Re; that post, my response was, and is, that it's about God's will and His sovereignty, and not "ours".
Any "gift" that is not from God is from the antithesis to anything of the living God, and who/what might that be?
Praying.
Let it rain.
Okay. If, being converted, our will becomes God's will, then anything we desire from God will be according to His will for us, because if it were not His will, we would not desire it.
Therefore, if the Holy Spirit (who is God) has inspired Paul to list the supernatural gifts of the Spirit as God's will for the Church, then to desire them is God's will for us. If it was according to our unsanctified will, we wouldn't be desiring them at all.
A self-willed person calling him or herself a Christian is not a true convert but a hypocrite.
You see, there is false teaching in many churches that folk can be "carnal Christians" with one foot in Christ and another in the world, and still be truly converted believers. As a result of this false teaching (which is a deception of the devil) can cause false manifestations of the spiritual gifts. This is why there are so many in the churches who have been seriously hurt by the misuse of prophecy, words of knowledge and discernment of spirits by unconverted religious hypocrites who think they can have their sins and Jesus too.
Jesus has come to save us
from our sins, and not
in them.
So, only a genuinely converted Christian can manifest the supernatural gifts of the Spirit in a way that comforts, encourages, builds up, and draws them deeper into Christ.
So in this I will agree with you, that Satan can falsify what should be good spiritual gifts, through religious hypocrites in order to spiritually abuse and hurt good godly people and lead them astray from a solid foundation in Christ.
For example, a religious hypocrite might hear a bit of gossip (true or untrue) that an elder is having an affair with the church secretary, so he "gets" a word of knowledge and blurts it out in front of the whole church. As a result, the elder loses his position in the church and his marriage, and the church secretary is fired from her job. This is a blatant misuse of the word of knowledge and causes the church to be split down the middle. And if the accusation was false, then innocent people have been hurt through a lying spirit speaking through the person with the "word of knowledge". This is an extreme example, but you'd be surprised at how often that happens in churches around the country.
But we cannot say that every Pentecostal or Charismatic who manifests the supernatural gifts of the Spirit are doing them falsely. It is all to do with the heart of the person. There are religious hypocrites, gossiping, lying, being judgmental, divisive and controlling in every church of every denomination.
If a a godly person gets a word of knowledge about an elder having an affair, he won't go blurting out out in front of the church. He will pray and ask God for a word of wisdom to know how to approach this so that the elder, his marriage, and the church won't be "nuked". So God may give him a word that God wants the elder to seek for greater faithfulness to his family. Then the Holy Spirit has a chance to being conviction to the elder, if the word of knowledge is true, and that elder will then respond by confessing his sin and getting right without harm being done to the church. If the word was not true, then there is no harm done because no accusation has been made, only an encouragement for the elder to assure his faithfulness to his family, whatever that will mean to him.
While whole churches have been destroyed by false prophecies given by religious hypocrites, and other churches have been strengthened by prophecies given by godly, loving believers, it is not the ministry of prophecy that is at the centre, but the issue is in the heart of the person giving the prophecy.
What this says to me is, "Am I truly converted to Christ? How do I know? And if I'm not sure, how can I find out? And what must I do to confirm that I am truly converted?"
So the important thing is not to point the finger at others and say, "You are doing false signs and wonders", but to look within our own hearts and to ask, "Is my profession of Christianity genuine?"
