by Tim Meier

Whatever we are currently experiencing of God—His love, the fruit of the Spirit, the spiritual gifts—is not the end of the story. It is not all there is of God. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in mild religion—praying just to pray and hoping for a ticket to heaven. I don’t think the unbelieving world is interested in that either. I want the all-consuming, transforming presence of Jesus in its fullness!

There is a common disconnect that exists in the American church between what we hear from the pulpit, what our theology says we believe, and what we live out. Even in The Alliance, we can teach about the theology of healing but rarely expect people to get healed. We talk about the work of the Spirit and His power to set us free from sin, but many people don’t really expect that to be true or haven’t seen evidence of it.

He Remains the Same

To be very direct, some who claim to be the most Bible-believing Christians also believe that God doesn’t act the same way today that He used to act and work in Scripture. I understand those arguments, and I think a lot of the intention is pure. Yet, this is troubling because Scripture teaches that God is unchanging—the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Heb. 13:8; James 1:17; Mal. 3:6). Readers of the Bible, particularly in the Gospels and the Book of Acts, will see all kinds of evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work. It is because of the Holy Spirit’s work that we have all the hope in the world—because of our Helper that we can know truth and even know Jesus Christ (see John 15:26, 16:13–14). That’s the Spirit’s primary purpose in us, to help us know and live out the way of Jesus, to make us more like Him. If we believe this—that the Bible is true, God is unchanging, and the Holy Spirit still works today—then that has real implications for us.

The way of Jesus, which the Holy Spirit helps us to walk, is very mysterious. It’s not just about sin management; it’s also about the transformation and miracles that happen when God shows up. When Jesus started His ministry, things started happening right away—healing, salvation, deliverance. And when we live out the life of Jesus, those things are going to be happening around us too.

I’m not talking about being a super Christian—simply about walking in humility with God and the hunger and expectation that follows. Since none of us have “arrived” in our walk with God, we can be expectant that He has more for us.

The Holy Spirit’s Work

If you are a follower of Jesus, you received the Holy Spirit upon belief. The Apostle Paul describes this in Ephesians 1 like a seal, a stamp of our inheritance: “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (Eph. 1:13b–14). Then we go on a journey of sanctification with the Holy Spirit, which is the process of being made more like Jesus.

There comes a point in every believer’s life where you start to think, I don’t know that I can do this Christian thing. I don’t think I have what it takes. This is the moment where we must go to God directly. In The Alliance, we’ve recently debated what to call this moment, but we’re largely in agreement that it’s common for the believer. This is why Paul follows Ephesians 1 with Ephesians 5, where he says to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18b). The verb used there for “filled” implies a continuous action—to be filled with the Spirit and keep on being filled by the Spirit. Paul makes a distinction here that there are people who assent to belief in Jesus but are not living out the maximum capacity of what they could have in the Kingdom because they’re not expectant or asking to be filled with the Spirit of God. But when we ask to be filled, He fills us. Why? Because He created us to be with Him and be like Him, to mirror Him and work with Him, to work out the Kingdom together in the world.

Maybe for some of us, we need this reminder of asking God to fill us with His Spirit, then living in expectation that He’s going to answer us.

The Spiritual Gifts Are for the Body

So, what happens when the Spirit of God fills us? First Corinthians 12 gives us one marker of evidence. Paul says, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:4–7). The Holy Spirit is the One who helps us grow in sanctification, who sets us free from the power of sin, and helps us know Jesus better. The Spirit also helps us to live into the gifts that God gives each of us. Jesus isn’t our Savior just to get us into heaven—He also saved us to work out the way of the Kingdom in our lives, with our families, and with our communities. It’s also important to note that He gives us these gifts not primarily for our own sakes but for the sake of the entire Body, for “the common good.”

When we talk about spiritual gifts, it can be easy to think it’s like a personality quiz. (Which Disney princess are you? What is your Enneagram number?) But the spiritual gifts shouldn’t be reduced to things that you enjoy doing or are naturally good at. They are gifts that God decides on and gives. It’s worth repeating—these gifts are from God, not your DNA. And they are for others, for the edification of the Body of Christ. These gifts, then, are an element of the sanctification process because they are part of how we become like Jesus. They should shift our focus from being self-centered and self-focused to Jesus-centered and others-focused.

This can be a difficult shift because often we think that once we surrender to God, His job is to make our lives better. He does, of course, make our lives better—but it comes at a cost. Frankly, you can have as much of Jesus as you want, but you have to give Him everything. He will give you peace, but you also have to give Him your anxiety. You can find freedom from sin, but you have to be willing to surrender yourself and your desires to Him.

Spiritual gifts are not manufactured, and they should not be ignored or denied. If you have a gift, use it! It’s not humility to deny that you have a gift of leadership or giving or prophecy. Using your gifts, and growing in maturity in them, honors God and our communities of faith. I know that sometimes it can be hard to not compare ourselves to others or wish that God had made us differently. But as Paul goes on to say, “God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” (1 Cor. 12:18).

Expectation Without Agenda

The things that we generally think of as supernatural—healing, prophecy, miracles—are actually natural in God’s Kingdom. This is how He works in the world. It’s natural for Jesus to heal people—so it should be natural for us to pray for people to be healed. It’s natural for God to answer prayer, so it should be natural for us to pray with boldness. It’s natural for God to speak to His creation, so we should expect He’ll speak to us!

I know that some of us have been disappointed or hurt in charismatic, “Holy Spirit” environments. We may have felt manipulated, coerced, or let down. We’ve also seen places where miracles have occurred, but the character of the leaders has led to devastation. But as Ron Walborn rightly teaches, “The answer to misuse in these situations is not disuse but right use.”

Sometimes we also look around the world and just lose heart. A close friend of ours recently passed away from cancer. She was 45. I’m still wrestling with that reality. Why didn’t god heal her? I don’t pretend to understand. But you know what? It doesn’t prevent me from praying in expectation for healing. Because while the work and way of Jesus is mysterious, He is unchanging. He is the same. I know it can be difficult, but it’s worth it to lean in with vulnerability and expectation. Just like when we see someone turn their life to Christ and then stray, we don’t stop sharing the gospel with the next person. So we continue to pray for healing even when we’re disappointed. This is not about us; it’s about Him.

I grieve that many churches don’t live in the tension of walking in and working toward maturity in the gifts of the Spirit because I believe that God invites us into expectation. In The Alliance, the phrase previously used regarding the spiritual gifts and life in the Spirit was, “Seek not, forbid not.” But, in the past decade, we changed it to what I believe is a much healthier phrase: “Expectation without agenda.” We don’t put an agenda on God because He can do whatever He wants, but we do expect that He’s going to do something!

So, here’s my hope—that you would join me in expectancy. That we would, as a Body and without agenda, make room for God to move. That we would never stop asking Him to fill us with His Holy Spirit.

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