January 16, 2008

• The Holy Spirit by Pastor Don

  Pastor Don did one last Bible study on the Holy Spirit before we move on to the next of the elementary, basic principles mentioned in,

  Hebrews 6:1-3 Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

  We dealt with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit questions, and we finished looking at scriptures about the laying on of hands. Pastor Don gave us a homework assignment at the end of this Friday’s Bible study. I am going to share it with you so that you can be prepared for the notes I will share after next Friday’s Bible study. We are to read about the Resurrection of the Dead. 1 Corinthians 15, John 11 (Lazarus) and Matthew 28.

  Pastor Don mentioned that with the Holy Spirit Baptism there are many gifts of God, and we want to receive and operate in them all. God could, if He chose, break you and force you to do His will, but He does not operate like that. God is God of Love and Justice. He is the Creator and the Father. Yet, if you are disobedient to Him he will slap you down and cause you to pay for what you have done. Many think of God as only loving, forgetting that He is also judge. And He will also forgive you for what you repent for. Unforgiveness and resentment prevents you from flowing in the spiritual gifts. If you hold anything against anyone it will block the flow of the Spirit. We are not qualified on what we deserve, but on what we believe.

  Matthew 11:25  At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.

  The number one reason healing is not manifested, prosperity is not manifested, and joy is not manifested is unforgiveness. The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy. If we are operating in unforgiveness, righteousness leaves, when righteousness leaves, peace is disturbed. When our peace is disturbed, joy disappears and we end up complaining and judging. Our unforgiveness binds us. We need to remember that when we are wronged, God will avenge us. If we are holding a grudge, if we are seeking revenge in our own strength it binds God’s hands from dealing with the situation.

  Spiritual gifts will not flow through an unclean vessel determined to play God.

  Someone asked how can you love someone who is so evil and still in your life – and Pastor Don said that you can love them but not want to hang around with them. And often he prays, “Help me to love the unlovable.” We are to do nice to the people, but we don’t have to go to the movies with them.

  Pastor Don told us that often what we need to do is change our glasses, change the way we look at people. We need to remember that hurt people hurt people. But you don’t have to choose to be a victim, you don’t have to hook up to the hurt people hurt people syndrome. After time we will see God move and see a change in the situation. Pastor Don shared about someone in his family who, after an operation, became very mean to him and to his family. Pastor Don and Cynthia stayed nice, often to the wonderment of those who saw the mean behavior. But Cynthia (Pastor Don’s wife) told us that the person did not change their mean behavior UNTIL they prayed for the person to change. God can change a person.

  Pastor Don tells himself that he’ll treat people nice because he does not want to mess with his anointing. God doesn’t play, “Well she deserved it.”

  The Baptism of the Holy Spirit comes with power and power is short circuited by unforgiveness. Jesus took things harder than all of us. He was crucified, His body was ripped into shreds, and people spat in His face, gave Him a crown of thorns. None of us can say that we received any tougher treatment than that and Jesus loved those who hurt Him so.

  Why do we believe in a Supernatural God and leave off the Super part. Prayer, laying on of hands , and praying in tongues are part of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

  Acts 2:1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

  They were in one accord, in agreement, unified. Miracles in the church will increase when we are in one accord. We give ourselves excuses. We say, I can get to God if they would sing the song I want them to sing, if that person would stop wiggling, etc. We want to appear super spiritual, look at another person’s agenda, or say that she’s got some nerve by doing that, and getting caught up in distractions. This is dividing the ACCORD. God can understand an unsaved person who does not understand – that is no problem for God, but division in the church from believers is not a way to God. We need proper respect and order in the Church.

  Psalm 122:1-2  I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.” Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!

  The Joy of the Lord is in the atmosphere when there is an attitude of gratitude. We accept everybody’s offering. Those who are busy noticing what others are doing or not doing – who made them the super spiritual police? There is a point where it is wrong to do something, and that point is where it would call attention to one’s self and where you are doing something to be seen – when you are operating from self and not worshipping God. But it is God who reads the hearts of the worshippers, not the super spiritual police.

  Some people adopt a worship posture that lets people think that they are super spiritual, but they are not in the Spirit. We are to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth. Your Spirit man must yield to the Spirit of God, and we worship with truth. We have to ask ourselves are we worshipping in truth or in the flesh? Does our worship style distract or add to the service? If the style is in the flesh, it is a distraction. Pastor Don said that the way he worships in the privacy of his home is not always the way he worships in the congregation.

