CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

It feels like I'm hitting a roadblock in my faith. Where it's just hard for me to let my logical side go, and just have faith. Basically I've been learning a lot of new stuff about being redeemed from the curse, speaking things into existence. Basically that type of stuff is now in my mind where I know it's true in my mind, but I'm having a hard time getting into faith and and actually receiving what I know God wants me to have. It's the same thing with trying to get the gift of tounges, I know it's for me and God wants me to have it. I'm just having a problem receiving. Really, I think this problem is also making it hard for me to grow stronger as a Christian... Any advice?

You're putting too much emphasis on what you want and not what God wants. "I know the gift of tongues is for me and God wants me to have it." How do you know that? What do you base that on? "I really really want it" is not proof that it's for you or that God wants you to have it. You want what you want. You need to let go of trying to get this gift and just do what God is telling you.

If you speak in the tongues of angels but don't have love, your tongues mean nothing. They're worse than nothing. Let go of what YOU want. It's about what God wants.

One of the things that I've found for myself is that everything from my faith to my relationship with God got stronger when I started actively seeking God. For me that meant reading the Bible consistently and getting back into a consistent prayer life. I believe that God gives us gifts and desires that he intends us to use for his purpose, but sometimes in order to get that fulfilment we have to go about it God's way. In other words, start with the obvious. Am I doing the things that God wants me to do in my life? How can I bring my life more in alignment with what I know that God wants just from his word? From there, at least for me, everything else really started to fall into place.

You don't have to have the gift of tongues to serve God or grow spiritually - in 1st Corinthians, when Paul's talking about the body of Christ, he suggests that not everyone will have that gift, and that's a good thing, because the church needs a diversity of gifts. I don't have the gift of tongues, and I don't think I'll ever get it, and that's fine, because God's given me other gifts I can use to serve Him, like being musically inclined and a love for knowledge.

Seek after what you're good at, what you love to do - God's given those to you to use for His glory. Develop them, ask God what you can do with them, and seek out opportunities to use them in your church. And don't give up your logical side completely - faith in God is important and necessary, but I don't believe God wants us to turn off our brains.

Also, what's that about speaking things into existence?

Lining up what you think you know to what Scripture says in its proper context (to the original audience before comparing what it means for us today) is a good starting ground.

We all go through these periods of "Okay, God, what I want lines up to what Your Word says, why isn't anything happening now?" And this is part of our problem as humans - we can't see the bigger picture that what God has laid out. (Habakkuk lays this out quite well, when God uses Babylon as punishment for the Israelites, and Habakkuk is crying out to God asking Him "Why would you use them?" [they're so much worse than the Israelites!!] But what he can't see at that point is that greater punishment will come to Babylon for their misdeeds after He has used them to drive home a point to His people.)

God's ways are not our own. They're almost backwards to ours (Where we, if we were God, might have first punished the Babylonians to drive home a point to Israel that "I am God" but all that would do would serve to have them fear me as God and not serve out of love and humble obedience)

Obedience. If we love Him, we will obey Him, we will follow His commandments (love others.) All spiritual gifts are to edify others. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians (as has already been said) and he specifies that tongues should not be spoken in church unless there is an interpreter. This is because without interpretation of the tongue spoken (whether human or angelic) it cannot edify the body.

So whether or not this is what God wants for you has to line up with what the Word says. We cannot know what God wants for us, unless we first look into what the Scriptures say about it. We must let go of what we want for ourselves and look into what God wants for us for the edification of those around us (Philippians 2 lays this out well)

There will be a period of waiting for the bigger picture, and we may only get small pieces of it at a time, but whatever God has planned for us will line up with the Biblical story. Seek counsel in His word to have a better idea of how to move. It's going to take time, but God will build you up as you learn more of His plan.

If God doesn't want you to have the gift of tongues, then the best you can do is stop fighting His decision and accept it. You can keep fighting His will, but it'll get you nowhere, buddy.

^What they all said.

This is going to sound harsh, especially since I hardly know you. If I seem completely off-base, let me know.

The problem with what I'm seeing here is your focus is on receiving. You're expecting to get these blessings from God, but God is not obligated to give you stuff just because you want it. God is a good Father, and he loves to give abundantly, but if you sit there and pray for something and then complain about how you're not getting it and you're not sure why, in what way are you different from a spoiled child?

God doesn't give spiritual gifts unless it will help you serve him in some arena, be it evangelism or discipleship or encouragement or something else that draws others closer to God. And many times, if you're waiting on a "spiritual gift" before you start serving him, chances are once you get it you're not going to use it to serve him anyway, because you haven't put yourself in the habit of serving him continually. If you're not faithful with a little, do you really think it'll change when you have much? God has given you everything you need to serve him now. So I want to ask you, what are you doing right now to serve God?