Spiritual Gifts

I enjoyed writing the last article on my thoughts. It was a new venue for the Vincent boys blog. So I will be trying to write more on the Christian faith, attempting to voice my opinions and why I hold them. 

  First I want to state what I do not believe to save time later in the article. I do not believe that God grants us everything we pray for. Second I do not believe that we can chose the spiritual gifts that we want granted to us. Thirdly I do not believe that Gods giving is controlled by how much faith we have in his power. God does not restrict giving because of lack of faith. I would go further & state that all three of these are blasphemous ideas. Each contradicting main points taught in the Scriptures.


  Now I will state that which I do believe. I do believe that God answers prayer. I believe that God gives us spiritual gifts so that we may further his glory while on earth. I believe that faith does not help or hinder Gods grace & perfect kindness in giving to us.

  To defend that which I have stated I will prove false the points that I do not believe in & by inductive reasoning prove that which I believe true. First I stated That I do not believe that God grants everything we pray for. God answers all prayer, but he doesn't always say yes. He might say yes, but often he says later or even no. God is not required to give you ANYTHING! He has already given us more then we will ever deserve. Yet we have the arrogance to tell our King that he will give us more!

We are completely evil according to Romans 3:10. Now to solve this problem for us God sent his only son to die a tortuous death to pay our death penalty. This is Grace! We should be thanking him constantly for what he has given us. Even getting up in the morning is a gift! We don't deserve life for even 10 seconds & he gives us years, but what do we do? We complain to him & have the guts to order the creator of the universe to obey our every whim! When you tell God I claim this car in your name or I am thanking you for this boat that your getting me. We are ordering our King to serve us!


   How is this obeying the Lord with all of our heart, mind, & strength? It isn't! I would say that it isn't honoring him at all. In fact it is dishonoring him. By doing this you are putting yourself over God which would be considered idolatry. Which is completely against all of the teachings of the scripture.

  My second statement was that God chooses the gifts that we will receive. This is much the same as the previous statement. God is supreme over man not the other way around. We can't decide that we want to serve a different purpose. We are part of a body, & God decides what part of the body we are to be. You cant decide that you want to serve another purpose. Each Christian is given a part in his plan. Think of it as an honor that you a sinner are allowed to serve in the plan that GOD devised!

  The third and maybe the most important point is that our faith has no influence with Gods Grace. Many Christians believe that if they only had more faith that they would get the truck they've been praying for. This is absolutely ridiculous!  Do you think that God waited till we had enough faith in him to send Jesus? NO! He decided that he would extend mercy to us so that we might be saved! Yet we claim that we have the power to decide to get something from him. This is not only false teaching but is amazingly arrogant! It is stating that you have the power to command the God of the universe tho obey your summons. It's ridiculous!

  This point is very personal to my family. It influenced both of my aunts lives very heavily. Two of my moms sisters have Muscular Dystrophy. This is a muscle deteriorating disease. My aunts grew up in a church where they were taught the name it & claim it philosophy. This philosophy states that if you pray for something & have enough faith that God will grant it to you. My aunts told my Mom that they truly believed the only reason they weren't healed was because they did not have enough faith in their savior! The older of the two  DIED still believing that she did not have enough faith! Rebekah died in sorrow, that she couldn't trust her Lord enough to be healed. Bethany is still alive, but has to live with the burden of thinking that she is less than a truly faithful christian. She tells my Mom this every time she sees her.

  I see the unnecessary pain this doctrine causes, & see the complete futility of it. It is just one more way for man to try to gain control of their king!

  Again GOD is in control & he will give or take away as his holy will dictates. We can do nothing to influence this. Our desire shouldn't be to control God it should be to surrender & let God control us.

Billy :D