  The purpose of corporate worship is the desire to get into one accord. To focus totally and solely on God. The miracle in the upper room was based on a particular event in the Jewish Calendar, the day of Pentecost. 

  God prophesied it was to happen. This was not a regular falling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told them to go and stay and He’d send them the promise. Not a manifestation of the Spirit, but an inhabitation of the Holy Spirit – something that had never happened before. The Holy Spirit was coming as a comforter, the Truth, and giving the disciples the power to endure. God would fill them with power from on high. But there was a price. They were going to go throughout all of Judea and the surrounding area and the outermost parts of the World to spread the Word of God. Most of those in the Upper Room also died horrific deaths due to persecution for spreading the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit gave them strength through the persecution.

  Pastor Don asked us if there was a set day for this, and the answer was, The Day of Pentecost had fully come. God set the time for this to happen. Pentecost was the 50th day after Passover and had significance. God was going to do something. Passover was the festival of first fruits, for Jesus was the first fruit offering. Pentecost would be the second fruit – the disciples. Jesus, the Lamb of God was sacrificed at Passover. He came, went to the cross, ascended, descended, gave gifts to men. Then Jesus gave us as a gift to the Father, he gave what He went to the cross for at the Passover meal-his Disciples came into covenant with Jesus. And then Jesus told them that just like He and His Father were one, the disciples and His Father were one. Jesus gave the disciples as an offering – it was the time of the wheat offering. The second harvest, barley is a little lower than wheat. Passover was wheat, Pentecost was barley. At Pentecost the first fruit offering was to bring an offering to God of souls.

  Peter preaches a one page sermon and 3,000 get saved. 3,000 disciples was the offering to God from Pentecost. God did what one person couldn’t do under their own power, he confirmed the Holy Spirit Baptism by doing something that Peter couldn’t do on his own. What you can do under God in your own strength is good, but under the power of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was way better. There was no clergy at this time. The Spirit Filled believer has the power to make a difference, we do not need to wait for the clergy to do something. We have been robbed of acting in the power of the Holy Spirit if we look solely to the clergy to do what God has ordained that we all can do.

  The Shekinah Glory baptized those Spirit Filled Believers in the Upper Room. They waited there until what was promised came. Pastor Don asked us, what comes with the promise?

  Acts 2:16-17 But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:  ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.

  God poured out His Spirit on ALL flesh, not on certain religious groups, not according to race, economy, discernment. But on ALL flesh. Sons and daughters – it was not gender particular. Prophesy is to tell forth the Word of God. It can be either 1) telling forth the future, 2) speaking forth the Word of God, 3) or tongues with interpretation. You can’t take any of these out of the mix. To try to limit this is to violate Joel’s Word that Peter confirmed as real.

  When a female steps to the pulpit to speak forth a Word from God, they are no longer what the flesh says they are.

  God prefers marriage, and most creatures born with two heads rarely survive. We are to do what we are supposed to do. To do as we were born to do, to love it and glory in it. In these last days, we need to run the race. Gender and sex have nothing to do with being servants of the Lord.

  Acts 2:18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days and they shall prophesy.

  Young men and young women will have the Spirit poured out on them and THEY (men and women) will prophesy. The Prophet Joel said the same thing twice, which is an indication that God does not want us to miss this point.

  Pastor Don then told us that at the time of the prophesy the Jew was considered a servant of God. But we, as Born Again believers are children of God. Up to this point, God only used Jews as menservants and maidservants, but a completed Jew became a Child of God. God broke down the wall when He split the veil at the time of the crucifixion.

  By 300 AD some men got together and decided to put the wall up again, and put on fancy robes and took the priesthood back. After King James and the Bible was printed, 1300-1500 the wall started to come down. By the 1800′s the Protestants put the wall back up again. They wanted to ignore the spiritual gifts that tore the wall down. They began to preach that these gifts were not for this time period, or for anyone for the purpose of ministry in the Church. They taught the theology that these gifts were not for us, that prophesy ended with the Apostles, and they started to develop a culture of priesthood, and had the audacity to call themselves “reverend” or “father.” They killed the gifts so that the regular parishioners would not have the power of the pastor. But a pastor is really just a servant of the flock, just one sheep with the bell around it’s neck that helps to lead the other sheep to the shepherd.

