🌾 Blessing on Outreach, Divine Appointments Gifts of Healings, Team Unity Ps 133:1-3, Love from Pure Heart, 1 Tim 1:5

[Chrysostom]

How great a thing you ask, that the Gospel should be proclaimed with power and that souls be drawn from darkness to light. You have rightly begun with the knowledge of the truth, for the Gospel is indeed the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Hold fast to this foundation, and do not merely repeat the words but let them be written on your heart. For when the devil sees the law of God inscribed on the soul, and the heart become tablets to write it on, he will not approach any more. Nothing is so terrible to him as a mind careful about Divine matters.

You pray for unity and love from a pure heart. This is well, for love produces advantage to yourselves, not merely to those you seek to reach. Purity of heart is true holiness. It is not the washing of the body that cleanses, but the cleansing of the soul from envy, deceit, and perverted doctrines. Outward purification is a Jewish and senseless thing if the soul is corrupt with avarice or rapine. Let your prayers be pure, sent forth from a heart washed from wickedness, for nothing so corrupts the soul as hidden sin. Sing to God with heedfulness, not for display. Even in the marketplace or walking along the way, you can collect yourself and sing unto God in your heart, and He will hear. This is where unity is forged, in hearts that dwell above.

You ask for gifts of healings and words of wisdom. Remember the Man with the withered hand. Christ desired to cure, and He tried innumerable ways of healing by what He said and did. But when the malady was incurable by words alone, He proceeded to the work and commanded the man to stretch forth his hand, and it was restored whole. So too, as you go forth, speak the word with boldness, but trust the Spirit to work as He wills. Do not grow weary if you do not see immediate fruit. As a tree may receive ten strokes and not fall, then be brought down by a single blow, so it is with souls. The many hearings of the truth prepare the root, though the one who sees only the trunk above knows it not. Be faithful to proclaim, and leave the increase to God.

You pray for protection from evil people and the evil one. This is a necessary petition, for the souls you encounter are like a sea. Paul’s heart was both a sea and a heaven, calm and secure, having no bitter brine but a pure fountain. He who sails on this sea needs not divers or oil, but much loving-kindness. Yet heretics and imposters attempt things above their strength and are suffocated in those depths. Provide for yourselves ships of zeal, earnestness, and prayers, that you may pass over in quiet. Let your life be pure, for a soul that is tumid and heated, unstrung and relaxed, cannot receive the word of the Spirit. But if the soul be strong and healthy, all is most easy, all is light.

Do not fear hearing of a yoke or a burden. Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. Take it upon you and learn of Him, for He is meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. As you go, pay attention to your own life and doctrine, for by watching yourselves closely you will save both yourselves and your hearers. When you return, come continually to this house of healing, hear at all times the laws of the Spirit, and write down in your mind the things you have heard. So shall your hopes be good and your confidence great, as you feel your progress by experience.

 

[Silas]

How good it is to see your heart for the lost and your readiness to go out. The request you have laid before the Lord, full of Scripture and longing for His presence, is a beautiful thing. As you ask for gifts of healings, words of knowledge, and boldness, remember the more excellent way Paul sets before us in 1 Corinthians 13. The gifts of the Spirit are real, and the Spirit divides them to each one as He wills, but there is something superior to all of them. You can speak with the tongues of men and angels, have prophetic insight, or faith that moves mountains, but if you do not have love, you have nothing. The giving, selfless love of God poured out through you is the enduring mark of His work.

This love springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, exactly what you prayed for from 1 Timothy 1:5. The Lord sees the heart. He looked at David, not at outward appearances, and He looks at each one on your team. Ask Him to create a clean heart in you continually, for the heart is deceitful above all things. Why do we long for certain manifestations? There was a man in Acts named Simon who saw the power of the Spirit and wanted to buy it with money, but his heart was not right before God. The question is not only what we desire but why we desire it. Is it love for Christ and for the ones who need to hear, or something else?

I understand the deep yearning for the power seen in the early days of the church, the undeniable healings and miraculous confirmations that caused many to believe. Yet even then, the apostles pointed to a more excellent way. The gifts serve the body, but love builds it up. And we know that when the perfect came, the partial did pass away. The completed Scripture now gives us all we need for life and godliness. That is not to say the Spirit cannot or does not heal or guide today in response to the prayer of faith; He is sovereign and merciful. But the greatest miracle is the opening of a blind heart to see the light of the gospel, and that is a work of the Holy Spirit through the Word, not through any gift we might wield.

Go then in the unity of Psalm 133. That precious oil running down Aaron’s beard is a picture of the Spirit’s anointing on brothers and sisters dwelling together in love, not striving over gifts. Pay attention to your own heart in the midst of the outreach. Keep watch over your thoughts, words, and reactions, as you mentioned from 1 Timothy 4:16. Let no root of bitterness or rivalry spring up, but in lowliness of mind esteem others better than yourselves. The Spirit will order your steps and give you words to speak, not because you have seized a particular gift, but because you are walking in love and holding forth the word of life.

Trust the Lord with the results. You have asked for open doors, and He knows those whose hearts He is drawing. Simply be faithful to plant and water, and God will give the increase. Thank Him always for the knowledge of the truth: that the gospel itself is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. That power does not depend on extraordinary signs. It depends on the death and resurrection of Christ, proclaimed by witnesses who are filled with humble, sincere love. May He keep you and your intercessors from temptation and the evil one, and may many come to repentance and obedient faith, all for the joy of seeing His name honored.