June 21 – The Father’s Gift: The Holy Spirit
The Second Chapter of Acts is one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible. In it, we see the Holy Spirit come in power, the first 3000 believers get saved, and the foundation and growth of the early church. It’s an amazing event in God’s interaction with man throughout history. Sadly, differing opinions on what this chapter means has caused some division among the body of Christ. Due to this fact, many people do not know exactly how to respond or what to think when it comes to the topic of Pentecost.
The funny thing is, people didn’t know how to respond when it happened either! We see in Acts 2:12-13 the different responses in the people who saw what had happening. Pastor Daniel touched on their reactions this morning. We read that as people heard God being praised in their own language, some asked, “What does this mean?” Others just made fun and tried to explain it all away. In which group do you belong? Are you open to understanding more about the Holy Spirit?
This morning we worshipped to an original song called Holy Spirit Come in which we sang these words:
Holy Spirit
Come and Fill Us
Come Reveal Who You Are
My prayer is that He would reveal Himself to us as we study through the book of Acts this summer. In Acts 2:2-3, the Holy Spirit reveals Himself as a rushing wind and pillars of fire. Pastor Daniel made the great point this morning that wind brings change and fire burns stuff up. If you’ve received the Holy Spirit, you should be different than you used to be. What change has the Holy Spirit brought to your life? What has He burned away? Join in the conversation of how the Holy Spirit has revealed Himself in your life…
Pastor Chris Davis
I admit that I used to be one of those that walked away from modern day acts like those in Acts saying they were faked…that was what I was taught. I had to repent yesterday when Pastor Daniel spoke of the two groups of people for being one of the doubters and naysayers! I can’t stand on the excuse of living what I was taught forever. We must get into the scripture, the Word of God and see what He says about himself and not stand on what other people have told us. I am so excited to be in a place at Mid-Cities where the miracles of God are not explained away, but instead are celebrated!!!
God has burned away so much from me since I have committed my life to him. He has burned away self-righteousness, selfishness (that one is still a work in progress!), control, plans, the list goes on and on. Most recently, He is burning away fear as we wait for test results on our youngest daughter. He reminds me when I consider what our future could hold that He holds our future! I love that no matter what our cirumstances or what we “feel” God never changes, and we serve an AWESOME GOD!
I was wondering…”fire burns ’stuff’ off”. This statement spoke to me during the sermon. I have been pondering a lot of different scriptures about having a “fear of God”. Now my nature is not to be afraid of anything and I am always trying to “think outside the box”. I see these things as blessings, but they can also be curses. When I think to far outside the box I can get myself in trouble with man and God’s laws. If I take the authority that is over me (being God and man) then thinking outside the box becomes difficult.
So I am wondering if the “trials and tribulations” that we go thru are God (by way of the Holy Spirit) burning stuff off? I am wondering …. Does God put things into our lives, good and bad, in order for us to learn or does He merely allow things to happen so that we might learn?
In today’s reading we read about Ananias and Sapphira. They fell dead for lying to the Holy Spirit. Were they wanting a recognition among the believers? They did not have to give all of the money to the church. Does a lying nature corrupt our souls? Why did they not get a chance to repent? Is all lying of Satan, if so does that mean that a liar is not of God?
I have heard it said that we “no longer live under the law”. I have taken that to mean the law of the old testament. All of the old laws and rules and regulations. That we live under grace today. That implies that we do not obey the laws of the old testament and yet Jesus’ interpretation of the law was stricter than the legalistic law because He involved our nature and our heart. It is a sin to commit adultery both in our hearts and our minds, as well as physically. Yet when we sin and repent God forgives us. Why were Ananias and Sapphira not given the chance for repentance? What is different about what they did than someone doing something for the church to get glory for themselves? Perhaps they were not lead by the Holy Spirit to give this gift to the church. Perhaps they were told by the Holy Spirit to give ALL of the sale of the land to the church and when they held part of it back for themselves the were revealing their hearts. Did God put this test into their lives in order to purify them? They surely had the power to overcome the temptation, but they slid to the dark side. What do you think?