  The truth rattles our cages. Sometimes a pastor’s wife can out preach the pastor. The position of pastor does not always have to include preaching. It is to be a position of loving the sheep and guiding them through life. So many churches pick pastors for the wrong reason – it isn’t preaching, but administration. The role of the pastor is not delineated in the Bible - pastor is only mentioned two times. God organized the church by spiritual gifts, not by titles.  The Bible mentions the head elder, not the pastor.  But not every head elder has a pastor’s heart. Someone can be a great administrator, have a wonderfully huge congregation, but not have a pastor’s heart.

  Acts 2:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

  God did a specific thing on this day of Pentecost. Is what happened in Verse 2 normal at any church service? No. If we are waiting for a mighty wind to rush through the church, it may not happen that way. Pastor Don said that he has experienced a wind of God on a few occasions, but it is not an every time the Holy Spirit comes occurrence. This happened to the first 120 people, men and women, to answer the perpetual promise that God made for 4,000 years, so that these people could change the world. God was to do something special on that day, but it was not something that would happen all the time.

  Acts 2:3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.

  Pastor Don told us that not all the time will we see divided tongues as of fire. He said that someone once saw that and said that it looked sort of like the heat radiation that comes off of a highway in the summertime. God gave those in the upper room an additional, special anointing – almost all were martyred. We are not to pray for tongues of fire, it it happens be happy about it, if it doesn’t be happy about it. What is most important is the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

  Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

  Pastor Don asked, who is doing the speaking – many said that the Holy Spirit was doing the speaking. Pastor Don then asked for people with other translations to read theirs and seek that answer again.

  Acts 2:4 AMP And they were all filled (diffused throughout their souls) with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other (different, foreign) languages (tongues), as the Spirit kept giving them clear and loud expression [in each tongue in appropriate words].

  Athena, who comes to our Friday Bible study read from her Greek Bible and gave the following further information – the word for “speaking” in Greek means to bypass the intelligence, and then that they spoke other languages.

  Pastor Don asked us to read what was written, to bypass our predisposed theology and read the words on the page. It is the people who spoke, they spoke what the Holy Spirit told them to say, but they were the ones doing the speaking. If the Holy Spirit took over and spoke though the people’s bodies, that would be possession. And that is not what the Holy Spirit does.

  Pastor Don had someone stand up and had her speak about something, then Pastor Don whispered in her ear, and she stopped talking about what she was speaking about and said, “Buenos Noches.” Then went back to speaking what she was talking about. Pastor Don in the role of the Holy Spirit put those foreign words into her mind and she spoke them forth. The Holy Spirit could put a thought in our mind that we speak forth, something we ordinarily would not say or think.

  The problem we have is our minds, which sometimes get in the way of God. We cannot get in a relationship with God as Spirit if we are coming at God limiting Him with the limitations of our mind. Speaking in tongues shuts down our minds so that we can bypass our intellect and get to the Spirit, to get to what God wants to tell us. (That is not the only way to do this, but it is effective.)

  God gave these people in the Upper Room a gift and an ability, and they spoke to people in an unknown language. Whether they spoke in the actual foreign language, or if they spoke in an unknown tongue and each person heard the message in their own language, it is still a miracle. They spoke to the people with the tongues of angels and the tongues of men, they were of one accord and ready to receive. They had an attitude of gratitude and expectancy that was necessary for them to receive. If they were not ready to receive, and had not opened themselves up to receive, they would have gotten nothing.

  God stirs us up, and ALL were filled with the Holy Spirit.  In order for the person to become Spirit Filled there has to be an understanding of the Holy Spirit being present and a sense of God. The Holy Spirit must be present for the filling to occur. Philip went up to Samaria where there were believers who were doing signs and wonders, but they were only operating in the Baptism of John for repentance, they had not received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Peter and John saw that there were signs and wonders occurring, but that the people had no filling of the Holy Spirit.

