How to Open Up to the Holy Spirit

Today, I’m going to explain just how we can open up to the Holy Spirit and receive Him in His fullness, and through Him, all the blessings I’ve been speaking about. We’ll look, in quick succession, at a number of scriptures which state the conditions we need to fulfill in order to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

We’ll look, first of all, in Acts chapter 2, verses 37 and 38. This is the end of Peter’s talk on the Day of Pentecost, and it gives the response of the people.

“When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”

There we have the promise, “You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” We also have two conditions clearly stated: repent and be baptized. To repent means to turn sincerely from all sinfulness and rebellion, and submit ourselves without reservation to God and to His requirements. And to be baptized is to go through an ordinance, or a sacrament, by which each of us is personally and visibly identified with Jesus Christ to the world in His death, burial, and resurrection.

Then I’ll turn to Luke 11, verses 9 through 13, where Jesus is speaking, and He says,

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

There’s a very simple condition, but a very important one. Jesus says, the Father will give the Holy Spirit to His children if we ask Him for the Holy Spirit. I’ve heard Christians say, “I don’t need to ask for the Holy Spirit.” I have to tell you that that’s not scriptural. Elsewhere, it records that Jesus said He would go to the Father and ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples. My feeling is that if Jesus had to ask the Father, it doesn’t do us any harm to ask as well. So that’s the third condition: to ask.

Then in John 7, verses 37 through 39, we have three more simple conditions stated.

“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, capital S, the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

The author of the Gospel makes it very clear that in that passage, Jesus was talking about believers receiving the Holy Spirit. So with that in mind, let us look at what Jesus said. “If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” So there are three simple, but very practical, requirements. The first is, we have to be thirsty. God does not force His blessings on people who feel they don’t need them. A lot of people never receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit because they’re not really thirsty.

To be thirsty means you recognize you need more than you already have. As a matter of fact, thirst is one of the strongest desires in the human body. When a person is really thirsty, they don’t care about eating or anything else. All they want is to drink. I’ve spent three years in deserts in North Africa. I have a pretty good picture of what it is to be thirsty. And when a man is thirsty, he doesn’t bargain, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t discuss, he just goes where the water is. And that’s what Jesus said, you have to be thirsty.

Then if you’re thirsty, He said, “Come to me.” So the next condition is, come to Jesus. Jesus is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. If you want the baptism, you have to come to the one who baptizes, the Holy Spirit. There’s no human being who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, only Jesus. And then He said, you have to drink. Now that’s so simple, some people leave it out. But drinking is receiving something within you by a decision of your will and a physical response. And that is also part of receiving the Holy Spirit.

Just being totally passive and saying, “Well, if God wants to do it, let Him do it,” is not drinking. Drinking is actively receiving within you. So you see, when you come to Jesus and drink, the final result will be an overflow, and it will be out of your mouth. I want to pray out for you a pattern prayer that includes the things that I’ve been explaining to you. Very short, very simple. I want you to listen, and then if it’s your prayer, say, “Amen.”

This is the prayer that I’d like you to listen to. “Lord Jesus, I’m thirsty for the fullness of your Holy Spirit. I present my body to you as a temple, and my members as instruments of righteousness, especially my tongue, the member I cannot tame. Fill me, I pray, and let your Holy Spirit flow through my lips in rivers of praise and worship. Amen.”