Launch Your Ministry Chapter 7 of 27
<-Chapter 6 Chapter 8-> Return to FulltextThe Doorway to the Gifts
Condensed Version (Completed)
When you accepted Jesus as your Savior and were born again, the Holy Spirit came to live inside your spirit forever. But it takes more to fully experience His power.
You need to walk through a doorway that is known as the baptism or anointing of the Holy Spirit. Until you do this, you cannot fully function in these gifts and fruits.
Until you have received that anointing and learned to flow in it, these things cannot come to life within you.
How do you go about getting this Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the anointing that you need? Firstly you should really want it.
Earnest Desire
The Scripture says we must earnestly desire these things. God never imposes Himself on us in any way. So if you want to have the power of the Holy Spirit, you have to reach out and receive it.
You will find that all of these are enabled by one very important quality, which is love. There is a Scripture that brings these two together. Paul said,
Follow after (pursue, chase) love, and then earnestly desire spiritual gifts.
The desire that is needed must go beyond normal desire. Earnest desire is what we call a 'core desire'; a passion that gets you to the point where you say,
"I've got to have it! I want it now and I will not give up until I get it."
That is the kind of desire that moves God. God will not force something on you that you do not want. He never imposes His will on us.
Experience
If the baptism of the Holy Spirit opens the door to the Gifts of the Spirit, then what opens the door to the Fruit of the Spirit? A little thing called experience.
The Fruit of the Spirit comes about when you learn to do what the Bible calls 'walking in the Spirit'. That word walking is a bit like soldiers marching together in rank. The key is that you must walk 'in step'.
To experience the Fruit of the Spirit you must come to a place where you learn to walk in step with the Holy Spirit. That means you must be able to hear His instructions and then obey those instructions.
When you first accept Jesus as your Savior you are not even aware that the Holy Spirit is there because you have not heard His voice yet. It takes experience and spiritual growth to learn this.
The Picture of a Dove
All of this comes from the Holy Spirit. And one of the most common pictures of the Holy Spirit is the picture of a dove.
Here is a picture of dove, with its wings outstretched. There are nine feathers on each of the wings. Think of the one wing as being the nine Gifts of the Spirit and the other the nine Fruits of the Spirit.
Example: Two Wings of the Dove
For a dove to fly correctly it needs both the wings. Some people seem to think that we do not need both the Gifts and the Fruit of the Spirit.
Some think that the most important thing is the Gifts, the power and the glory. They get hyped up on the power and the anointing; the glory, the miraculous, and the supernatural.
Then you have another group who are afraid of the Gifts of the Spirit. They teach that the Gifts of the Spirit have been done away with and are not needed anymore.
They say that what we really need is the Fruit of the Spirit, and they want to do away with the power. They are simply flapping on the other wing of the dove.
But God wants us to have both of these together. Both wings should be flapping together for you to have the full power of the Spirit manifesting in and through you.
Seven Feathers for Ministry
If you look at the nine feathers on each side, you will find that in both cases there are two feathers that you can use mostly for yourself. The other seven you use more for other people.
The number seven is God's perfect number. So why did God choose nine and only reserve seven of those for ministry? Perhaps because He was kind enough to let us use two of them for ourselves.
Some people like to experience the awesome 'highs' that we get when the Holy Spirit comes on us, because this is what the Holy Spirit does.
But I want you to see that each of these two things takes place through a different kind of operation and relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit.
We will look next in more detail at these two different relationships or experiences with the Holy Spirit
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