Spritual Gift or the Spirutual Giver
It is absolutely necessary to understand that the Holy Spirit is He, not “it.” The Spirit is not an impersonal force, a sort of spiritual electricity. The anointing of God is not just power or gifts but the Holy Spirit Himself.
When people first stepped into modern history, speaking with tongues, they were called “the tongues people.”2 In fact, the memory of those people is still among us, and they carried an impressive godliness whose motive was service, not sensation; the Giver, not the gifts.
They longed to know Jesus better and to be more Christlike, not simply to have power for its own sake. Their daily desire was to “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who … made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant … and became obedient” (Phil. 2:5–8). Many laid down their lives for God.
When Jesus healed the sick, it was not just sheer voltage power He wielded, but it was also the power of His conquering love. He healed the sick by His stripes—that was the secret wonder of His anointing. He healed a withered arm, although it provoked men to plot against His life. He risked everything and would go to any lengths, even to a Roman cross, for the sake of the suffering.
Pain and the ministry of healing are strangely linked. When some of us are willing to know “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10) and feel the same anointing of love that Jesus had and the same heartbreaking pity that forgets self and that will make any sacrifice for the afflicted, as Jesus did … when we become so identified with the sufferer that we would share suffering to ease others’ pain, as Jesus did, and are “touched with the feeling of [their] infirmities” (Heb. 4:15, KJV) and afflicted in all their afflictions, as Jesus was … then perhaps fewer people would go home unhealed.
Examples of initial reactions to the tongues phenomenon can be found in F. W. Pitt, The Tongues Baptism, and G. H. Lang, The Early Years of the Tongues Movement.
2 Examples of initial reactions to the tongues phenomenon can be found in F. W. Pitt, The Tongues Baptism, and G. H. Lang, The Early Years of the Tongues Movement.
