One of the hardest things for Christians to deal with in the holy spirit field, and one of the most important, is distinguishing what God is supposed to do from what we are supposed to do. If we try to do God's job for Him, we will fail and become frustrated. If we do our job, and let God do His job, manifesting holy spirit will become as easy as it's supposed to be. Nowhere is the distinction between what God does and what we are supposed to do made more clearly than in the Bible, the written Word of God.
Much of the Bible's teaching about the manifestations is contained, not in long, dry discourses about the manifestations, but in "Bible stories", true accounts of holy spirit in action. These accounts not only let us know what happened, but many times give us an x-ray look at the operation of the manifestations, showing us what was going on behind the scenes.
One record that provides an exellent example of the revelation manifestations in action is found in I Kings 14:1-18. In this record Jeroboam, king of Israel, has decided to try to deceive a prophet.
"At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick.
And Jeroboam said to his wife, 'Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get thee to Shiloh: behold, there [is] Ahijah the prophet, which told me that [I should be] king over this people.
And take with thee ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruise of honey, and go to him: he shall tell thee what shall become of the child.'
And Jeroboam's wife did so, and arose, and went to Shiloh, and came to the house of Ahijah. But Ahijah could not see; for his eyes were set by reason of his age.
And the Lord said unto Ahijah, 'Behold, the wife of Jeroboam cometh to ask a thing of thee for her son; for he [is] sick: thus and thus shalt thou say unto her: for it shall be, when she cometh in, that she shall feign herself [to be] another [woman].'
And it was [so], when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said, 'Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself [o be] another? For I [am] sent to thee [with] heavy [tidings].
Go, tell Jeroboam, 'Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel,
And rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and [yet] thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do [that] only [which was] right in mine eyes;
But hast done evil above all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back:
Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, [and] him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone.
Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat: for the Lord hath spoken [it].''
Arise thou therefore, get thee to thine own house: [and] when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die.
And all Israel shall mourn for him, and bury him: for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found [some] good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.
Moreover the Lord shall raise Him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: But what? Even now.
For the Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and He shall root up Israel out of this good land, which He gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river, because they have made their groves, provoking the Lord to anger.
And He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.'
And Jeroboam's wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: [and] when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died;
And they buried him, according to the word of the Lord, which He spake by the hand of His servant Ahijah the prophet."
Ahijah should have been a very easy man to deceive. He was blind. A disguise was redundant with him; he couldn't have recognized Jeroboam's wife, or anyone else whose voice he did not know, anyway.
How did he find out what was really going on? The Lord told him. In a nutshell, that's all revelation is. If God speaks to you and gives you information, or gives you instructions, or tells you what's going on spiritually in a situation and/or what to do about it, you have received revelation. All that remains is for you to carry out any instructions God gave you.
Man may or may not ask for revelation, but God is always the initiator with revelation. Unless God speaks, there is no revelation. The decision to do so rests with Him. That is God's part.
Once God speaks to you via holy spirit, you have received revelation. If you look through the records in the Bible where people received revelation, and especially those where they received for the first time, you will find that recognizing the voice of God does not seem to be a problem. God seems quite confident that He will be heard and recognized, and His track record in the Bible seems to bear that out.
The hard part about revelation is obeying after you've heard from God. The reason that many of us don't hear from God as often as we would like is because we don't obey promptly when we do hear from Him.
From the point of view of Jeroboam's wife, Ahijah's perception and words were astounding. All she could see was the blind man sitting in front of her. From Ahijah's point of view, what he did was simple. He did not have to try to figure out who she was, or what she wanted. All he had to do was say what God had told him to say. Ahijah did not have to do anything "spiritual" besides listen and obey God. God did the rest.
Notice how word of knowledge and word of wisdom are intermingled in this record. Unless you look closely at what is being said, they are almost indistinguishable. That's the way it will be in our lives. When we receive information from God, we are receiving word of knowledge. When we receive instructions from God, we are receiving word of wisdom.
God is not limited to speaking to us. When He chooses, He can give us a picture of what is going on. The record of Elisha's deliverance recorded in II Kings 6:8-17 is an excellent illustration of this, as well as an providing an example of discerning of spirits.
"Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, 'In such and such a place [shall be] my camp.'
And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, 'Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down.'
And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once or twice.
Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, 'Will ye not shew me which of us [is] for the king of Israel?'
And one of his servants said, 'None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that [is] in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.'
And he said, 'Go and spy where he [is], that I may send and fetch him.' And it was told him, saying, 'Behold, [he is] in Dothan.'
Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about.
And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, 'Alas, my master! How shall we do?'
And he answered, 'Fear not: for they that [be] with us [are] more than they that [be] with them.'
And Elisha prayed, and said, 'Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.' And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain [was] full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
This record opens with one of the most unusual uses for the revelation manifestations to be found in God's Word. On several occasions, God gave the prophet Elisha an enemy king's military plans. In Elisha, the king of Israel had an unsolicited, unpaid, 100% reliable, completely unstoppable spy. There was no way on earth for the king of Syria to stop this spy, as subsequent events proved. The king's counterintelligence men had no problem finding out who the leak was; apparently they had their own sources spying on the king of Israel. Yet they were completely unable to stop him. He had no access to the king of Syria that they could cut off, no sources that they could track down and silence. All Elisha had to do was listen to God and tell the king what God said.