Debby, I love your e-mail. I pray that the Holy Spirit will help us all honestly look into our hearts and examine the things we believe. Are they really scriptural or have we compromised the truth to fit it into our experience? Do you mind if I throw a few things out there?
You asked if God puts good and bad things into our lives to teach us stuff. God’s nature is always good, never bad. James 1 :17 tells us every good and perfect gift comes from God. Also, Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. (John 14:9) He only did what His Father did. Jesus forgave sin, healed the sick and set people free from the power of the devil and told His disciples (us) to do the same thing. He never said, ” Go on your way in your suffering and glorify God.” He always did good and opposed evil.
If God is always good, where does evil and suffering come from? Remember that before Satan and sin took charge of the earth there was no pain or suffering. Didn’t sin, sickness and death enter through Adam’s fall to temptation? I think bad stuff happens because of the sin that entered the world through Adam’s sin and sometimes even our own sin. We as people must take responsibility for our choices and not blame God for it!! Can we learn from the consequences of our wrong choices? ABSOLUTELY!!
So what are we to do when we are suffering bad stuff? I think the first thing is to examine our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit if we have allowed sin into our lives. If He brings something to mind, fall down in repentance and accept His forgiveness. Next, get up in holy boldness and get eyeball to eyeball with the devil and remind him that because of the blood of Jesus, he has no right to you. Use the authority of Jesus name and the power of His resurrection to tell the devil to leave and take his junk with him. James 4:7 tells us that if we will submit ourselves to God and resist the devil, he will flee.
I think we believers have been suckered into blaming God for our suffering. Lets put the blame where it belongs. SATAN!! Let’s become aggressive with our faith in who God says He is and oppose Satan and all of his works.
Debby & Becky, I LOVE your thoughts! The only thing I would like to add is on the topic of Ananias and Sapphira being struck dead. There is a LOT of that in the old testament! A question was asked “why couldn’t A & S have repented?” I’ve had that same thought as I read through the Old T. but feel the Holy Spirit gave me a glimps as to why. The Old T is full of “harsh” acts of God, showing His Holiness and hatred for sin. Praise God we have the New T! Without the contrast of the law and harsh power of the Old T. we wouldn’t see a need for an intermediary. Job cried out for one all through his book. He was longing for someone to go between he and God and WE get Jesus! Every time I read through the Old & New T I am reminded of our GREAT need for a Savior!! Due to the blood of Christ, we are seen as clean, holy and able to come into the presence of a Holy God. Without Jesus’ blood, we would be struck dead too!! I am forever thankful for the blood of Christ!!!
Debby, keep thinking out loud girl! I can tell you are a deep thinker. Keep looking to the Word and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you through His Word as well as His Body (other believers). Becky, I long for more and more of the Holy Spirit’s power to overcome the lies the enemy tries to throw my way. May we continue to spur each other on to that aggressive faith you spoke of. Allowing the power of the Most High to flow through every event in our lives, good and bad. He truly IS the Giver of every good and perfect gift! Thanks for sharing ladies!!
Hey Debbie,
These are good questions and something I happened to be very interested in and have studied in the past few years.
I think it would be good to look at the life of Jesus only because we know that He was perfect and deserved nothing bad in his life! Even though He never sinned, he definately had sufferings, but He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. (Heb. 5:8). So, we see it is not always because of our sin that we have suffering and hard times. Sometimes it is simply a trial of our faith. 1 Peter 1:7 It was God’s plan to crucify Jesus (the plan of salvation), but He knew He could use Satan as a pawn in His hand to fulfill His perfect will. So we can also say it was God’s will to bring hurt and pain into Jesus’ life, but He allowed Satan to put fear and jealousy into hearts to bring that about. “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him (Jesus)…” Isa. 53:10.
When our feelings or own understanding bring confusion, it is because they don’t yet agree with God’s word. Like with the Trinity: 3 persons, yet 1 God, we have to receive God’s word by faith, which simply means coming into agreement with what He says.