  Acts 19:1-6 WHILE APOLLOS was in Corinth, Paul went through the upper inland districts and came down to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he asked them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed [on Jesus as the Christ]? And they said, No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And he asked, Into what [baptism] then were you baptized? They said, Into John’s baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, continually telling the people that they should believe in the One Who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus [having a conviction full of joyful trust that He is Christ, the Messiah, and being obedient to Him]. On hearing this they were baptized [again, this time] in the name of the Lord Jesus. And as Paul laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke in [foreign, unknown] tongues (languages) and prophesied.

  Pastor Don told us these believers were Born Again, followers of Christ, and believed in Jesus, so why does he even ask? Pastor Don told us that the Spirit in us identifies anyone else that is a Spirit Filled believer. We can tell if someone is Born Again, if the Spirit of God is operating in them, if they are not Born Again, or if they have the Spirit of God upon them but are not Born Again. We can locate, through our Spirit where another person is in their faith.

  The Holy Spirit knows and you can sense and find out if someone is saved or not saved. It is important to be honest about where you are. You can say, I have the Holy Spirit and don’t want that other stuff, or I want the other stuff, or I want some of the stuff. God can work with our honesty.

  Verse four above tells us that there are many different baptisms. This is the verse to show those who try and tell you that one Baptism takes care of all. If one baptism takes care of all, why would Paul make the distinction? Are we  not in the same category as these people in Acts?

  Mark 1:9-11 It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

  Jesus was Baptized, but He did not have any sins to repent for, so immediately the Holy Spirit came on Him.

  Acts 1:5 (see above) the Baptism of Fire was received from Jesus. They were baptized in the Name of the Father, baptized in the name of the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit was NOW upon them.

  Luke 11:9-13  “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 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!”

  The Heavenly Father will give us the Holy Spirit if we ask Him. Pastor Don told us that to impart the Baptism of the Holy Spirit on a person, you show them the Word of God, and both of you ask in agreement that God will give them the Holy Spirit, lay hands on them and tell them to begin to speak. Sometimes it will  happen instantaneously, other times it may occur at a later period, but the Holy Spirit will be on a person, and it is up to them to yield to the Holy Spirit.

  Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

  It is the person doing the talking. If the Holy Spirit took over the person’s body and talked through them that would be demonic possession. If it is the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to stop and start at will. Notice that it says And THEY, not the Holy Spirit began to speak and give utterances. The Holy Spirit is alongside helping.

  Praise God and the Holy Spirit helps. God wants to do something for you and also for others, for the benefit of all the Spirit led believers. The Gifts of God are not for our own selfish purposes solely, but so that we can help the Body of Christ.

  Acts 2:5-6 And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.

  Why were they confused? These were not mysteries to God, but were used to exhort, edify and comfort the people. But the people in Jerusalem knew that the people in the Upper Room were uneducated, and should not have been able to speak all those languages.

  Pastor Don told us of a time when he was in Russia speaking through a translator. He had asked the translator to read a particular passage of the Bible. The translator began to read and the Holy Spirit told Pastor Don that the translator was reading the wrong passage. Pastor Don stopped the translator and told him this. The translator and the people in the congregation knew that Pastor Don did not speak Russian, so would have no way of knowing the wrong passage was read. When the translator looked, he realized that he was reading the wrong passage. That word of knowledge from the Holy Spirit increased the faith of the people to believe for the working of the Holy Spirit.

  Pastor Don told us: PARTICIPATE IN THE SIMPLE GIFTS AND MIRACLES THAT BEAR FRUIT AND GOD WILL MOVE YOU INTO GREATER GIFTS AND MIRACLES.

  God will speak into our spirit, and we need to obey God. As we operate in obedience we will see greater gifts and miracles. We need to take our thoughts captive, and begin to follow through with what God tells us. The devil will try to interfere, and stop you from focusing on God.

  Pastor Don told us that sometimes distractions can be more of a problem for women because we tend to worry and seek approval. We do many things at once and call it multitasking, but it is often worry and frantic activity. Pastor Don told us that women who can control that tendency become powerful intercessors.

  We need to listen to the dialogues in our head and take captive those that are not from God, to not get lost in the quest of our minds. We need to pray like Daniel, who held onto his prayer for 21 days until the answer came.

  BUILD SOME QUIET TIME IN YOUR LIFE SO THAT YOU CAN HEAR FROM GOD AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.

  Praying this blessed you and answered some of the questions from the last Friday Bible study on the Holy Spirit.

  Have a blessed day!

  Heather

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