Jesus set the example for us to follow. And so, when we look at the ministry of our Lord Jesus as recorded in the gospels, we see that there were three aspects to His ministry that were always consistent, i.e. He preached the word of God, He healed the sick and He cast out demons, and people came to His meetings for those reasons. The only reason Jesus never filled anyone with the Holy Spirit so they could speak in tongues, was because He was not yet glorified, otherwise that too would have been a consistent part of His ministry. Jesus however, very seldom displayed the other gifts of the Spirit in His ministry like the prophetic gifts for example, i.e. prophecies, words of knowledge and words of wisdom. And so, even though Jesus did stand in the office of the prophet (Matthew 13:57), and He did operate in the prophetic gifts from time to time, i.e. the account of the woman by the well in Sychar is a case in point (John 4:16-19), that aspect of His ministry was always secondary and people never attended His meetings for that purpose. So why did Jesus consistently teach the word of God, heal the sick and cast out demons, but only operated sporadically in the other gifts? The reason is because while it is always God’s will to proclaim His word, heal the sick and cast out demons, all other gifts are only manifested as and when the Holy Spirit wills, and so even the Lord Jesus operated His earthly ministry within those parameters.
Michael E.B. Maher
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