As I grew in my faith from my healing experience and gained a deeper understanding in how the Holy Spirit interacts with people. I became aware that as a believer in Jesus Christ I have access to a divine dimension that can be utilized to be a blessing to others. The purpose of this blessings is so that others would have an encounter with God’s love and receive salvation and a new life in Christ. I would let go of the misunderstanding that the Holy Spirit is like some kind of genie ready to do my personal bidding.
This misconception of the Holy Spirit lacks spiritual maturity and biblical truth. So, if you currently have this concept of the Holy Spirit, simply focus your attention on others when you receive a word from the Lord, insight into a scripture passage, etc. The other thing that is hard to do is share the experience with others. When the Holy Spirit uses us to be a blessing, we tend to want to share the experience with others. However, this really takes the blessing from God and places it onto ourselves. So, keep the experience between you, God and the person receiving the blessing. The only time this is different is in a church service setting. I choose to handle these situations by letting people know that it is the Holy Spirit working through me and thanking them for their gratitude.
Since my healing the Holy Spirit has used me to speak prophetic words to others. These prophetic words are not like the Prophets in the Old Testament where they foretold future events. Instead, prophecy is more a word of encouragement, divine insight without knowing someone’s situation or need, as well as being able to utilize faith and discernment (or other spiritual gifts) to help bring someone into an encounter with God. Many times these experiences with the Holy Spirit are during spiritual battle situations.
It is very important as a Christian that we maintain a close relationship with God through daily scripture study, prayer and an occassional fast. Their is no one method that works as long as you leave the scripture study learning something new or having a better understanding of God, you sense the presence of God during prayer time and your relationship with God grows through your time of fasting. God is greater and more powerful then the method we use to connect with Him. However, this can also be dangerous. In our experience of developing our relationship with God we can accidentally bring other spiritual experiences which breakdown our connection with God. This is why studying the Bible is so important. We learn from scripture how to keep our relationship holy and pure.
With the growing pressure within the United States to be tolerant and excepting of other religions can come the idea of syncretism. Syncretism is the converging of multiple religious beliefs. I first learned about this in a Worldviews course taught by Jim Raymo and Steve Eliason (Bethany Global University instructors). They helped us to see how we have already, as a nation, have blended into our Christian worship experience beliefs of Hinduism, New Age, Biblical Christianity as well as other forms of religion.
This same religious syncretism is apart of Brazilian culture as well as other countries around the world. As our family is prepares for a Missions Candidacy course through Bethany International, we will learn how to effectively proclaim the love of Jesus to a culture that is connected to a variety of other religions. We will experience spiritual strongholds and need to be constantly lead by the Holy Spirit. As we serve the people we will need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit so that the dark places will radiate with the Light of Christ. Continue to pray as we continue to prepare to serve in Jesus name!
Written by Erik Afton
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