The Law of Love

1 John 4:7-8 (NKJV)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

There is so much that God wants to say to His people today, He has never stopped speaking, the problem has always been that people have stopped hearing. The same God, the Lord of Hosts, The God of the armies of Israel is the same God that lives inside the believer today by the Holy Spirit. Let him who has an ear hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The Spirit has never stopped speaking to the churches, the Spirit has never ceased in anything that He set forth to do since He has been upon the Earth. Healing has not passed away, prophecy has not passed away, tongues and interpretation of tongues has not passed away, the working of miracles, or faith or the word of knowledge or the word of wisdom or discerning of spirits have never passed away for the same God works in us now as worked in Jesus Christ Himself, the same God works in the Church now as worked in the Church in it’s inception on the Day of Pentecost. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

There are so many people in the world today who are searching but they have no idea what they are searching for. To ask many of them, one thing that would be high on the list of things sought would be love, another would be truth. People want a spirituality that is real, and the enemy of their souls wants them to have anything but that. For too long have the people been held captive by a church that has become artificial, a church that has held to a form of godliness but has denied the power thereof. The Bible says that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, there is freedom. The truth contained in the Word of God does not put people in bondage to laws and rules and regulations rather it sets them free to live in the Spirit through the perfect law of liberty, the law of love. To love one another is the way that people recognize that we are the children of God. If we don’t have love then we are not born of God, anyone who is born of God has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit and that love will produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness as we cooperate with it. Love is the fulfillment of the law, if you love your neighbor then you will not commit adultery against him or her, you will not steal, you will not covet what he has, you will not murder him, you will not lie against him or bear false witness against him. Simply loving your neighbor will take care of all the requirements of the law and you wont even have to think about following a single rule. You will simply live according to the new nature that God has placed within you. If you are born of God then the new nature that God has put in you is love, for God Himself is love. Love is His very essence and if you are born of God then the nature of God the essence of God which is love is your nature and essence as well.

So many are bound under rules and regulations, trying to keep this commandment or that commandment but that is not the way of the New Covenant. The commandment of Jesus is that we love one another any other commandment that there ever was is summed up and fulfilled in this one, the law of love, which is the perfect law of liberty.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit Part IV

The gift of speaking in tongues that accompanies the baptism in the Holy Spirit is very important to the Church today because it is something that represents a certain level of surrender to the Spirit of God that is necessary to begin to flow in further gifts of the Holy Spirit. The surrendering of the tongue to the Spirit of God so that God himself may give you the utterance to speak a language that your natural mind does not understand is a step of faith that will serve as a springboard forward into the supernatural power of God. I have never witnessed anyone minister in another supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit who did not first speak in tongues.

In a very real way the baptism in the Holy Spirit is the gateway into the supernatural power of God for prophecy, for the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, the gift of faith, the gifts of healing, the working of miracles and any other gift of the Spirit. In order to minister in the gifts of the Spirit and in fact to accurately preach the gospel at all one must be yielded to the Holy Spirit. The more that one is yielded to the Spirit the more depth there will be to that person’s ministry and the more supernatural power they will flow in. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit does not come without being yielded to the Holy Spirit and in order to be yielded to the Holy Spirit you must do things God’s way and God’s way has always been to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and then minister in the power of the Spirit. There was never anyone in the New Testament who was ever recorded to have ministered in the power of the Spirit who was not first baptized in the Holy Spirit.

We are talking about the reality of spiritual things here. There are many in the world even among Christians who through ignorance of the things of the Spirit do not want to be faced with the reality of spiritual things. To be faced with the reality of the supernatural is frightening to some but you will never encounter true love until you encounter the supernatural love of God. The Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8 that God is love. That means that love is a supernatural spirit being, we would never know real love if it were not for the fact that God who is a spirit is love. Love, real love is supernatural it is not of this world. Certainly, there is a negative side of the supernatural and it is this side that movies and books and the like usually portray in order to inspire fear. God however who is love is so immensely greater than the negative side of the supernatural that there is no contest. The devil is not equal to God, he never was and never will be. Satan is a created being who rebelled against God and then fell from heaven because he rebelled. The Creator is so immeasurably greater than the creation that he could if he wished destroy it all including Satan and start over from scratch without anyone but Himself ever knowing that he had done it. There simply is no contest between God and Satan so do not allow fear of the supernatural to keep you from experiencing the fullness of the blessings that God wishes to bestow upon you. Open your heart and receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit it is not complex at all, it only takes trust, a yielding to the Holy Spirit and the willingness to act in faith to speak what He is giving you.

