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9.1 How to receive the Spirit?
The following is meant to help you ( to the extend of application ) to appropriate the rich promises of the Lord. In the way that they will be practised in your life.
It is for real very easy to receive something from someone:
The other person is standing before you,
he holds the present in his hands,
he offers you the present,
you believe him,
you reach out your hand to receive it,
you take the present out of his hand,
you pull back your hand and
you have/own the present indeed!
You thank the giver heartily,
you ‘enjoy’ the present
and you start using it as your ‘possession’.
The ‘difficulty’ with the promises of the Lord is in the fact, that you can’t perceive the Giver and the present with your (earthly) senses.
That’s why the Bible talks about ‘to obtain by faith’.
Faith is receiving the invisible present form the invisible giver with your invisible hand.
Faith gives you a certainty of the existence of that which you don’t see.
Faith is the evidence for you and me, that the invisible exists. That what you hope for, exists indeed.
Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
We will have to keep that in mind. We will have to learn to trust the Lord for 100%, just like a child trusts his (good) father.
If he promised it to you and gives you the promise (the present), then it is necessary, for you to imagine this promise very precise. Take time to think about this for a while…!
The deed of faith comes after you knowingly accept the promise, the present. If you have the certainty for yourself: that is also for me! And why wouldn’t it be (available) for you? If you stopped with sin and accepted the forgiveness of guilt, there is no more hindrance after all!
Doubt (usually) comes after you have accepted the promise, without seeing or experiencing anything of it. It is now important to hold on trusting and believing in God.
Which promise? What is it that God promised? Concerning our subject it is more than clear: the Holy Spirit.
So you now have a clear picture of what the Lord means with: you will (not in the way of ‘having to’) be baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).
It is good, to be prepared for this great moment, for you to accept the most precious one of all gifts out of the hand of the Lord!
Jesus Himself is the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit.
He loves you immeasurably! He gave his life for you! There is nothing He wants more than for you to receive. The price is paid by his suffering, after which the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was made possible by his resurrection.
If you come to the Lord to receive his promise, then cling to Luke 11:13b – “…how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”. The Spirit comes out of heaven, it is a spiritual matter, which you can only grasp with your faith.
God is an exclusively good God. He doesn’t give rocks instead of a bread, no snake for a fish, no scorpion for an egg!
He gives only good gifts to his children. Again: how much more will He give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?
Below are a few short advices for you to pave the way for the receiving the Holy Spirit.
1. remove every sin you are aware of (out of your life)
Make sure that, to the extend in which it depends on you, sins are being removed. First of all make matters right with God, ask Him to forgive you your sins, whereupon you receive a ‘clean’ heart, to have a clear conscious. After that also make matters right with people, according to the extend of application.
2. be free of demons
If you know, that you are tied up by powers of the darkness (for example you are addicted, you have to do things that you don’t want to do, you just don’t seem to be able to loose it), the first make sure that you become free from it. Ask someone who is baptized in God’s Spirit and practises the spiritual gifts, if he wants to pray with you and wants to ban the dark spirits, in the Name of Jesus Christ.
3. listen to the Lord in everything
God gives the Holy Spirit to those that listen to Him, that are tuned in with Him.
With the baptism in the Holy Spirit we surrender ourselves completely to the guidance of the Spirit and let God be King in our lives.
4. be baptized in water
Not that this is an absolute condition for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but we do often see the following order in the Bible: baptism in water and after that baptism in the Holy Spirit. The first, who gave us an example in this was Jesus Himself, with his baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan. He who is guided by God in every matter, will also be happy to be (willingly) tuned in with him.
5. put your confidence/trust completely in Jesus
Don’t rely on people: the one says this, the other says that. Another person looks at it from a different point of view or knows someone, that experienced it or did it in a complete different way. Shut yourself off from those sounds!