Debbie, if we take this same principal and apply it to this topic in question- God says about Himself that He is love (1 John 4:8). He is light and there is no darkness in Him at all (1 John 1:5). The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. (Psalms 103:8). Now, let’s go back to your question about Ananias and Sapphira: we see that by God’s power working through the apostles (not Satan’s power), that Ananias and Sapphira are killed! We have to know the character of God and trust that His judgment is righteous and it doesn’t change His love and compassion! Mercy and truth show a perfect balance of God’s character. When we see that God kills or puts some hardship into someone’s life, we have to always know that He is light and there is no darkness in Him at all; therefore He does nothing out of an evil heart, but from a heart of love! This takes faith! If we don’t believe that He is the one who puts pain in people’s lives, in trying to protect His character, I’m afraid we might end up giving more power to Satan. To say that Satan has the final say on all the bad things that happen to us is giving him too much power! If we know God has the final say in all of this, we recognize His authority, and then if we will remember what He says about Himself, we won’t doubt His character in the process.
To me, it is a matter of taking the whole word of God and rightly dividing it (2 Tim. 2:15). And Jesus never meant to cancel out the law of the Old Testament: He came to fulfill the law. So don’t throw out the OT because there are many great and precious promises for us, such as the one I gave from Psalms about God’s compassion and mercy!
It is God’s overwhelming compassion that keeps drawing me to Him and His powerful fierceness that makes me fear Him and want to obey Him!
I hope this has helped you somewhat and even more, I pray that you will believe God’s word over your own feelings and understanding until He gives you revelation of it!
Thanks Kimberly!
You expressed what I was questioning so much better than I did. If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, then the old testament is very relative today. Yes we have Jesus’ blood, but so did A & S. They were NT believers. THey were a part of the new church. I think it was their hearts. Perhaps God saw in their hearts no repentance for what they had done. Perhaps if they had lived they would have caused great damage to the new and growing church because of what they had done. The thing is how do I take this and apply it today to my life so that these things will not happen to me. So that I may better walk His path and learn His lessons.
I believe that God has placed things (trials) in my life in such a perfect way. Trial #1 comes along…I in my self-centered life I thought I had fixed it and moved on…. Trial #2 comes along, my husband and I work hard at fixin’ it. We think we have it all under control. Trial #3… BAMB… a combination of #1 and #2 with a little extra for good measure. God knows what it takes to get us straightened out! These were overwhelming for us and showed us how really stupid we were! I know these things were from God and not Satan because it brought us to God. We had been trying to be good people on our own before these trials. We were exactly where Satan would want us. Now because of these trials we believe in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and open our hearts to everything He has to teach us. I know He knows what He is doing and I just need to ask Him…”What do I need to learn from this?” There are times I am not sure if it is God’s voice or Satan’s I am hearing, so I pray to bind Satan (I actually picture it like a mummy wrap, especially the mouth) so I can better hear God. I also see that when I do not read my Bible daily it is harder for me to hear the Lord speak to me, but it is nice to be learning all of these things, including learning to have a healthy fear of God.
Thanks for all the discussion!
What awesome discussions we have going on here. I think of 1 Cor 14:26 where it says that when we come together each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue and an interpretation. It amazes me how God can speak different things to each of us and when we come together and share them, they all line up perfectly to give us an even bigger picture of the truth than any of us had individually.
Something I wanted to share that happened just recently. We had the privilege to pray with a couple in the hospital the other night (they were able to go home soon afterward, God had already begun healing her, what a mighty and glorious God we serve!!). When we were praying over them, God spoke to me. First He brought to mind a passage in 1 Peter.
1 Peter 1:6-7 (NASB)
6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials,
7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
God began to reveal to me that our faith is more precious to Him than refined gold. Stop and think about that for a minute. My faith in God is more precious to Him than refined gold. Wow!! I think we have all seen the late night TV commercials advertising investments in gold coins (which Dave Ramsey says we should never do). Think about how people in this world clamor for gold and precious metals. How they search and seek. How precious it is to them. Then we see in 1 Peter that God cares even more than that about our faith. That just blows me away!! That my faith is that precious and valuable in God’s sight.
