Chapter 19

This is another action-packed chapter. Looking at this I could easily do a whole entry on the first bit. And the second bit. And the third bit.

However, I’ll have to discipline myself, since it’s already late in the night (or early in the morning, depending on how you look at things!)

We start with Paul sharing the Holy Spirit with a group of disciples who have only been baptized with John’s baptism.

After this, we have an incident where wonders happen from the hands of Paul – or even from, for example, handkerchiefs that he had touched – leading a bunch of people, including the Sons of Sceva[1], to attempt to practice magic in the name of Jesus. Some people end up getting very badly hurt because of this (and in passing . . isn’t this story hilarious! Read verses 13 – 16).

And then we have the Silversmiths’ trade union getting together and stirring up a fuss because of the amount of business done by the Temple of Artemis (and they can rightly see that if the Good News of Jesus gets around, the Temple could stand to lose business big time, which in turn would cause potential downturns in their business.


If you don’t mind, I’d like to get straight into application here.

I can relate to the Sons of Sceva, because several times I have seen Christians doing spectacular things in the name of Christ. And I want my life to be obviously supernatural (who doesn’t!?). I want people to look at me and say “Wow, there MUST be a God!”

Now, I have grown up in the Evangelican Protestant church, and they tend to be pretty skeptical when it comes to many of the more miraculous gifts. Some of them propose the concept of “dispensations” – times when the Power of God is available more spectacularly, or perhaps in different ways. Others simply ignore these parts of the Bible and hope that they’ll go away.

And me? Well, this all bothers me, as a non-Charismatic Christian. I have to confess that I have become rather cynical towards the gift of tongues – without intending to cause offence to any Charismatic brothers or sisters who may be reading, I have simply seen too much abuse; too many “tongues” which were obviously nothing more than repeated sequences of meaningless syllables, with no attempt to interpret.

Yet in this passage, the tongues were obviously genuine. And I have to confess that, cynical as I am, I have seen miraculous things done in the name of Christ; and tongues may go hand in hand with these miracles, things which cannot be readily explained away.

And there’s the age old challenge right there – if the OTHER miracles are genuine, why be so skeptical about the tongues themselves?

So where do I go? Am I really a Christian, then, if I’ve never experienced this gift? Have I somehow pushed God away, or did He not intend me to have this Spiritual gift? If not, why not?

It’s a little hard to know here exactly where the baby ends and the bath water begins on this one. Fortunately for me, I’ve had an excellent response from two very Godly charismatic brothers.
One of them likes to say “God’s gifts are by Grace, including tongues and prophecy. You may ask Him if you wish. He may or may not give them to you. But there’s no point in trying to make these gifts appear if they’re not there. He will give them to whom He chooses.”

The other says “If you want to see the evidence of the Holy Spirit in someone, always look for the FRUIT of the Spirit first, GIFTS of the Spirit second!

To me, this is a game changing concept. On these two principles, there seems to be no more justification for pretending. I start from the knowledge that I have most definitely given my life to Christ, and I have asked God for His indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So I definitely have the Spirit in my life. Therefore, any gift that He wants to give me should be here.

I know that I have been given a generous list of gifts. So in some ways I have a cheek asking God to give me any more than He already has.

Moreover, if God hasn’t given me a particular gift, to pretend that I have it when I don’t is both dishonest and stupid. So therefore I can speak in tongues if and when God gives me that gift, not before. So if God has NOT given me that gift, even if I desire it, it doesn’t make me less of a Christian – God has just reasons for the combination of gifts He gives. And He will give me all the gifts I need to perform the tasks I need to do.