A review of the basics about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson, and this is going to be the final
Little Lesson in our extended series on speaking and other tongues and the baptism
in the Holy Spirit. And I'm so thankful for those of you that have stayed with me during
this entire series. We've gone through, not everything in the Bible that could be relevant,
but we've taken a look at the most relevant scriptures, at least in my understanding.
And I'm thankful also for those who have received the blessing of the baptism in the Holy Spirit
and who have written to tell me about it. That's been a super encouragement to me. And
if you're one of those ones who has received and spoken in other tongues, but you haven't
let me know yet, I'd appreciate if you would do that. And I can rejoice
with you. I would encourage you then to use your wonderful gift that God has given you
every single day in your personal prayer life. Praying not only in your known language,
but praying in that unknown language that the Lord has now enabled you to pray in.
And although you don't know what you're saying, you can be certain that it's
perfect prayer. And as we read on our previous Little Lesson, Paul actually said, let him who
speaks in unknown tongue, pray that he might interpret. So
there's no harm in asking the Lord to give you some understanding, at least whenever it would
be His will for you to understand. I don't think that we have a promise that we could claim that
the Lord's going to allow us to understand everything that we're saying in tongues.
But there have been times when I certainly sense when I've been praying in tongues, particularly
when I have a sense of a burden of prayer, where something seems pressing, and I feel like I need
to pray and pray something through that there have been times when I've sensed that the Lord's
showing me the situation that I'm praying for, or the person. And who's going to find fault with
praying as best you can with the help of the Holy Spirit. So we know in part right now, Paul said,
and we prophesy in apart. We see through a glass darkly or a mirror dimly, whatever translation you
read. So we're not going to know everything or understand everything, but thank God for
what we do understand. And we understand that this is a wonderful, wonderful gift.
Now, if you have been with us through most of these lessons or all of these lessons, and
you have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit yet with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues,
let me encourage you not to give up. No reason to give up. I would encourage you to go back to the
beginning of this series and watch them all again. And perhaps there could be stuff that you'll catch
the second time around that you didn't catch the first time around. We know the Bible says
that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And so if you want your faith to
grow and become stronger, the way to do that is to focus on and feed upon the word of God.
And so if I was seeking to be baptized in the Holy spirit, I'd be reading all the
scriptures that are relevant to that, that gives me confidence, that this is indeed
God's will for me. So I'd read through those five chapters in the book of Acts,
Acts 2 and Acts 8, and 9, and 10, and 19, where we have definite instances of people
being baptized in the Holy spirit. And in most cases, it mentions that they spoke in tongues.
I'd read what Jesus said in Mark 16, about one of the signs that will follow the believers is that
they will speak in tongues. I would read Luke 11:13, where Jesus said, "If you being evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" And I would read John 4 and John 7 where Jesus made mention,
first of all, to the woman at the well of Samaria, that if she were to ask Him, He would give her
living water. It would become within her a well of water springing up to eternal life.
And we pretty much identified that as a cryptic way of speaking about being born of the spirit,
because so often water represents the spirit. And that is confirmed
by John 7, which I'd also encourage you to study, then Jesus's words when he stood up at the Feast
of the Booths and said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink," and so forth. And
he will have rivers of living water flowing from his innermost being. And John says "This he spoke
of the spirit, that those who believe in Him were to receive." And so that's a promise right there.
You have to just come to Him and to drink. And one of the most basic things that you
need to remember, and I've emphasized this several times during this series, is that
like most things in the Christian life, it's a combination of the natural and the supernatural.
I mean, we all experience miracles every day of our lives. What I'm doing right now, talking
to you, is a miracle when you think about it. I'm communicating ideas, words that form in my mind,
and that I'm moving my mouth, and using my vocal chords, and my lips, and my tongue to communicate.
And that's natural. Everybody does it. We do it all of our lives, oftentimes without consciously
thinking about how amazing it is, and the fact that it is miraculous. We eat food every day and
we take our fork and stick it in the carrots and put those things in our mouth and chew them up.
