Asking

Jesus also presents the fourth step to receiving the Holy Spirit.

“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!” (Luke 11:13)

Here Jesus places upon God’s children an obligation to ask their heavenly Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. We sometimes hear Christians make some such remark as this: “If God wants me to have the Holy Spirit, He will give it to me. I don’t need to ask Him for it.” This attitude is not scriptural. Jesus plainly teaches that God’s children should ask their heavenly Father for this special gift of the Holy Spirit.

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This question of how the gift of the Holy Spirit is received had apparently been raised among the Christian churches in Galatia, and Paul makes several references to it.

“This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3:2)

“Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you... does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3:5)

“...that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” (Gal. 3:14)

Three times, therefore, in these few verses Paul emphasises that the receiving of the Spirit is by faith. In other words, the essential preparation for believers to receive the Holy Spirit is that they be instructed out of the Scriptures on the nature of God’s provision for them and how they may claim this provision through faith in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. If this kind of scriptural instruction is first given and received with faith by those seeking the Holy Spirit, there should be no need for great effort or delay in their receiving the gift.

Paul’s epistle to the Galatians implies that the Christians there had originally received from him with faith the message of the gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and had thus entered into the fullness of God’s provision for them. Later, however, through other teachers, they had become involved in a legalistic system superimposed upon this gospel foundation and had begun to lose their first vision of the receiving of God’s gift by grace through faith.

One main purpose of Paul’s epistle is to warn them of the dangers of this and to call them back to the original simplicity of their faith.

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Another type of experience often associated with the baptism in the Holy Spirit is some kind of powerful physical sensation. Over the course of years I have asked many people on what grounds they based their claim to have received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Their answer is often: some strong physical sensation or reaction.

The following are some of the experiences which have been mentioned to me: a sensation of a powerful electric current; a sensation of a fire or of intense heat in some other form; being prostrated forcefully on the floor; a powerful shaking of the whole body; seeing a very bright light; hearing the actual voice of God speaking; having a vision of heavenly glories; and so on.

Foundations

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