3.1.2 Name It And Claim It

And yet there are times when the spirit of God has specifically worked and God has given gifts of Holy Spirit to men and women to do specific things. And he bestowed this power upon individuals. Now, my whole point with this is that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were to do specific things at specific times. They were not constant possessions of a believer throughout the course of their spiritual life. And never were they in the form of a blank check that you can have what you like, just “name it and claim it”. That’s never how the Holy Spirit was used.

 

And so there’s some specific examples here: When they built the tabernacle they were filled with the Spirit of Wisdom so that they might make Aaron’s garments. Bezaleel had these gifts in order to work in gold, etc. Also so as to do specific things, Samson had the gift come upon him to kill a lion and to kill 30 men. The spirit wasn’t possessed by him constantly. The gift came upon him to do a specific thing and then it was taken away. Now when he was there facing the lion, he knew full well what the gift was given him to do. It was to kill that lion, and then that was it. The gift did not continue after the lion.

 

When you come to the New Testament, it’s the same thing. The gifts were given, but they were for specific reasons. Christianity, humanly speaking, had no chance of success. These men went out to preach the gospel not knowing the languages and with no credibility. They preached that a man who lived in Palestine had died and risen from the dead. And so they were given these gifts to confirm the message that they spoke. The Lord Jesus gave gifts unto men for the perfecting of the saints, the developing of the saints, for the work of the ministry, to build up the body (Ephesians 4). They were given (Paul says in Romans 1) the gifts to establish the early church. The Lord promised the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to the disciples to bring all things to their remembrance “whatsoever I said unto you”. So that was something specific to enable them to write the gospel. To remind them of the words that Jesus said in his ministry. So all the time, you can see from these references, the Spirit was used to confirm the preaching of the early church. They went forth and preached everywhere and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with signs following (Mt. 28, Mk. 16)- different to 'name it and claim it'.