Supernatural Abilities of the Soul 28

Supernatural gifts already reside in every believer, and the Lord wants each of us to desire their enlivening in our daily life as well as stirring it up in others. Since this is one of the ways God shares His life with His world—through us, these gifts—to ignore or resist the necessary training is to deny God His throne rights in our lives, and in fact to deny our very nature, which is to give unconditionally what we have already received unconditionally.

How Do We Get Them?

Well, actually, you already have them, or at least they are already available to you from within. Rather than asking the Lord to "give" us these supernatural gifts, we can ask the Lord to identify and stir up those gifts or aspects of the supernatural that He would particularly like to focus on at that given time. The Lord may or may not use terms from the scriptures; it is His right to train you in the way He wants you to go. The purpose is not for you to be able to fit into a specific group at church or be equipped for a ministry. The goal is to be dependent on Him for all things, including life, fellowship and discipleship.

These gifts can also be “imparted” by others. This doesn’t mean that someone gives, or prays for you to receive, something that you didn’t have before. Rather it is the process of discernment at work, where another is able to identify a gifting in you that the Lord wants to encourage you to focus on. By the expression of encouragement, whether through prayer or laying on of hands, the Lord often takes the opportunity to baptize or immerse the receiver in an additional level of His movement. This is perhaps an explanation of why there is often either an emotional response or a clear manifestation of His presence as the gift is stirred within.