New Life in Christ AND the Holy Spirit

Okay, after last Sunday's message I felt like I needed to do some research. As I was praying for direction about this business of receiving Christ and the Holy Spirit at the same time I knew in my spirit that there was a passage of Scripture that would "exhonorate" me. Sure enough, it was actually a passage that I had chosen to us in my message but didn't get to it. The passage is Acts 2:38. Just a side not, I'm not a big fan of text-proofing. For those of you who don't know what text-proofing is, it's the use of scripture to prove a principle or belief. You might ask yourself this question, Isn't that what reading the Bible is all about? Yes and No. The point of the Bible has nothing really to do with proving whether God is God or that anything He did whether through the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit is valid or not. The point of the Bible is let us, mankind, know what He has already done and what He desires to do and plans to do in the future. You can prove the existence of God through His Word, but that is not the primary purpose of the Word. Read II Tim. 3:16, 17 and that will in a nutshell tell you the purpose of the Scripture.

But back to my proof-texting. Luke in writing about the early days of the church recorded an event that took place with Peter. The folks he was addressing got under conviction and said "Brothers, what shall we do?" It was then that Peter said to them, "Repent, be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." There you have it. The forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit all in one fell swoop. So is that the end of it all? By no means NO! Because as we move in our journey of faith and deeper into our relationship with God we learn to surrender more and more to Him and as we surrender more of ourselves we are filled up with more of Him. We pour ourselves out and He pours Himself into our spirit. There are times where we stall out, get discouraged, perhaps even want to give up. Don't give up friend, simply reach out and take the hand of Jesus and He'll pull you closer to Himself then you and I were before. Why don't you let Him do that today? He can be trusted!