All in Holy Spirit
Have you received the Holy Spirit? Do you really understand what this means to us? Why did the apostles have to wait for this filling and what did they do as they waited? The answers to these questions might just surprise you. So let's have a brief lesson.
When we believe in Jesus Christ as our savior, the Son of God, and are then baptized, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift plays an important role in our spiritual lives by giving us such things as scriptural understanding, remembrance, prayer when we don’t have the words, and the various other gifts of the Spirit when we need them to obey and do the will of God. In the upper room, following the ascension of Jesus, the disciples received the Spirit, but they were not the first nor the last that the gospel of Jesus tells us of receiving him. We read first of Elisabeth the mother of John the Baptist, and John in her womb, being filled with the Spirit.
As believers, and Christians, we focus, and pray, to God and Jesus Christ, but too many of us neglect the importance, and power, of the Holy Spirit in our prayers, praise, worship, and indeed, every aspect of our faith lives. We lean on God’s Word with the limited understanding of men, yet without the true understanding the Spirit brings, we intercede alongside Jesus without the direction and remembrance of our helper, the Spirit, and when our hearts are overwhelmed, and our prayers begin to fall silent as a result, we forget to ask for the comforter’s help… for the Spirit to step in and pray for us.
We ask for the Holy Spirit when we come to believe, and when we feel his presence we rejoice, because we think we have received him in his entirety, but is there more yet to come? Are we missing a greater dispensation than what we received during our first encounter? Will God send His Holy Spirit to us in even greater portions, or frequency, if we ask Him?
The Holy Spirit is an incredibly important part of our faith, and to our lives as Christians, but so many believers tend to trivialize, or ignore, him. There are those among us who believe that all they need is to believe in Jesus, but even our Lord Jesus received him into His life to help Him. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, so he is not a new creation. He is the essence of God, the power in Christ, and our understanding. Didn’t Jesus tell us that He could do nothing of Himself?