I. Packer12 chides the church: “With a perversity as pathetic as it is impoverishing, we have become preoccupied today with the extraordinary, sporadic, non-universal ministries of the Spirit to the neglect of the ordinary, general ones. Thus, we show a great deal more interest in the gifts of healing and tongues — gifts which, as Paul pointed out, not all Christians are meant to partake anyway — than in the Spirit’s oridinary work of giving peace, joy, hope, and love, through the shedding abroad in our hearts of knowledge of the love of God.”
