Receiving the promise of the father
Published 1:14 am Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Church Corner
What if you were a Christian for years but never experienced the life-changing transformation you read about in your Bible? What if you never really knew God’s joy or peace or his love? What if your Christian walk was dry and boring, lifeless, powerless and impossibly difficult? What if God felt so far away that you wondered if He could hear you and you definitely couldn’t hear him? That would really stink! I don’t know how people do it. Better yet, I don’t know why people do it. Jesus came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. Unfortunately this is not the Christian experience for many believers who have not yet become receivers.
I’d like to ask a question that isn’t asked enough. Ready? Have you received the Holy Ghost since you first believed? Have you been baptized of the water and of the spirit? Surprisingly, many Christians I come across today know very little about the Holy Ghost and certainly aren’t sure if they have ever received it. Many people just assume they have the Holy Spirit because they believe in God or because they have been washed of their sins by the blood of Jesus. Some believe or have been taught that if they were baptized in water as a child or as an adult that this is the same as being baptized with the Holy Ghost. However, I would like to tell you today that you must be born again…of the water and of the spirit…a believer and a receiver! Jn. 3:5
I didn’t choose this topic to be controversial, though I think it will be to some. Rather I’m writing this because the perilous times we are in will require the body of Christ to know that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God. The Holy Spirit is God’s divine power, love and authority working in and through us! With it, we have everything we need for life and godliness. Without it we can never truly know God and are weak, impoverished and powerless. Without experiencing the baptism of the Holy Spirit we are still creatures after the flesh with no real or lasting change. The Holy Spirit is the fullness of God in us and will lead and guide us into all truth. The Holy Spirit is how we experience the intimate, breath-to-breath, life-changing relationship with our creator. It is awesome and cannot be attained or replicated by philosophy or an intellectual pursuit of God. The Holy Spirit is the gift of God and it is received by asking for it and receiving it.
Jesus says in Luke 11:13 that our heavenly father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him. In Acts 2: 39, Peter tells a crowd that the promise of the father, which is the Holy Ghost, is to all of us. It is to our children, those far away and to as many as God will call. Why are so many Christians trying to drone through this life without the help and comfort of God inside of them? I am convinced it is because no one ever told them to seek the Holy Spirit. Some go to church week in and week out, but they are never taught about the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul found some believers of Jesus Christ while traveling into Ephesus. He asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit since they believed, but their response was that they hadn’t even heard of the Holy Spirit. Paul expounded the word to them and they were all filled. Acts 19:1-6.
In Acts 8:12, 15-17, Philip preached Christ to the Samaritans and many believed and were baptized in his name. The scriptures tell us that they had not however, received the Holy Spirit yet, so the apostles traveled from Jerusalem to Samaria and laid hands on the new believers and they received the Holy Ghost.
Where there is no teaching on the Holy Spirit few people receive it and there is a conspicuous absence of God’s power…just a lot of words. Formalism has caused many people to construct a religious approach to God without any kind of real spiritual relationship. Spiritual things don’t make sense to a natural person and seem foolish to this world, so some believers take on a form of godliness but deny the power. What is so important about the Holy Spirit that before ascending into heaven, Jesus commanded his apostles not to leave Jerusalem or attempt to spread the gospel until they had received it? Christ knew that we couldn’t do the work alone and that we would need his power and his love in us! The kingdom of God is not in words, but in power; power over every enemy, power over sickness and disease, power to change our circumstances and power to stand in the day of trouble.
My prayer is that someone reading this would desire God’s promise to all believers and would ask God for his Holy Spirit; that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19).