The first thing that is necessary in order to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit is to simply desire to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, without desiring a thing you will never receive it. That sounds quite simple when you put it that way, but the desires of the spirit are born in the spirit it needs to be a heart desire, something that comes from the inside of you and this desire is in every truly born-again believer if they are honest with themselves. It is manifest as a dissatisfaction with where they are in God, wanting something more, a hunger after God that can only be filled by His manifest presence. If you have ever experienced this as a believer then that is God drawing you toward a deeper relationship with Himself, seek His face, yield your heart, yield your tongue. Jesus said in Luke 6:45 that “out of the abundance of the heart his (a good man or an evil man) mouth speaks.”

It is out of the abundance or overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. As you seek God to be baptized in the Holy Spirit He will begin to fill your heart with His presence, with His Spirit. You may then begin to experience different things a feeling like your tongue wants to do something, some describe it as a thickening of the tongue, for some people they begin to hear words in their mind as thoughts it may be a combination of these things but they are all indicators that the Holy Spirit is moving upon you and is wishing to manifest something in you. The thing to do here is to simply yield to it allow your tongue to speak the words that are coming to it whether it is in thoughts or simply in urges. You will not be overpowered, and you can stop at anytime you wish. When you begin to speak your mind will not understand the words that are coming out of your mouth and your natural mind may tell you that they are just gibberish. Do not be deterred by this, spiritual things are foolishness to the natural way of thinking. Allow God to have His way, yield to His Spirit and as you do a whole new realm of the supernatural power of God will begin to open to you. Use the heavenly language that you receive to pray to God often, in private of course or among other believers who also speak in tongues because unbelievers and those who do not pray in tongues will not understand what you are doing. The more you pray in tongues the more you will become yielded to the Spirit of God and there simply will be no limits to where He is able to take you from there.

This concludes the series on the Baptism on the Holy Spirit, I hope you have been blessed please stay tuned for much more in the days to come. Be blessed.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit Part III

Now the apostle Paul who had been called Saul of Tarsus was converted by a vision of Jesus himself on the way to the city of Damascus and at the same time stricken blind, after his conversion the Lord sent someone to him with a message in Acts 9:15-18. It does not state here that Paul spoke with other tongues when he was baptized in the Holy Spirit but later in 1 Cor 14:18 he states that he speaks in tongues more than all of the Corinthian church.

The apostle Paul thanked God that he spoke with tongues more than the entire Corinthian church. Gifts of the Spirit had been kind of misused in the Corinthian church so Paul would have had to do a lot of speaking in tongues to do this.

The evidence that is more profound than speaking in tongues or prophesying is the power from on high that accompanies the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this is greatly evidenced throughout the book of Acts. One last thing before I close is that the tongues received at the baptism in the Holy Spirit also serve as a prayer language for the believer it is possible to pray in tongues when you receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit and you can do so whenever you want or need to. It is still the Spirit that gives you utterance to do so. It is just like you can start preaching anytime that you want to and when you preach sometimes the words come out so quickly that your head has no time to register them, yet they come out and they glorify God. 

Praying in tongues is a step of faith that you take just like when you open your mouth to preach under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul said again in 1 Cor 14:15 that he would pray with the spirit and that he would pray with the understanding. He specifically uses the phrase "I will" saying "I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding." The use of the phrase I will indicates that that this is something that Paul (or any believer for that matter) could do by choice as an exercise of his own will. He also made a definite distinction between praying and singing with the spirit and praying and singing with the understanding as if praying or singing with the spirit was something that his natural mind didn't understand. 

Look at 1 Cor 14:14. The apostle Paul seems to make a clear case that a believer can speak with an unknown tongue in a language that his natural mind does not understand, in verse 15 he indicates that he can pray and sing in this language as well, and the indication is that he can do it whenever he wants to because he says, "I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding."

