August 9. 2014

So I've been thinking! My youth group has been doing a devotional right now, and we're in Acts. And it seems that acceptance of Jesus and recieving the Holy Spirit is TWO seperate events, unlike the ONE event the church tends to teach nowadays.

The biggest example of this is of course Pentecost. The apostles had been spending many days after Jesus was lifted up praying (Acts 1:12-15) and replacing Judas (1:16-26). A couple days later, at Pentecost, THEN they were filled with the Holy Spirit (2:1-4)! The apostles obviously believed in Jesus beforehand, they JUST watched Jesus be taken into heaven! There was no doubt in their mind who He was, God made sure to fix that problem (John 24-29)!

After the apostles recieved the Holy Spirit, they start speaking in tongues and Peter delivers the first gospel message, founding the basis of the Church with 3000 followers (Acts 2:5-42). But what I want to draw your attention to is the wording of verse 43: "*THEN* fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles." (Acts 2:43, HCSB) The Bible clearly states they devoted themselves, and THEN recieving the Spirit (or fear as its the word used in the passage)! That word 'then' implies there is a short passage of time before anything happened...

Romans 8 talks some about this either, though its vague, and frankly, I don't do in depth studies so feel free to investigate this yourself as it may or may not be 'real' proof... Romans 8:9 HCSB says: "You, however, are not in the flesh, since[m] the Spirit of God lives in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him." The footnote for [m] says: OR 'provided that', so it can be read "...provided that the Spirit of God lives in you...." Thats makes it sound like someone can BELIEVE in Jesus but not have the Spirit!

Now, drawing from my own life, I think this is what happened to me. I accepted Christ in sixth grade, and thats when I lived FOR Jesus but I had no life changes... I still lived by the rules my parents set outwardly and had ZERO integrity. But I DID have a God experience that turned my heart towards Him! Four years later, halfway through my tenth grade year, God showed me I needed to stop living FOR Him and start living WITH Him! One night I was praying and suddenly I KNEW with a passion thats what I needed to do... there was no way of explaining it, but now I think thats when I recieved the Holy Spirit! After that I grew and learned extremely quickly and God gave me opportunities to serve Him and I started my G+ ministry... its been kinda crazy ever since!

Why its important: I think a lot of Christians were walking around like I was, thinking they had done all they needed, because our church today teaches ONE event; salvation AND recieving of Holy Spirit. While I think its common that the two happen together, and may look like one, in other cases its distinctly two happenings (like mine). So we have a bunch of half-wakened Christians, and this might be our hypocrite problem also, cause if you ask me, they haven't experienced the full Jesus thing yet. I could NOT turn back to my old ways if I tried, it'd be like shoving a knife into my own throat... it just wouldn't happen. And if I did manage it, I'd die inside. Once you have the Spirit is when He starts using you! This message was not intended to scare you guys or make you think you aren't saved... please don't view it that way. If you have the Spirit, you'll know! If ya don't you'll take a double take at this and wonder if what I'm saying is true. If someone would kindly take a look at my research and see if I went wrong ANYWHERE, please let me know. I don't wanna scare for no reason, but I think its important for people to know... God bless you all and keep living it like Jesus!!

#LiveItLikeJesus