Never thinking about how miraculous it is that we can actually see the carrot, and see the fork,
and actually accurately stab it, and get it into our mouth, and then chew it up, and then swallow
it. And then the body takes that and takes the nutrients and nourishes every cell of our body.
I mean, it's phenomenally amazing. But there is a human part that is played in that miracle. We're,
as it were, cooperating with God. So don't let the devil talk you out of this wonderful experience,
because I've encouraged you to pray and then to act upon your faith. Peter walked on the water,
but that was a miracle. God was holding him up as he walked across the waves there. But goodness
gracious, he had to do the walking. He had to get out of the boat. So there's the divine part,
and there's the human part. And that's just, you can say that about so many things.
The miracles in the Bible, Jesus fed the 5,000, but the disciples
distributed the food and so forth and the paralyzed guy got up and walked, but Jesus said,
stand up. So the guy had to make some kind of an effort. He had to do something. Same
is true here. If you have faith, and that's the main ingredient here. You got to be born again,
first of all. But then after that, it's pretty simple. You just have to have faith. Have faith
and have enough faith to open your mouth, and begin to speak, because it's in the Bible,
just like you do anything else that God said you could do, you'd act upon your faith.
If you were Peter in the boat and Jesus was out on the water and said, "Come," would you just stand
there and say, "Well, I don't want to just do this myself. I want this all to be the Lord and him to
get all the glory. I don't want to just fake it here. And so I'll just stand here and wait for
myself to be supernaturally just lifted out and for God to grab my legs, and make them."
No, you have to do your part, and God will do his part. And
once you've spoken in tongues one time, then this all makes perfect sense because you're very much
aware that when you speak in tongues, it's because you decide to speak in tongues from then on.
I mean, I speak in tongues every single day in my prayer life, at least. But in other times,
throughout the day as well. And every time I do it, it's me, I started, I stop it, but the
Holy spirit gives me the utterance. So don't let the devil talk you out of it, because of that,
that's really, I would say that's the primary stumbling block that I have observed over the
years, more than anything else, is Christians are persuaded by the word of God, but they just fail
to act upon their faith, with the kind of faith that acts. And if you're praying and hoping that
you'll be baptized in the Holy spirit is being done. It's not enough. You got to get beyond hope.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Hope always leaves room for the possibility
that what you want, you may not get. Faith is confident assurance. It doesn't take
no for an answer. It forges ahead and says, "God cannot lie,
and so this is how it's going to be. I'm going to pray, and I'm going to get up
from my place of prayer. And I will have spoken in tongues, because I'm going to act on my faith,
and begin to speak with the help of the Holy spirit give me the utterance." All right.
So that should be enough. I've basically done the best job I can do in this series to help
you be baptized in the Holy Spirit. So I just wanted to kind of review
the fundamental basics in this final video in this series. Again, don't forget to let us know.
We want to hear the good news about your being clothed with power from high. And I should say,
and I'd be remiss not to say this, and I almost didn't say it, but the speaking in tongues part
is great, but there's much, much more to it than that. Much more to it than that.
The main purpose of being clothed with the power is to be a more effective witness for the Lord.
But even that is just part of the overall package. So blessings, blessings, blessings, blessings.
"If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children," Jesus said,
"how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"
I think that means that the greatest gift that God has for his children,
now the greatest gift for the world is salvation, and eternal life,
forgiveness of sins. But the greatest gift that God has for his children is the Holy Spirit.
And if you don't agree with me now, I think eventually everyone will agree with that.
All right. Thanks so much for joining me. If you've never been to DavidServant.org,
why don't you check out our website? You can search for articles, read books,
so forth. There's just, goodness, almost couple of decades worth of material that I've written
and so forth and put there. And it's all for free for your spiritual growth. DavidServant.org
or.com. Either one of those works, all right. Until next time, may the Lord bless you.