Wednesday, June 26, 2013

The Need for the Gift of God’s Spirit


Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38
This week we have been talking about sin and truth.  We have learned that we can avoid the truth by redefining it and we can twist things enough to make our sin relative to our life so that we can justify it.  However we are deprived of God’s forgiveness when that happens.  God wants us to acknowledge our sin and ask forgiveness.  That is the first step in the process of ridding our lives of sin.  After we have repented and asked forgiveness, the bible tells us that we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Today we are going to take a look at the need to receive the Holy Spirit. 
The Need for the Gift of God’s Spirit
What does it mean to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? Is this a promise of being baptized in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, being empowered by the Spirit, or being indwelt by the Spirit
The longer I meditate on those alternatives the less I see reasons in the text to choose between them.  My answer would be simply this: From the day of your repentance and your identification with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit will be at work in your life as a gift.  If you truly repent and publicly profess the name of Jesus Christ through baptism, the Holy Spirit will be given to you and will make a difference in your life. From that day on you will have the Holy Spirit.

These are the two great needs that we all have:
1.    The first is to be forgiven-to have all the violations and offenses and transgressions and disobedience and sins cancelled out.  Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow!  Isaiah 1:18.
2.    The second need is to have God Himself come into our lives where sin once reigned. We need a personal relationship with God through his Spirit. We need wisdom and guidance and love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and self-control. And we need extraordinary power for the task of local and world evangelization. We need the gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Scripture to Claim:
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.  If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies [b]through His Spirit who dwells in you.  Romans 8:9-11

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