Finding Opposition When You Stir Up Spiritual Gifts

When people start to grow and learn in their spiritual gifts, I think one thing in particular goes unaddressed, and that is spiritual opposition towards using and growing in it, after all, it's there to strengthen and help the church, and that's one of the last things Satan wants. When something is important in the production of good, it becomes a special target of Satan for obstruction.

My church just had a miniseries on spiritual gifts, and I honestly don't think we are prepared for the after math of the spiritual battle that is going to come.

I have had considerable resistance to trying to connect in my church, and it's so much of no one's fault and yet I feel neglected and isolated. Just what Satan would like. He would also like it if I got angry and indignant at these people who really haven't done anything wrong. But those feelings are distractions from the important thing that needs to happen. I need my church, and they need me, in matters of spiritual gifts and otherwise, and I can't possibly be the only one facing resistance.


1 Spiritual gifts produce important results. But they are important as God judges importance, and may not have the impact our small eyes want to see, or the attention our small egos want to hear. So have faith when your efforts do not seem worth the fruit, for it is ours to plant, and for God to make it grow.

2. If you call for spiritual gifts to be practiced, you will be resisted. Satan doesn't like God's important things, and tries to ruin them. This is no different. Expect opposition on every level, from the exsistence of spiritual gifts, the definitions, the growth, and the fruit. We face resistance from the lies we believe about ourselves, the trust in our inadequacies to fill our gifts more than God's actions through us, and the external resistence from others with or without malice. The exercise of our spiritual gifts is more valuable than the cost of our ego, we must sacrifice our expectations of how we are to be treated or respected and focus on the goal of the gift that is required of us. It is so easy to be tangled up in the lies of imagined slights and politics and destroy the opportunity to do God's work because the circumstances to producing the fruit were not politically correct or comfortable. Our fruit is more important, and Satan will do anything, no matter how cheap and petty, to prevent the exercise of our gifts. In fact, he loves the cheap and petty, so watch out for low blows and irksome tiny things that, really, don't have anything to do with Eternity.

3 Resistance is aimed at us. Nothing can prevent God from doing anything, he is God. So Satan must try to prevent us from doing God's will. Resistance is not a consequnice of our wrongdoing. Sometimes we have punishments and consequences for what we do on Earth, and that is not the same as being opposed or going through a hard time for something good.

 Satan will attack the discovery of our gifts with decit that they don't exsist, and lies that you are not good enough to weld them. Get up. Satan will fight at the growth of our gifts, he will attack every mistake and failure. Get up. He will attack the fruit of our gifts with put downs, neglect, and lies of unworthiness. Get up, we need you .



Fight, babies, as you take your first steps, fall and get up. Get mad at the inevitable gravity of our human nature. Fight and walk, and trust that one day you will run.