By Titto Thomas

CAUTION: As I mentioned in the first post, gifts are very essential to us. We at Imrah consider the spiritual gifts to be a foundational topic. When we are young in Christ, we usually depend on God through the faith of others. And while there is nothing wrong with that, God does not want you to stay in that place forever. He wants you to grow and become mature (so that you may help others). Many times, people seek those with the gift of knowledge or wisdom, wanting to know what to do next, or the will of God for some major decision. Some people do it all their lives. When they hear that a minister with such a gift is in town, they will run after them. My friends we need to come to a point where we are receiving such things from the Lord himself. You should be asking for this gift for yourself to help others come to maturity. I hope you see my point.

Having been introduced to the gifts of the Holy Spirit by Paul, let us now examine each of them in-depth. In this post, we will look at the revelatory gifts: the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, and the discernment of spirits. These gifts are caused by revelation or supernatural illumination. Let us consider each gift separately:

Word of Wisdom

Notice that this gift is called the “word of wisdom”. It is not called “words of wisdom”, which implies that God is not revealing all of His wisdom. This gift is given for specific instances where wisdom concerning a matter is needed. The gift instructs us on how to deal with a particular situation. To better understand this gift, all we need to do is to look at Jesus’ ministry on earth. Consider these two instances: one in which a prostitute was brought to Jesus (in John 8:3-11), and the other being when the Pharisees tried to entangle Jesus with talk on taxes (in Matthew 22:15-22). In both of cases, we find the Pharisees (the spiritual leaders of the time) attempting to trap Jesus in His words using complex questions. But through the wisdom of God, Jesus saw through their traps and was able to answer, leaving them astonished and amazed. 

Word of Knowledge

A Hindu friend of mine went to church one day. The guest speaker that day was a preacher from Sudan. It was the guest preacher’s first visit to India, and he hardly knew any English. But at the end of the service, he asked the huge congregation if there was anyone who hadn’t met with the Lord. No one moved. Suddenly he pointed to my friend who was sitting silently at the back and said “my son, I know you haven’t. If you come up here, I will pray for you.” This is an example of the word of knowledge gift. Jesus used this same gift to get Zacchaeus off the tree in Luke 19:2-5. The word of knowledge is a revelatory gift that God gives us for His glory. This gift can manifest in many different forms, from spiritual insight to finding your car keys. Most people say that the word of knowledge is followed by a word of wisdom, and that the word of wisdom tells us how to handle the word of knowledge.

Spiritual Discernment (the Discernment of Spirits)

In Acts 16:16-18, we find a very peculiar story. A slave girl follows Paul and Silas around proclaiming them to be messengers of the Most High. After just a casual glance at 1 Corinthians 12:3 and as I explained in the last post, we can be led to believe that it was the Holy Spirit at work here–but it was not. After many days, Paul gets annoyed and  casts the fortune-telling spirit out of her. From this passage we can extrapolate an idea of how gifts work. Gifts are an inherent part of you. Paul didn’t sit, pray and seek counsel from the Lord about it, but rather he sensed that the spirit was not from God. I have heard about this gift being used during interpretation of tongues, when the interpreter was saying something untrue. I have also experienced it when wrong doctrines were being taught.

Spiritual discernment is also necessary during teaching. If someone asks you a question, in the middle of your class, there can be two possibilities, either that person is legitimately in need of an answer, or it is a distraction from the devil. A person with this gift can discern what that person needs and act accordingly for the glory of God.

Take note that the topic here is not the discernment of a spirit, but that of “spirits”. This implies that God gives this gifting to distinguish between spirits and help know when demonic activity is involved. 

Similar to what I mentioned in the gift of knowledge, God does not want you to be looking for some person with this gifting all your life. Rather, He wants you to be so acquainted with Him so that our experience with Him causes us to identify everything that is not of Him. Again, this is the most ideal of circumstances, and it takes many years to reach that. I myself am not there yet, but I need this gift.

God gives these gifts to be used. If any of you have hidden a spiritual gift under your bed, I encourage you to start using these mighty weapons. In 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul encourages Timothy to fan into flame the gift that was inside him. It is an analogy that is well fitting. As you know, if a fire is left unattended, the flames will die down and reduce themselves to burning embers. But the embers could be fanned and the fire revived with a little effort. If you have kept your gift dormant, I encourage you to fan it back into a flame.

Hopefully, this article will leave you with a basic understanding of revelatory gifts. But in closing, these gifts are not meant to be talked about, but are rather meant to be used. A deeper understanding will only come through experience. In the next post, Sidharth will take you into the verbal gifts.