DID YOU RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT WHEN YOU BELIEVED?



Detail from "Pentecost", by El Greco

The story is told of the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the first to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and first to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the "top of the world", he opened the bird's cage and set it free. The pigeon began instinctively heading toward home.

It is said that his wife, back in Norway, looked up in delight from the doorway of her home, as she saw the pigeon circling overhead. While it is conjecture, I can imagine that she shouted "He's alive! He's alive! The pigeon was the sign that her beloved had reached his destination.

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended, this time not as a dove, but as flames of fire over the heads of the 120 gathered in the upper room. And when He came, there was power to live, to serve, and to be witnesses of the resurrection. It was because He was still alive and had reached His destination, the throne of God. It is clear that something profound changed inside of these men. Peter, who had denied the Lord and had gone out weeping, stood up in power and proclaimed the gospel to the multitude.

Some 30 years later, we find the Apostle Paul at Ephesus. There he finds a group of 'disciples' who have only a basic understanding of who Jesus was. We don't know for sure if they were disciples of John and had not even truly received the gospel, or if they were disciples of the Lord, who had an inadequate understanding of the Holy Spirit. However, elsewhere in the book of Acts, the word 'disciple' always refers to a born again believer.

Regardless, Paul's question to this little band of men is a question to be asked of believers everywhere. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"  Now in this passage the greek text, in using the word "receive", implies something forceful, produced by a demanding faith. It means "to lay hold of", to "grasp". In other words, one may 'receive', or "lay hold of" salvation through faith in Christ and never hear of the need for the Holy Spirit...never "lay hold of" the Holy Spirit as One who is needed just as we need Jesus. If one is truly born again, it is certainly by the Spirit of God, for one cannot be born again without the Holy Spirit doing a work on the inside. But if we look at the disciples before and after Pentecost, we see the difference between the Spirit's presence for salvation and the Spirit's power for service.

When Jesus was about to be crucified, he told His disciples that He was going away. However He told them, "I will not leave you orphans...I will come to you". But what did He mean? How would He come to them?

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." In addition to this, He instructed them not to go out and do anything in their own power, "But to wait for the promise of the Father". "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." This is how He would come to them.

So in spite of denominational differences concerning the terms "Baptism in the Holy Spirit", and "being filled with the Holy Spirit", and the "Anointing", etc., the question still rings true: "Did you recieve (lay hold of by faith) the Holy Spirit when you believed (in Christ)? Do you have what they had?

I am experiencing a new desire to walk in stronger faith...to expect the miraculous in our meetings, and to have the confidence that when we go out to do the work of the Kingdom, we will be supplied all of the power needed that we might be effective witnesses for Him. I have walked in a measure of that kind of faith in years past, and I'm not saying that I want to return to that...I want to go beyond that. I don't want to be satisfied with where I am right now, nor with where I once was. I want a growing, dynamic, maturing faith that continues to expand and grow until the Lord takes me home.

Our church is to be this kind of place, a place of power, a place of fire. Please join me in prayer and expectation of a fresh wind of God.