From the very foundation of the church people have wanted to use the Holy Spirit as if He were a source for mystical power. In Acts 8, we see a believer, Simon the magician, actually trying to buy the Holy Spirit and we are told in the verses that follow that he tried to do so because we was jealous and bitter that the Apostles had been given a gift that he had not.
But what Simon and his spiritual descendants fail to grasp is that the gifts of the Holy spirit are not for your own personal edification. We can see this just by looking at the "love chapter" in the Bible. Seriously, turn to 1st Corinthians 13, and then flip forward or back one chapter from where you are and what do you see? God, through the pen of Paul, talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit and how the Corinthians were abusing those gifts for their own personal glory. 1 Corinthians 13 is not a lovey dovey message, it is a strongly worded reprimand against the Christians in Corinth that were living in sin by their flagrant abuse of the Holy Spirit resulting in divisions in the church.
So next time you're sitting there thinking, "Hey, I wasn't paying attention, did I just _______?" and think the Holy Spirit enabled you to do something supernatural, here's a quick sanity check to help you figure it out: Does it minister to the church? If the answer was yes, then the answer is at least "maybe". If the only person who benefits is yourself then the answer is no! The things I hear people try to attribute as a work of the Holy Spirit are mind boggling and resemble the mystical spiritual ki/chi energy or magical potions found in eastern religions than it does anything in the Bible.
A good follow up question would be is it being used in a manner consistent with scriptures? I'm willing to believe God might still allow someone to speak in tongues, but if they do not follow the command to have someone interpret that tongue as commanded 1 Corinthians 14:27-28 then why should I believe they are Christians? After all, Christ Himself said in John 14:15, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." If someone is directly rejecting a commandment of Christ, how can we claim that they love Christ at all?
There is a reason all this has been weighing on my mind, beyond the fact that I just taught a lesson on it. This past week Mark Driscoll chose to resign rather than endure church discipline. In a process that was disturbingly similar to what happened at my own church a decade ago, he had the decks stacked in his favor to be acquitted, though not guilty of moral (read sexual) impropriety (as if that's the only sin worth holding a pastor accountable for), the Board of Elders asked him to submit to, what Driscoll's church called, a "spiritual care plan", and instead of enduring such discipline resigned (and then went to speak at a different venue).
We are told in 1 Corinthians 12:10 that the Holy Spirit has given some people the gift of discernment. When people pop up and start saying, "hey we should really be paying attention to this guy because he's out of line" instead of telling them to sit down and shut up, or saying "well you don't have all the fact so there's no way to no for sure", we should pay attention and check what that guy is saying against the standard of scriptures.
This Driscoll fiasco should have been stopped 7 years ago when he preached a sermon on the Song of Solemn stating that God commanded wives to do specific sexual acts on their husbands regardless of their own comfort with it. Disregarding the complete abuse of the passage to reach such a conclusion, forcing your wife into something she is not sexual comfortable with directly violates Ephesians 5:28 where husbands are told to love for cherish their wives above their own needs (i.e. as Christ loved the church). It probably should have been stopped even sooner than that had only someone prevented a spiritually young in the faith Driscoll assuming an elder/pastoral role when he co-founded Mars Hill.
Rather than letting these things escalate until they're the stuff of national news bringing derision on the name of Christ we need to not suppress the gifts of the Holy Spirit, even the dealing with of sin privately within the church through proper discernment is a gift designed to bring unity and peace to a church. Those who would block such work are hindering Christ and the church and are directly contributing to a process which eventually blows up and brings shame on us all.
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