Knowing God’s Presence, Compassion and Power - 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Imagine you go back in time 100 years and you are asked to explain to your grandparents or great-grandparents what a smartphone can do. The problem is that you don’t have a smartphone in your hand and the internet does not exist. You can only use words to describe the smartphone to them. How would you do it? Your grandparents or great-grandparents would have no frame of reference for what you would describe - a calculator, a camera (you can take selfies), a global information search engine, a video camera, a written messenger, an online store, a movie theatre … Because they love you, they might nod along and say, “Child, you have the best imagination”But what if you had the phone with you and could show them all the functions? They might not understand what they see, but they would most certainly know that smartphones are real and amazingly powerful. There is power in actual experience.When it comes to relationship with God, we ask some very fundamental heart questions: does He exist? If He does, can we know Him? Does he care?We can know God through reasoning based on evidence. And we have many reasons to believe in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. But we also long to experience the reality of the Resurrected Jesus. Can we experience his presence, compassion, and power now?The gift of faith is the Spirit-empowered ability to discern with extraordinary confidence God’s purposes and sustain unwavering confidence in God despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.The gift of healing is the Spirit-empowered ability to serve as the instrument God uses to restore people to wholeness (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) through prayer, touch or spoken words, apart from natural means.The gift of miracles is the Spirit-empowered ability to pray for and see supernatural acts, where God receives the glory for the miraculous intervention.