The Holy Spirit, the Christians Source of Power.

Everyone is familiar with the term "the Trinity" but few could tell you anything about it. It is called the God Head, the Three in One and many other terms. The purpose of my writing today is not to get into the doctrine of the Trinity nor nor to define it for it must be accepted by faith. To simplify it for myself I tend to think of God as an indefinable complexity beyond human capacity to understand and therefore not to spend a great deal of time pondering what is too complex for this simple mind. Scripture says there is One God and yet He is spoken of as 3 therefore I think that He has revealed Himself in 3 of His multiple and complex personalities and manifestations. I will go no further than that. However I have had much experience with the third person of the Trinity known as the Holy Spirit and I can assure you He is real and He is vital to genuine Christianity. The scripture says that no one can even say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. He is that vital, you cannot even open your mouth to proclaim Jesus unless He permits it.

I can testify this day that after 34 years as a Christian that without the baptism in the Holy Spirit I would not be serving God. I would have dropped out long ago.
It is the Holy Spirit that brings life to your belief and motivates you to continue and press into Christ. Jesus spoke of Him as the Helper and the Comforter and He is both and so much more. As Christians we need HELP and we need COMFORT. The road to heaven is a narrow and rocky path and many things will need to be removed from your life to prepare you to live in the presence of a Holy God and His saints in perfect harmony of eternity and no one can endure the journey without the working of the Holy Spirit through His "helping" and His "comforting".

In the Gospel of John Jesus taught about the coming of the Holy Spirit. One day He was talking with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. He asked her for a drink of water and she said that Jews didn't even speak with Samaritans so why is He asking her for water. His reply was that if she had a clue who He was that she would be asking Him for living water.John 4:10-15 (New King James Version)
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

In this passage He does not use the term Holy Spirit but we know that He is speaking of the Holy Spirit as living water because of another passage where He speaks of the Spirit as water as a life giving force.

John 7:37-39 (New King James Version)

37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing[a] in Him would receive; for the Holy[b] Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
In both passages Jesus is inviting believers to come and drink water that He is offering but with very different results. In the first passage He is offering living water that becomes a well that provides eternal life. Now consider what a well is. It is a static source of water that must be drawn out. One who is thirsty must use a bucket on a rope and let it down into the water and bring it back up and drink it to get a benefit from it, hence the beneficiary must be directly involved and it benefits him only.

The second passage speaks of water in a very different term as a river. Consider a river and it's action. A river is not static, it is in motion and is an unstopable force. A river has a destination and that is the ocean. Eventually every river reaches the ocean though it flow through many different banks and channels it will always reach it's destination. The power of a river is enormous, you can build a dam and back it up into a great reservour but if you don't provide an outlet it will simply overflow or go around the obstacle. Also a river provides life giving benefits wherever it flows. It may flow through a barren desert but there will be lush foliage on it's banks and people can draw from it to irrigate their crops. Even when it is in flood mode there are benefits because it brings silt that makes rich new topsoil.

Now most churches today have rejected this aspect of the Holy Spirit known as the Baptism in the Holy Spirit because of the seemingly uncontrolable aspect of it. Man wants control but God says "if you want My best you cannot be in control, you must surrender control to Me". In order to justify their actions the theologians have twisted scripture to say that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was only to get the early church going and it was no longer needed after we received the written Word (the New Testament scriptures). It is simply not so and can be proven by the scriptures themselves. Now my purpose today is not to argue the point nor to prove the validity but rather to explain His ministry for those who hunger for more of God.

It is taught that every Christian receives the Holy Spirit at conversion and that is not true and here's the reason why. Conversion is not salvation. Conversion is the result of someone convincing you about certain facts that cause you to decide to go to church and live a certain way but never transact business with God whereby you surrender your entire being to Him and His purposes. Salvation comes when you confess you are hopelessly corrupt and can do nothing to save yourself and throw yourself entirely on God's mercy and ask Him to save you. The result is markedly different because at this point you will truly understand what is means to be 'born again" because that is what it will feel like, as though you are not even the same person. It is the Holy Spirit entering your heart that causes you to be born again and that is the living water that Jesus promised that would become a well springing up into everlasting life. But it is still just a personal experience where your name is now written down in the Lambs Book of Life. Now comes the journey and you are going to need a lot of help, not just to get there but to bear some fruit along the way and you cannot do that on your own. You must ask for the baptism in the Holy Spirit and here are the scriptures.

Luke 11:10-13 (New King James Version)
10 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 11 If a son asks for bread[a] from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Let me show you the progression according to the scripture. We know that on the night that Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane that he left Peter, James and John and went a distance away to pray by Himself and before leaving them He told them to watch and pray but when He returned He found them sleeping. He admonished them and repeated the instruction and went off again and prayed in such agony that He actually sweat blood, yet on His return He found them sleeping again despite His distress. This is a good example of normal human weakness. However let, see what happens when they are Born Again. This occurs on the evening of the day of Jesus ressurrection.
19 Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled,[c] for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Though the disciples had spent 3 years in close company with Jesus they were still without a spiritual connection. When Jesus breathed on them and said "receive the Holy Spirit I believe He came into them just as He does when a person today repents and totally surrenders his life to the Savour.
Theologians look at it differently and many say that Jesus was instructing them to receive the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost which was still in the future but I believe the evidence shows otherwise and here's why; In the Garden they couldn't stay awake and when Jesus was arrested they all fled and in the court of the High Priest when Jesus was being abused someone asked Peter 3 times if he was a disciple of Jesus and he denied it and I'm sure it was simply from fright that he too would be arrested and tortured. However the scripture above shows Jesus on the evening of ressurection day coming to the disciples and breathing on them and telling them to receive the Holy Spirit. 40 days later He is with them on the Mount of Olives and tells them to wait in the city and do not leave until they receive the promise of the Father. Then He is taken up into heaven. They then enter the city and gather together in an upper room and pray together for 10 days before the Spirit comes down in visible form as a mighty wind and tongues of fire upon their heads. It was the staying power of the first manifestation of the Spirit in their life that gave them the ability and will to wait 10 days when previously they could not even spend one hour in prayer when it was obvious that their friend and teacher was in a battle for His life. But that is not the end of the story because on that day timid Peter stood up and gave a sermon that cause 3000 people to be saved and after that he performed many miracles and the power of the Spirit was so great on him that his very shadow falling on the sick caused them to be healed.

I must ask why would anyone want to reject such power when it is still available to us as believers? As I have stated before, a good part of it is the issue of control and the desire to keep it for ourselves. Another major issue is that of speaking in other tongues. Many consider it to be foolish gibberish and sometimes it is but let's examine it carefully and I will do that in the next blog.