The best gift that God offers to
the world is salvation through His Son Jesus Christ who died on the cross for
our sins. This is what makes us to be His children. This is not the end of what
God has for us. God has so many gifts that He wants to give to His children but
He has that which is the greatest of them all.
He says in Luke 11:13, He says if our earthly fathers who are
evil know how to give good gifts to His children, how much more will our Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.
The reason the Holy Spirit is the
greatest gift.
1. God wants our best and He has determined the
destination he wants us to arrive is not heaven but to be conformed to the
image of Christ. Rom 8:29. It is the Holy Spirit who communicates this to us by
showing us the image of Jesus Christ and then transforms us into that image
from glory to glory. 2Cor 3:18. The greatest thing we can achieve is to be like Christ in
our character, attitudes, motives, talk, and everything. It is the Holy Spirit
who makes us partake of this nature of Christ.
2. The
greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind and
strength and our neighbor as ourselves. Mark 12:29-31. The bible also tells us
that it is the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad love in our hearts. Rom 5:5
3. Jesus
says that we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. John8:32. The
Holy Spirit is God the Spirit of truth and will guide us in all truth. John
16:13. Therefore He brings us to the freedom God bought for us. He is also
called the Spirit that brings liberty.2Cor3:17
Jesus before He began His public
ministry, prayed to be filled with the Holy Spirit during the baptism. Luke 3:21,22.
Remember that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, Luke 1:35.
If Jesus who was born of the Holy Spirit had to be filled with the Holy Spirit,
how much more do we need to be?
We need to continuously seek God
to be filled with the Holy Spirit and this is not a one-time experience, just
like breathing or eating or taking fluids. It’s impossible to take one deep
breath that you will not need to breathe again, or eat large amount of food
that will take you for weeks. It has to be something done continuously. The literal
translation of Eph 5:18 means ‘’be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit.’’ The
apostles were filled several times as recorded in the scriptures as we see, Act
2:4, 4:8, 4:31.
Luke 11:13 tells us that God gives
the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, if we lie passively without asking, we
will not be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to ask God to fill us.
What is the mark of being filled
with the Holy Spirit?
The bible is clear on the mark of being filled with the
Holy Spirit and that is power be a witness. Acts 1:8. Being a witness is
different from bearing witness. Bearing witness is through speech whereas being
a witness is primarily through our lives and then speech.
When we receive the Holy Spirit we will be witnesses of
Christ, which is to mean that when people look at us, they will see that God
has transformed us and they will see something of Christ in our lives.
We have been taught that the mark of being filled with
the Holy Spirit is speaking in new tongues but we have to be honest with the scripture.
1Cor 12:4-11 talks about the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit and it says God
gives different gifts to different people, including the gift of speaking in
tongues. 1Cor 12:29,30 shows the same thing. Paul expresses that he wished that
everyone spoke with tongues which shows that in the early church not everyone
spoke in tongues. The book of acts is a history book telling us what happened,
it does not say that the experiences happened to the early apostles has to
happen to us. For example, they broke the bread daily, we do not do that though
it happened, Acts 2:42, they had their fellowship daily and had prayers at
3:00p.m Acts 3:1. These things we do it different today.
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