Be Naturaly Supernatural : Jonathan Crabtree
One thing that I have been finding recently is the diversity of talks and styles to do with the holy spirit, and the use of spiritual gifts. Now I as a person love the spirit and try and use those gifts practically as much as possible, wether that be the fruits of the spirit, (e.g. kindness, goodness, faithfulness) or the gifts, (e.g. prophecy, speaking in tongues) but I find that pastors and preachers can never seem to agree on how to use them. The main trend I find is preachers are Either Pro Fruit, Pro Gift or just off their heads on spirits, which makes it hard to discern which is right or wrong.
I realised at this point that I couldn't just take someone else's word for how I should use my gifts, but i should go straight to god's word and miss out the middle man, and the conclusion I came up with is that we shouldn't look directly at the gifts and how strange or mundane they are, but we should look at ourselves and our comfort zone. I know that we need to push our boundaries and move out our comfort zone to become better men of god, but the fact is we need to start from a point and move forward, and preachers of today always seem to miss out the mid ground, you are Either "super gifted" a "super fruit" a "super human" or none at all, and so from the outset we have a mentality that we either have it or we don't, even when the bible clearly splits each category up and states that each individual is gifted in different ways, so we shouldn't be jealous of others gifting and fruit salads. Just because you don't speak in tongues or prophesy over people doesn't mean you don't have any gifts, its not an all or nothing package, you just have to let god show you your gifts and he will do so.
When we get started on this journey we need to start from a place that feels natural to us so we are not intimidated by the gifts that all of us possess, but also we have to start all together to get the ball rolling. We have a generation of young people who aren't taping into the arsenal that god has given to us to use against circumstances and to use to build each other up, and this is down to a bad image given to the holy spirit by pastors who take it to a massive level, or pastors who make it an elephant in the room. There is no need to go up to people and start shaking your hand over their head when you pray, that is not all the holy spirit is about, the holy spirit is natural and should be treated as such.
I challenge you to go and use the gifts god gave you, not to an extreme extent, but to your natural comfort, no one will be wierded out, but lives will be impacted by it, I promise you.
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