Walking With JesusSample

### The Gifts of the Holy Spirit Once you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you will receive the ability to pray in an unknown language. Scripture refers to this as “speaking in tongues”, “praying in tongues”, “having fellowship with the Holy Spirit” or “having communion with the Holy Spirit”. This refers to the ability of the believer’s spirit to speak to God without the believer understanding what he or she is praying. The purpose of this is to build yourself up and strengthen your spirit. Scripture also says that once we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can begin to move in the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are supernatural endowments from God. The word “gift” is derived from the word charis , meaning “grace”. These gifts are not for our own benefit or merely to strengthen ourselves, but for the edification of other people, to build up and encourage the body of Christ. Throughout the book of Acts, we find numerous examples of people receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-6; Acts 8:14-19; Acts 9:17-19; Acts 10:44-46; Acts 19:1-6). People received the Holy Spirit in different ways: * Through the laying on of hands * Through impartation * Spontaneously There is a difference between the ability to pray in tongues and the gift of speaking in tongues. Praying in tongues edifies oneself and the gift of speaking in tongues edifies the church. Not all believers can move or be used in the gift of speaking in tongues, but every Spirit-filled believer can pray in tongues. Read 1 Corinthians 14. Reflection questions (write your answers in a journal): * What is the main motivation behind the use of these gifts? (see 1 Corinthians 13:1-2) Testimony: One day in a school prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit fell on all of us. We started to pray in tongues spontaneously without having received any teaching on the subject. My first reaction was to think that I was imagining or faking prayer in tongues because I did not understand what I was saying. Only later I realised that I was speaking “mysteries unto God” and building my spirit up by this prayer language.