Spiritual gifts are often a point of controversy. Mostly because most Christians of mainline denominations don't have any experience with speaking in tongues, prophesy or anything such as these. All we know of this are the writings of Paul, and when we see folks on TV on some of the Christian TV stations having religious experiences, most of us feel uncomfortable with what we see.

If we think about it though, that is how we are with most things we don't understand. We can easily brush those things off with a "that was fine for the 1st century, but it doesn't happen now." Or we might even come up with some other explanation - such as "the only reason they were speaking in other languages is that they were from different parts of the world." But the fact is that the Holy Spirit was given to these people to empower them in their faith and to build the church.

We receive that same Holy Spirit at Baptism. It still empowers us and gives us wisdom, courage and all things necessary for the building up of our personal faith and for the building up of the whole church. We only need to stop and recognize the Holy Spirit in our midst to really appreciate all He does for us.

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