BY GREG CRUM

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.” I Corinthians 12:1

God does not want us to be ignorant of, misinformed about, or uninformed concerning how His Spirit desires to move in us, work through us and demonstrate Himself among us. Unfortunately, most believers in Jesus today are woefully uneducated in these matters.

We have grown up in a society that has “preached” the scientific method so convincingly that we have shunned the supernatural realities of God and the roots of our faith and embraced only what can be empirically derived through our five natural senses. This is nonsense. In fact, it is a fine lie from the enemy to keep us from experiencing the greater realities of the spirit realm while we journey through this life.

There is a spirit realm, where God reigns supreme. We are spirit beings, made in the image of that God, and we are designed to know and flow in that realm just as much as we are designed to live in this natural world.

So, according to I Corinthians 12:1, God does not want us to be uneducated concerning matters of the spirit. Yet, most of His children are unaware of the most basic movements of the Holy Spirit in our times of worship together. An understanding of how the Holy Spirit can and does move in our midst has become so rare that many believe God does not even work this way any longer. It is sad. What is more, the relatively few that do believe God desires to work as He did in and through the early church are like lost balls in high weeds when God does show up to demonstrate Himself in our churches. This is one reason the modern American church is weaker now than it should be and not as culture-shaping as it once was. We are not experientially familiar enough with the power of God.

Now, you might know a bit of my background theologically, and think I am bashing traditional denominations in our area with these sentiments. No, that is not the case. The fact of the matter is that we have generations of charismatic/Pentecostal Christians that have rarely seen God moving through men and women in demonstrations of “Divine power,” let alone to have been used of God this way and to have experienced it themselves.

We have drifted away from our roots, and I am not talking about the beginnings of any denomination, but from the beginning of the New Testament Church as recorded in Acts 2. That has to change. We need to go back to school, so to speak, and learn from the Lord about His grace in this area. I do not know about you, but if the Lord wants me to know something, I want to honor Him by doing my best to look into the Scriptures and find out what He has to say about that matter.

With that said, what do we need to know about the moving of the Holy Spirit? How can we become more educated in this important area?

First, we need to know the Lord in a relational sense. We need to be “born again.” You will always be intimately unaware of the Holy Spirit until you have made Jesus the Lord of your life.

Beyond that initial commitment to Christ, we must endeavor to become more familiar with Jesus personally through fellowship with him and his Word. When we set aside time daily to put ourselves in God’s presence in this way, we will grow more familiar with what it “feels” like and what it “sounds” like when He comes in the room in a more tangible way.

Learning to flow with the Holy Spirit starts with dedicated times of reading the Scriptures and personal prayer, and not just the “asking” kind of prayer, but the “hanging out with God” kind of prayer.

Greg Crum is the pastor at Calvary Temple in Lovely.