The other thing God spoke to me is that because my faith is that valuable in His sight, He allows things to come into my life so that my faith might be refined. He knows that faith does not grow sitting on the couch watching TV, it grows when we walk through those hard times that come up in life and yet still in the midst of the pain and hurt and fire, we turn to God and declare that we trust Him and know that He is working all things together for good (Rom 8:28).
Someone might ask, if God is good and He loves us, why does He allow hard times in our lives? I do not presume to know the total answer to that. However, my wife and I have 4 boys. I love them all very much. Yet I still desire for them to walk through difficulties. This is not because I do not love them. It is because I know there are lessons they need to learn from a storm when they are 10 that will carry them through the greater storms that I know are coming when they are adults. It is because I love them that I do not shield them but allow them to face the difficulty head on. But because I do love them, I promise to walk through the difficulty with them. This is the same promise that we have from God.
In Philippians 3:10 Paul links suffering to God’s power and intimacy with God. In the verse he states “that I may know Him (Jesus), and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings”. Our suffering causes us to come into a greater intimacy with God, which in turn leads to a greater outpouring of His wonderous power in our lives. It is my prayer that in everything I might know God more. I do not seek just knowledge of the Bible (although that is a great thing), I do not seek to just know more about God, but that I might know Him more. That I might hear His voice more distinctly, that I might see His face more clearly, that I might truly abide in Him daily. And that my faith, which is so precious and valuable in His sight, might be tested, grown, and refined; and that it will result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The God of the universe has opened the door for us to have a deep relationship with Him. I pray that all of us hunger and desire after a relationship that is deeper, more intimate, and more fantastic than anything we have ever dreamed of or imagined!!!
Thanks for reading along, God bless you all!!
Hi Debbie,
Thank you for your wonderful encouragement and it was such a delight to see your openness to God’s word and working in your life!
Didn’t you love Pastor Daniel’s example of how we sometimes think God was a strict, harsh dad in the OT, then after realizing how He needed to mellow, changed into a grandpa figure in the NT? It was so refreshing to hear Pastor remind us that God will never change.
I believe you are right on track about Annanias and Sapphira and it being the condition of their heart: we must trust God’s judgment that it is righteous. You may not realize, but you showed this when you began to contemplate outloud how God could see the future and was doing what was best for the church.
You said A & S had the blood of Jesus just like we do – true. But I would like to challenge you to go a step further, and say that the believers in the OT also had the blood of Jesus to look forward to, and were not in right standing because of their actions alone. Although right actions will follow our faith. ” … and I will show you my faith by my actions” (James 2:18b). It was also by faith that they were saved. “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness” (James 2:23). They also had the promise of a Messiah that they looked forward to, just like we have Messiah, or Christ, that we look back to. Same Lord, same faith, same salvation, same means of righteousness; only a different dispensation.
God has always looked at the heart, as shown in this OT scripture: “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, looking to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose hearts are perfect toward Him” 2 Chronicles 16:9.
Debbie, what a wonderful heart you have – to ask God what it is He wants you to learn from your trials. Oh, that we would all have this attitude! (I am thinking of my present trial and see the lack in my own life). It seems like too many Christians are fighting God when they think they are warring with the devil. Yes, we must reject and fight off Satan’s condemnation, doubt, guilt and shame (I like your mummy visual). But the sooner we realize that God has the final say even when the enemy is being used, the sooner we will mature. And as we saw, this is the heart God is looking for to be able to display his power and glory.
I certainly hope my husband and I will be able to meet you and your husband (with your cool name). Who doesn’t like Coco, right? We have been attending Midcities since February and are loving the people and the services there! Stay in the word and it will be your protection from false doctrine and false teachings and it will give you wisdom beyond your years!
Grace and peace to you and your family!