My Story with the Holy Spirit
When I first heard about the Holy Spirit, I thought that He was just a New Testament identity. Early in my salvation in the early 80’s, while driving I would often tune in to Christian radio programs, to learn more about my salvation. What I sometimes heard, was that the Holy Spirit showed up and disappeared some 2,000 years ago. I heard repeatedly, that He was important to Jesus’ ministry and the early church, but had no place in the modern church of today. That thought, I believe, unfortunately permeates the body of Christ today in a big way.
I was astonished when a ministry group came into our mainline denominational church to teach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Every Thursday night, for eight weeks, the church members were encouraged to attend this two-hour teaching, which began to grow in size because of the buzz it created. On week eight we were told that we were ready to receive the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit manifested Himself that Thursday night in a powerful way. I heard singing in tongues, I heard prophecy, I heard a language that made no sense to me at all. Then, all of a sudden, I felt in my belly a strong urging, a very strong urging to stand up and speak. I trusted God and spoke out in tongues, then gave a mighty prophecy, and everything that night changed for me. Now, I had to know more about the Holy Spirit.
As a pastor and teacher, I open my meetings, welcoming the presence of the Holy Spirit. My walk with Him has been a road not paved, and a road less traveled, as I had few teachers to turn to for direction. Since then, I have had my intensity about the Holy Spirit challenged, and as a result have seen it wane at various times. Not seeing that I had been drifting from the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I often would just “wake up” from my spiritual slumber and reconnect with the work of the Spirit that happened to me many years before.
The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and told him to “stir up the gift”. I realized then that the work of the Holy Spirit in me was a thing that needed to be grasped, and regularly “stirred up” in my life, and in the lives of those that I minister to. Like any type of exercise, you can take a period of time away from Him, and recognize that, “Hey, I need to get back to doing that”. So, like marriage, like your Christian walk, like exercise, the call of the Holy Spirit is always there, but for many reasons, we drift away from Him because of other pressures and the busyness of our lives.
Some of the things that I began to discover is that the Holy Spirit is all through the Old Testament, and that He was upon Moses, David, and many others. He is mentioned in the Old Testament over 300 times! I discovered His Hebrew name, Ruach HaKodesh. I also discovered that Jesus Himself was baptized in the Holy Spirit only at the beginning of His earthly ministry. And I discovered that He did no mighty work or miracles until that event occurred at the river Jordan. I found out that the Holy Spirit baptism directed Jesus and empowered Him in brand new ways. I am still discovering in the Scriptures new characteristics about the Holy Spirit for the very first time. He is God, He is Eternal, He is God.
Our prayer for today:
Father, stir up the gift of the Holy Spirit in me every day, in Jesus’ name, amen!
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