Relevant Today 4 (final part)

The Relevance of Words of Knowledge for Today’s Church

I want to just brush on three more gifts of the Holy Spirit – the gifts of Words of Knowledge or Revelation, Faith, and Wisdom. I suppose that, if there is one gift of the Holy Spirit about which next to nothing is known then Words of Knowledge or Revelation has to be it. Most people don’t even recognise it as a gift and even less have actually seen it or experienced it in operation. Yet, most of us have probably exercised it ourselves or seen it exercised without ever realising what was happening. That’s because, when we hear it, it never even occurs to us how the person speaking came by that knowledge. Only the person on the receiving end knows that the speaker couldn’t or shouldn’t ever have known it.

So what is it exactly?

A Word of Knowledge is a revealing word of information from God usually right into the heart of an issue. For an example, how on earth did Peter know Ananias and Sapphira had lied about the money they brought into the church and placed at the feet of the apostles? Simple, he received a word of knowledge from the Lord. In a less devastating example, when a prophet makes a statement that he or she cannot possibly have known beforehand – how do they know it? In a healing meeting, when the leader calls for ‘someone who has been deaf in their right ear all their life’ – how do they know about that?

They don’t make ‘lucky’ guesses. It is a word of revelation knowledge given to them by the Holy Spirit. It is usually given that the hearer at whom it is directed may be convinced that he or she is indeed hearing from God.

What about the other gifts – the gift of faith and the gift of wisdom – how do they fit in? In Hebrews 11:1, Paul says of faith, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. “ We all have faith to one degree or another but sometimes our own faith is simply not enough. How many times would we agree with the prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.” The gift of faith is when the Lord sometimes gives us greater faith for something than we have within our own circumstance. It is very aptly called a Gift of Faith.

The gift of Wisdom is very similar. In James 1:5 we read that, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” So we can ask for wisdom and it will be given to us. Remember Solomon? He asked for wisdom and the Lord gave him much wisdom – and other great gifts too because he had had the wisdom to ask for more wisdom. I am not saying that will happen to you and I when we ask because in all probability we will ask with the wrong motives. However we will still get some wisdom, I believe.

There you have, in essence, my personal take on the relevance of gifts of the Spirit in today’s church. Quite simply – they are necessary to our walk with God.