{"id":549,"date":"2013-05-19T19:07:34","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T01:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/?p=549"},"modified":"2013-05-23T23:07:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T05:07:04","slug":"maturity-and-the-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/19\/maturity-and-the-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Maturity and the Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing I have observed from the Word is that every biblical record of a person exercising the power of the Spirit was a mature believer, who had been in the Word and discipleship for a long time. It seems plain to me from these testimonies that the power of the Spirit comes on the heels of an intimate relationship with the Father fostered by a deep study of, and obedience to, the Word of God. One possible exception is Balaam&#8217;s donkey, but she wasn&#8217;t a person and I think this just demonstrates that the Father can use any vessel He chooses. And don&#8217;t get me started on the puns I can make from this. Ass me no questions and I&#8217;ll tell you no lies. Another possible exception might be Cornelius in <a class=\"bibleref\" title=\"Acts 10\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esvbible.org\/search\/Acts%2010\/\" target=\"_blank\">Acts 10<\/a>, but it is clear from the context that he has been at it a long time. It doesn&#8217;t appear to me from the Word that &#8216;rookies&#8217; had a great deal to do with relaying the power of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing I have observed from the Word is that every biblical record of a person exercising the power of the Spirit was a mature believer, who had been in the Word and discipleship for a long time. It seems &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/19\/maturity-and-the-gifts\/\">read more<span class=\"meta-nav\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[398,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fruit-2","category-holy-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}