HOW EVEN SPIRIT-FILLED CHURCHES HINDER THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

This article describes why the typical church does not see more of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. There are many personal reasons why individuals do not move in spiritual gifts, and we can list some of them in later posts. But this is written to describe the general church atmosphere that quenches the Holy Spirit and hinders the hungry and willing individual.  ----Billy Long

 

HOW SPIRIT-FILLED CHURCHES HINDER THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

Our expectation of the Lord’s active presence working among us is often disappointed because we tend to create an artificial context that does not allow people to “come forth” in their gifts reaching out to one another. We would see the Lord moving among us and through us if we would give Him opportunities in a more natural, living room setting rather than the artificial and rigid setting of the typical Sunday morning.

The absence of relational interaction quenches the real moving of the Holy Spirit. The typical theater style spectator setting forces the congregation to sit as a passive audience focused on the stage up front as the Holy Spirit performs through the pastor, the worship team, and special gifted people. In this context most of the church subconsciously feel they must be super-stars or “special” in order to “perform.” And so they sit passive and watch. Their active involvement is restricted to listening, congregational praise, prayer and song.  These are good, but still missing is the individual's ability to actively participate and flow in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.


Christians need fellowship where they can get to know one another and communicate personally within the group. The Holy Spirit works where people are able to open their hearts and share their concerns, their problems, and their gifts. Churches need to include gatherings in which there is no agenda or curriculum that hedges participants into some fixed path of discussion that precludes their creative sharing and involvement around issues that concern them and one another. The “living room” setting best facilitates this. Not just a small group, but one that has an unofficial air and the marks of real life without the stiff formality of an official meeting that causes people to “act differently” than when they are relaxed and sharing their thoughts about real life issues in a comfortable setting.

 

One other problem that prevents Christians from learning to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is that we tend to compartmentalize the gifts by isolating and analyzing them out of context. There is a place for the classroom, but an academic approach that teaches principles and methods without face to face interaction in a relational setting will give people intellectual knowledge without first-hand experience.

 

We should not divorce learning spiritual gifts from people. We learn the gifts in the context of reaching out to others and experiencing the gifts as they work through us to touch people and impart what the gifts provide. We don’t learn to move in the Holy Spirit by simply learning a technique; we learn by reaching out to others with compassion on a one-to-one basis and in relational contexts that allow interaction, communication, and real-life fellowship.

 

Another major hindrance to the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit is that pastors fail to see and teach that the list given us in 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 is composed of supernatural manifestations rather than simply motivational gifts and inclinations of one’s personality.  The Holy Spirit should move among and through us so that people “will fall down on their faces, worship God, and report that God is truly among you.”

1 Corinthians 14:25.


For a detail teaching on the Holy Spirit in the New Testament Church, you can go to my website to order my book, "Spiritual Power for Everyday Living"


www.billylongministries.com 

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