The use of the phrase "I will" as stated before indicates that it was something that can be done by an exercise of the will and Paul indicates that he can do it as easily as he can sing or pray with the understanding. It is still the Spirit that gives the utterance else you would not be able to do it at all. Your natural mind will battle you on this because of what you have been taught either religiously or through just not believing in the supernatural. When you come to this revelation you will break into a new realm spiritually that will build up your spiritual life and empower you for the things of God like nothing that you have ever experienced before.

Please stay tuned for the next part of this series coming soon.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit Part II

I do believe that speaking in tongues is an evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I am not certain as to whether it is the only evidence, there may be other evidences as well, it is also stated in the book of Acts that people spoke in tongues and prophesied. Prophesy as spoken of here is not merely preaching. It is speaking something by divine utterance that is given by the Holy Spirit. Someone who is preaching can be prophesying but it is not always the case. True prophecy is never dry and boring, it is always fresh and alive, but it will not disagree with the Word of God. The Word and the Spirit are always in agreement. One thing that is very certain from scripture is the fact that the entirety of the New Testament was written by people who were Baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. All the authors of the New Testament except for the Apostle Paul were in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was initially poured out and all spoke in tongues. As we discuss later in this blog the Apostle Paul also states that he spoke in tongues as well in the book of 1 Corinthians 14:18. Let’s look again to the book of Acts, in Acts 2:1-4 we are shown the first recorded instance in the New Testament Church of anyone being baptized in or filled with the Holy Spirit. 

After being baptized in the Holy Spirit the apostle Peter preached a sermon in Acts 2:14-21 and the remarkable thing about this sermon is the power and boldness with which Peter spoke. This is the same Peter who due to his fear had denied Jesus three times before he was crucified. Here he was filled with such boldness and the power of the Holy Spirit that through the preaching of a sermon that lasted maybe 10-15 minutes 3000 people were saved. The baptism in the Holy Spirit imbues people with the power of God and a boldness to speak the truth of His Word that simply was not there before. In Acts 8:14-17 we have another example of people receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit after salvation. These people had been baptized in the name of Jesus and they had received the Word of God but they had not yet been baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Stay tuned for my next post which will explore the Baptism in the Holy Spirit further yet.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit

A lot of the modern church has lost touch with something that is entirely Biblical, but many do not believe is for today. The something that I am talking about is called the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The theology of a lot of American churches has, down over the ages, been unconsciously for the most part, attempting to remove most things that are supernatural about God or the manifestation of His presence today from their belief system. This is an unfortunate side effect of American culture. From childhood up in America we are taught that the supernatural is not real that it exists only in fairy-tales, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, all the natural reality of this entire universe that we see around us was created by God who is Himself a Spirit. That means that the natural universe was created and is sustained by a supernatural being. I am not talking about the spooky supernatural that we see in horror movies and the like, I am talking about the real supernatural, in which exist God, angels, demons and other supernatural creatures that the Bible describes. Do not be afraid of the supernatural because the Bible clearly states that God and believers in Jesus Christ here on the Earth are the ultimate winners of every supernatural struggle that they face. There may be losses in some battles, but the war is already won. If you are not a believer, then you are only a step away from being one. You simply need to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that God raised Him from the dead and confess that with your mouth and you will be saved. These are the essentials to being born again, there are other things that follow like water baptism and the like, but the essentials will get you into heaven. Let us now however move just a little beyond the essentials, not far but just a little. In the book of Acts Chapter 1:4-5 Jesus commanded the disciples to wait for the promise of the Father which would be the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is something that gives to the believer the power of God to enable them to effectively minister and be a witness to others of the wonderful things of God. In the book of Acts it seems that in most cases we are shown several examples where people are born again by the Spirit of God meaning that at the time of being born again they already have the Spirit of God dwelling in them but after that they are baptized in the Holy Spirit which typically resulted in manifestations of gifts of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues or prophesying. This leads us to a question that is sometimes a little bit difficult to answer correctly because in scripture we have many examples of it but no direct statement that this is how it must be. The question is; Do you have to speak in tongues to be baptized in the Holy Spirit? In all honesty I would have to say that I am not 100% certain. There are those who teach that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and those that teach that it is not. I can only teach what the Word of God tells us and in the book of Acts there seems to be many examples of people who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and only one or two where it is not directly specified but even in most of those cases the scripture states that a manifestation of the Spirit was evident that could be seen and heard. 

My next post will continue to address this issue further.