The king of Syria took this problem seriously enough to send spies out to track down Elisha, and to send a "host" of troops to his city to capture him. By all accounts, this should have been more than enough to take care of the problem.
The servant of a man of God was usually more than a servant. Elisha himself served as servant to the prophet Elijah, while Joshua served as servant to Moses. The servant of a man of God was usually a prophet being groomed by him to be his successor.
When Elisha's servant saw the troops surrounding the town, he became frightened. Elisha asked God to open his eyes so he could see the forces on their side. God responded by giving Elisha's servant visual revelation. The revelation he received falls into the category of discerning of spirits.
The servant apparently had no trouble at all seeing what God showed him; nor did he have a problem understanding what He meant. The servant did not have to do anything special to receive this revelation; all he had to do was look at the picture God showed him. What he saw represented what was happening spiritually in that situation.
In Exodus 4:1-9, we have an excellent example of the working of miracles. In this record, God Himself walks Moses through the performance of his first signs.
"And Moses answered and said, 'But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say, 'The Lord has not appeared unto thee.''
And the Lord said unto him, 'What [is] that in thine hand?' And he said, 'A rod.'
And He said, 'Cast it on the ground.' And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.
And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail.' And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand:
'That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee.'
And the Lord said furthermore unto him, 'Put now thine hand into thy bosom.' And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand [was] leprous as snow.
And he said, 'Put thy hand into thy bosom again.' And he put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as his [other] flesh.
'And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the forst sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.
And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour [it] upon the dry [land]: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry [land]."
As confirmation that God had indeed spoken to Moses, God gave Moses three miraculous signs to perform. (A miracle may be a sign, but not all signs are miracles, and not all miracles are signs.) Moses had never done a miracle before, and had no idea of what to do; so God told him.
The pattern was simple: God told Moses what to do, Moses did it, and the miracle came to pass. No special effort or ability was required on the part of Moses; all he had to do was obey God. When God told Moses to cast his rod on the ground, Moses did so; he could do that. When he obeyed, his rod was turned into a serpent. When God told Moses to pick up the serpent by the tail, Moses obeyed in spite of his fear, and the serpent turned into a rod again. When God told Moses to put his hand into his bosom, and then to remove it, he obeyed; he could do that. When he did so, his hand became leprous. When God told him to put his leprous hand into his bosom, then remove it, Moses obeyed, and his hand was whole again.
In each case, God told Moses to do something that he was perfectly capable of doing. God did not require Moses to figure anything out, or to make anything happen. All Moses was required to do was obey God.
What is most remarkable about this record is what is NOT here. God did not require Moses to believe, or to have faith, in order to accomplish these miracles. In fact, if you read the record carefully, you will see that God made faith impossible in this instance! How? By giving Moses no idea what to expect when he carried out God's instructions!
When Moses cast his rod onto the ground, he had no idea what was supposed to happen. He could not believe for his rod to turn into a snake, because no one told him in advance When God told Moses to pick up the serpent, I'm sure Moses was HOPING it would turn back into a rod, but he had no way to know for sure, because God hadn't told him what He was going to do. When God told Moses to put his hand into his bosom, Moses could not believe God for his hand to become leprous, because God gave Moses no idea what to expect. Moses no doubt expected his hand to return to normal when God instructed him to put his hand into his bosom again, but again, he had no way to know for sure. He simply obeyed God, and trusted God to do what God was going to do.
What does this record tell us? That faith on Moses' part was not essential for bringing to pass the miracles that God, in these instances, told him to do. What was necessary was obedience to God's instructions. No faith, no visualization, no special mental or spiritual techniques were required; only obedience.
Was this an isolated incident? It certainly does not appear that this was the case. When you look at the other miracles that Moses did -- turning the waters of Egypt into blood, parting the Red Sea, bringing forth water out of the rock -- the same pattern appears: God told Moses to do something that he was perfectly capable of doing by his five senses, Moses obeyed God, and the miracle came to pass. We are not told whether or not faith was necessary for the accomplishment of these miracles, but that, too, is significant; for the pattern established in the first miracles Moses did (and the first miracles that ANYBODY is recorded as doing!) was that faith was not required. If there is no change, no break in the subsequent miracles, we must conclude that what was true there remained true in subsequent miracles.
What is the lesson here for us? That when God tells a person to do a miracle, or gives a person instructions for doing one, faith to bring the miracle to pass on the part of the person doing the miracle is not essential. Faith is indeed required of the person doing the miracle, but that faith is the faith that results in obedience. Moses did not have to have faith that his rod would turn into a snake, or back into a rod; he did have to believe God to the point of casting down his rod when instructed by God to do so, and of picking up a live serpent by the tail when God so commanded him. Moses did not have to believe that his hand would turn leprous when he put his hand into his bosom, or that it would be healed when he took it out. He did have to trust God enough to follow God's instructions to him to the letter; and God never told him to do anything he was not perfectly capable of doing.
It is important for us to note that what we have just seen and learned is true of most of the miracles in scripture, but not of all. There are some miracles recorded in scripture where faith regarding the results is an indispensable factor in bringing the miracle to pass. We will examine these miracles, these "faith" miracles, in a subsequent study.