Look up to Jesus only, to how He did it, than you are on the ‘right Road’ (He is the Way indeed!). Jesus is capable of fulfilling all promises of God in and to us, also the one of the baptism in the Holy Spirit!
Remove all doubt (satan is willing to whisper plenty of doubts into your ear); it is easy to conquer doubt, if you only take in the Word of God and leave all those other ‘words’ for what they are! When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert, He said: “There is written…”.
6. determine a distinct/ concrete moment
Make a ‘deal’ with the Lord, when you want to receive the Spirit. Yes, that is allowed, why not? As long as it happens with all the appropriate respect. Don’t let it stay vague. Don’t continue praying until you have no breath…!
After a time of preparation you determine a moment, that there will be prayed with and for you. The Lord, from his side, has already shown, that the promise is available to you.
The praying (/asking) for the Holy Spirit usually happens by the laying on of hands by other believers, who are fulfilled with God’s Spirit. This was customary in Acts, also in the meetings of the Church. You can go to the front for prayer when there is an alter call. Otherwise you can also ask for it yourself.
There are also testimonies of people, who are baptized in the Holy Spirit in their ‘inner room’. Of course this is possible. More important than how you receive it is the fact that you receive it!
7. relax
Relax when people are about to pray for you. Stretch out (in the spirit) your hands to the heavenly sanctuary, to receive the promise out of the hand of Jesus Christ! What an unimaginably great, loving and beautiful happening that is!
Don’t (any longer) think about the people around you. They support you with their prayers and they will rejoice with you in God’s goodness, that He will also let his Spirit come in you.
So, relax and surrender to the Lord (just like with the baptism in water). He will do the rest!
8. accept the promise in faith
Do this very consciously. Imagine this in faith. Think about how it happened in the Bible, then it will become more concrete to you. The Lord hands this promise out to you, you don’t have to look for her. You only open your heart: your thoughts and feelings.
The Lord gives his Spirit by ‘pushing you under’, in the spiritual world. You don’t get a ‘little piece’ of the Holy Spirit, but God pours out the Spirit over you in abundance! Even when you don’t experience anything, you can thank God for receiving the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the baptism in the Spirit is also coupled with (a lot of) emotions. It is different with every person; you are unique, with you it will go in ‘your’ way!
9. surrender to inspiration
Now that you have received the Holy Spirit, you can calmly surrender yourself to his inspiration. Now the Holy Spirit wants to form words on your lips. Put, therefore your speech-
It is strange according to your feeling. But now you know the working of the expression. The Spirit of God will make the ‘strange ‘sounds into sentences in an harmonious way.
Again: no word can come out of your mouth with closed lips and a restrained breath, not even by inspiration by the Spirit. You will ‘have to’ start speaking indeed!
It is not about a wonder of speaking here (it is your own mouth that is being used), but it is indeed about a language-
You now calmly let the stream of sounds come out of your mouth. The Spirit continues (now and also later) to inspire you.
10. a place in your prayer life
Now that you speak spiritual languages, it will take a big, or maybe the biggest place in your prayer life indeed. In fact, by speaking spiritual languages, you can live the whole day, sometimes more sometimes less conscious, in relation with God (you sometimes speak softly within yourself, sometimes aloud, for example if you are alone somewhere or in the car – often a very beautiful (good) opportunity!).
It goes too far here to completely calculate the ‘advantages’ of this gift. Look at other places on this site for this or in other readings/ books. Maybe you can also look at the site: www.rhemaprint.nl (only available in Dutch).
11. other gifts
Also start to knowingly reach out for the realization of (the) other gifts, expressions of the Spirit in your life. Through speaking spiritual languages you are edified and the positive result will also be experienced by your brothers and sisters in the Church!
By striving after the other gifts your fellow believers and also others are directly edified or experience support and recovery (through you).
If you are also full of pity for your by satan oppressed fellow man, than this is a beautiful way of helping him effectively and bringing him further on the road, that leads to the eternal perfect life with and near God!
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