Third Level Blessing

by Richard Spangler

While attending a Ministering Spiritual Gifts Conference, I heard a teaching by Apostle John Burkholder of Buffalo, NY, who taught on Luke 6:38:
“Give and it will be given to you a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

He says he regularly prays Luke 6:38 over his personal offerings. One day, as he prayed this verse, God told him he was praying it wrong. Apostle John asked, "How?" The Lord stated it was not enough to pray for his offering to blessed, but he needed to pray for those who were to bless him, that they would be blessed to be able to give. Then the Lord took it to another level, not only was he to pray for blessings for those who were to bless to him, but also pray for those who were to bless the givers, so that they could bless him.

The Greatest Gift is Love

1 Corinthians 13: 13, And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. NKJV

As Christians, our primary focus should be our personal relationship with the Father. Why do I say this? We have an adversary called the Devil that is just looking for an opportunity to attack our faith in Jesus. We can inadvertently open the door for Satan to pull us away from intimacy with Jesus through hurts... if we should place more importance on the gifts than on loving the Giver of those gifts. If you will meditate on the true purpose of a spiritual gift, you will soon realize that they were given to express God's love and grace to those who are in need of a touch from God.

We are ambassadors of God; we are also citizens of God's kingdom and are called to release the power of Christ into a fallen world. Jesus has commissioned us to go into the entire world and be witnesses to them of the power and the authority that we have as children of God in the name of Jesus. It is very easy to get caught up in the spiritual gifts and forget that we have an enemy who seeks to attack us so that he can discourage us from being salt and light in the world. Perhaps this is why the writer of Hebrews tells us to consider Jesus when suffering for the sake of the cross, lest we become discouraged in our souls and want to quit.

You are God’s Masterpiece

by LEWIS

You are God’s masterpiece, a work of his own hands.

No one else has a vote on who you are. You’re free to be you instead of imitating someone else. You’re free to use your unique, God-given gifts, and there’s no need to compare your gifts to the gifts of others.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them —yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. – 1 Corinthians 15:10

Is Suffering Good For Us?

But ought we get to thinking suffering is 'good'? There have been some contemplative writers and teachers who thought so. We have to think seriously about what God can give us in suffering.

You can learn :
the difference between real fears and illusory fears you (or someone else) whipped up. And you can learn the difference between telling yourself to 'fear not' and actually believing there's a reason not to fear.
to depend on God's grace and active love.
to depend on what's done by those who aren't suffering, and sometimes by others who are. And you learn something about how each of us depends on each other. You learn that more good things happen when you cooperate.
that by yourself, you flail and fall and fail -- and so does everyone else.
to wait, often because you have no power to do otherwise, and sometimes because it just works best that way.
that suffering grabs you and drags you to the place where you discover how much you need God's grace.
that most material things aren't much of a help for the actual suffering.
which material things really count, which you're better off without, and which simply don't matter.
that suffering, like death, has a way of stripping away the differences we-all have created.
that you're not so important after all.
that it's a good thing to let down the walls you use to guard your inner self and your privacy.
why the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news: God loves you and is with you! You're not out there floundering around on your own.
that when you've got little to lose, you're freer to surrender yourself to the gospel.

But if good things can come from suffering, doesn't that make suffering good?

No.

The spiritual gains of suffering don't come from what you're suffering from, or even from the suffering itself. The gains come from the fact that God (and, like God, we ourselves) can take 'bad', 'horrible', and even 'evil' situations and make something good come from them. God enjoys doing that. It's this fact that gives us real reason to hope during suffering. This 'good effect' doesn't change the nature or 'badness' of suffering; it is what it is. A mountain of dung is no less filthy when there's a diamond in it.

The truth is, more often than not, the lessons aren't learned, the goodness doesn't come of it. Those who are broken may remain broken. Suffering destroys and beats people down. The devil uses it to cause confusion, anger, delusion, or resignation. It usually leaves some sort of scar or damage. It is exceptionally cruel to speak glibly of 'spiritual gains', real and/or imagined, to those who live with extreme disabilities or are stuck in the poverty class or who lose a loved one. Not that they too can't find gain or hope or even happiness, because many of them really do. But only some, and definitely not most. Our duty is not to tell them to smile harder or to feed them false hopes, but to make it so that they can live amidst their suffering and perhaps be led forward with their life. They need real hopes, and Christians are called on to help make real hopes take root.

The Holy Spirit does not stop life from having suffering. What the Spirit gives is resources so we can face the suffering and make something positive come from it. The Spirit gives the direction and power to make these resources work. The Spirit gives hope, which itself creates perseverance. The Spirit gives wisdom to find the way past the suffering, and to learn from it. And, the Spirit created a body of believers, with the gifts to support and strengthen. In a way, the gifts are geared toward suffering, because spiritual gifts are meant to be for the good of others. Who needs the benefits from those gifts more than those who suffer?

Spiritual gifts are from the Strongest One acting through the weak on behalf of the weakest.

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