went through the motions" of "church" and who said all the "right" things, but sadly their ACTIONS never quite lined up with what they SAID they believed about God and His Holy Spirit. It left me disheartened and confused. I'd prayed the "sinners prayer" and "asked Jesus into my heart" and was even told by everyone in church that I was "saved". I should've been "good" but I wasn't.
It took God humbling me greatly through a series of very traumatic events in my life before I became broken enough to FULLY trust Him and to TRULY seek Him and to FULLY take Him at His Word. In my broken, hopeless, and surrendered state I poured out my wretched heart before God and prayed like I'd never prayed before. I said "God, I am desperate and hopeless without You. If You are there and You are who You say You are and You will do what Your Word says you will do....find me now, and rescue me. Lead me to something higher and deeper. I want nothing else but to be right with You!" Over and over I wept, and grieved, and prayed this....alone...in the still of the night. In the midst of brokenness and turmoil 4 years ago, I found my way to a Pentecostal Church....or rather, God put a series of people and events into place that LED me there. It was there I heard a man of God preach his heart out. It was there I was pierced in my heart and convicted about what I needed to do. It was there I witnessed people (not all there, but enough) holding nothing back from God in their prayer and in their praise and worship of Him. It was there, in that Pentecostal church where I first felt the overwhelming presence and power of God's Holy Spirit....moving, working, convicting. It was there, where I realized that I'd leaned much to heavily on my "own understanding" of what the Bible said and of how God worked. It was there that I realized that I hadn't yet fully surrendered to God's will nor had I been fully obedient to His commands. It was there I saw people actually healed and instantly delivered from the bonds of affliction at the altar. It was there where I realized that Jesus didn't leave His church powerless after all. And my life has not been the same.
Long-er story short, I repented, was baptized in Jesus' name (fully submersed) and was filled with the Holy Ghost. I came up out of the water praising Him and speaking in a language I didn't understand. I knew, in that moment, that it wasn't me who was speaking, but the Spirit who was speaking through me....because I'd finally surrender my heart...and with it, that "unruly member'....my tongue, to God. I couldn't believe it.....me....raised in a Cessationist church...the biggest skeptic ever of those "crazy tongue-talkers!" But it was beautiful, and it was amazing.....and it forever changed me.
Since yielding to what I knew along God wanted me to do, my spiritual eyes have been opened to so much. God's Word has been illuminated to me in so many new, refreshing ways, and I began to see the Holy Spirit working in ways that I'd never thought possible before.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm still no better than anyone else. If there is anything good in me, it is only because of Jesus and I give Him the gory for it! I'm just a sinner saved by grace, and I'm still just a "work in progress"......but by the grace of God, I have lived long enough to truly get right with Him. And if I seem to be boasting, then like Paul, "let me boast in my weakness" and let me boast about the goodness and mercy of God.
There is STILL power in the Holy Spirit. I have seen it. I have experienced it. God's Holy Spirit STILL works through faithful believers in miraculous ways....I have seen it and experienced it. So to summarize: yes the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are still for the church today. Because many don't see them working in their churches is not an indictment of the Holy Spirit as much as it is an indictment of the state of belief within the churches today.
If one reads a bit further in that passage of scripture I referenced above, you will see that Paul wasn't saying what many have sadly come to believe he was saying.
What is "
the perfect"? If we read God's word through spiritual eyes, and pray for discernment, we clearly see what it is. Paul tells us:
"For now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12
What do you think he means by "face to face"? I think if we are honest with ourselves, we know he is talking about seeing Jesus when He returns "face to face" (not the completion of biblical canon as many would have us wrongly believe).
"...but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” - Jesus from Acts 1:8
