Continued from part 1 of this post: Now you might be saying, “Oh great! This is how to really have the Spirit of God? How in the world am I going to have this? There is no way this is happening now? This is back then in the Bible days. It doesn’t happen today. It’s impossible. And if it still happens today there’s no way I can have this if I have to speak in tongues and prophesy!”
To answer these questions, yes it still happens today. I got filled with the Spirit of God when I was 9 years old and I spoke in tongues and prophesied about the wonderful works of God. I still do that today when I go in the presence of God and worship Him and love Him. It certainly still happens today. “Prophesying” about the wonderful works of God is when the Spirit of God comes upon you and you start to speak in tongues (you can’t drum this one up either), and you start to praise Him and love Him and speak out loud about how wonderful He is and how great He is. Of course when you’re speaking in tongues you can’t understand it. But somehow in the process of speaking in tongues you will speak in your own language and you will understand what your heart is saying. You are loving Him and praising Him. You will feel it come from the bottom of your soul. It just happens. It just comes. You just want to do it.
And yes, you may certainly have it too. The Bible states according to your faith so shall it be done unto you. Now, don’t get worried that you may not have the faith to have it. If you lack the faith, ask the Lord for it. The second thing is, this is exactly what the people that were listening to Peter asked. When he started preaching to them about Jesus Christ and how they crucified him and rejected him, and how God had made Jesus Lord and Christ, the people asked the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said unto them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall received the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” {Acts 2:37-39} See, Peter said the promise of the Holy Spirit is unto them and to their children and to all that are far away, “even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” So if you feel the Lord’s calling in your life then the promise is yours. Just believe. Have faith that He loves you and He most certainly desires to give it to you.
Now the thing is though, like Peter said, we have to repent. Repentance means, “the action of repenting; sincere regret or remorse.” Basically, repenting is turning away from sin and desiring to live for God and to follow Him. It is also asking Him to forgive you of whatever sins you have done in your life from since you were aware of them when you were a child until this moment. You can say this prayer, “Jesus, I come to you right now and repent of my sins. Please forgive me for whatever I have said, done, thought of, desired in my life, and that were not pleasing before you. Please Lord forgive me. I repent of them. My desire is to live for you and follow you. I ask also that you will come and be my Lord and Savior in my life today. Please come into my heart, I pray, in Jesus name. Amen.” That is the first thing about getting the Spirit of God. I ask the Lord for forgiveness every time I come to Him. I even ask Him to show me my sins and to help me repent of them. Remember, He is our righteousness. Without Him we are nothing. We can’t be perfect without Him. So don’t try to please God without His help. It is pointless. Jesus Christ said in His word, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” {John 15:5}
The second thing is, get baptized. After you’ve repented and asked the Lord Jesus Christ for His forgiveness for all the things you’ve done wrong in your life, against Him, against other people, and against yourself, you need to get baptized next. Peter said that it is for the remission of our sins. Remission in the Bible based on Strong’s Concordance, is “deliverance, pardon, complete forgiveness. A sending away, a letting go, a release…” Basically, when you get baptized you’re getting your sins washed away from you. It is also a spiritual “burial,” or dying away from your old life and living a new one for God. This is so important in God’s eyes that Jesus Christ made John the Baptist baptize Him. He told him, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.” {Matthew 3:15} Basically the Lord was saying, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Even though mind you, He did not have any sin, yet he was baptized. Apostle Paul explained it this way, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” {2 Corinthians 5:21} This clearly shows us that baptism is so important to God that the Lord asked John to baptize Him. He said it is a righteous act. That’s why Peter says to us we should do it. Also, another thing to note here, Peter told everyone to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Why? Because, Jesus Christ is the only one that can take our sins away, there is no one else who died for our sins. He alone can save us. He is the Lamb of God sent from above to take our sins away. Furthermore the Bible states in Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” There is no other way about it, the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ.
Also, remember the twelve followers of John the Baptist who were baptized by him, got re-baptized by apostle Paul. The scripture states they were baptized in the name of Jesus. There’s nowhere in the scriptures in the book of Acts where the people were baptizing in the “name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” Even with Philip who preached in Samaria, the scripture states that the people were baptized “in the name of the Lord Jesus”. {Acts 8:16} Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, is not a name. Jesus is. I know, I know, Jesus Christ told His disciples that when they go and baptize that they should baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But remember Jesus Christ told Peter, “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” {Matthew 16:19} Basically speaking Peter will know the way to enter heaven. He has the keys to enter heaven. And so, this is exactly what Peter told us on the day of Pentecost. He is giving us the keys to enter heaven. Peter knew the name of the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost. He knew it’s Jesus Christ. Remember the prophecy in Isaiah 6:9? It said there, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” We can’t say Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, and the Prince of Peace and not believe that He is also the everlasting Father when the scripture plainly says He is. If there is only one God and we believe Jesus is God, then we’ve got to believe He is also the Father. Peter knew this. All the apostles knew this. Even apostle Paul knew this. That’s why they went around baptizing in the name of Jesus. They weren’t breaking the Lord’s commandment at all – they were fulfilling it. Jesus Christ told Philip one day when he was asking the Lord to show him the Father, “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” {John 14:9} Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9 that “the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily in Jesus Christ.” When we see Jesus we see God and everything that makes God, God. We can even see the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. (To put it bluntly Jesus Christ is the Holy Ghost. After all, who died and rose again? Isn’t it Jesus Christ?) That’s why it’s such a powerful thing that God, in the flesh, has come to us and died for us. This what makes His coming so incredible because, God, the Father, the Spirit that created all things in this life and makes all things possible, has come down and revealed Himself to us in flesh and blood and we call His name, Jesus. He said to the disciples, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” {John 14:10} If Jesus is God and there is only one God, then we have to believe that Jesus is the Father too. But seriously, you don’t have to take my word on this either; you can ask the Lord to show Himself to you. Ask Him who He is and He will show you. If you earnestly desire the fullness of Jesus Christ and you seek Him for a revelation of who He truly is, He will show Himself to you. This is how I came to know who He is, I asked Him to reveal His fullness to me. It took years in the making but He showed Himself to me. He revealed Himself to me. I wouldn’t know who He is otherwise if He didn’t reveal Himself to me. He can do the same for you if you ask Him.
