Now for a little burden-shifting.
It has been stated a number of times in this discussion that all a Christian has to do to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to believe and seek, and perhaps tarry.
Here, then, is the catch-22 in which I find myself: I simply don’t believe.
Let me clarify my unbelief. I do believe that the first generation of saints received the baptism almost exactly as my pneumatic brothers have described it: it appears to have been frequently experienced subsequent to conversion; it appears to have been universally given to all who were converted; it appears to have been invariably accompanied by supernatural manifestations. No problem there.
I do not deny the possibility that God still does such things; I do not even deny the possibility that God could some day do so to me. But what I do not believe, and what it seems I would be required to believe if I were to receive the blessing, is that God will do so to me.
What is the cause for my unbelief? I do not believe that faith is effectual unless it is based upon the explicit promises of God. And though I see, for example, that God universally promises salvation to all who put their faith in Christ, though I see that he universally promises that as many as die in Christ will be raised with him, I have yet to see where he universally promises that all who are converted will experience this supernaturally-manifested baptism of the Holy Spirit.
I cannot receive, you say, until I believe God's promise. I cannot believe, I say, until I have heard his promise.
Help my unbelief.
20 comments:
Ask, seek, knock.
Acts 2
37When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
38Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call."
Verse 39, second word.
You have been called by God
-the promise is yours!
I forgot to mention that Peter's whole sermon in Acts 2 is in response to the passersby seeing the manifestations of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and accusing them of being drunk at 9:00 in the morning. I consider it the best answer to unbelief ever made.
Hey, now that's not a bad argument, chaz. I don't know if it's entirely conclusive, but it certainly puts the burden back upon me.
I have two initial responses, one is rather complicated, and I can't yet get the other to pass the red-face test. Stay tuned.
Brad - you are correct in that it takes faith to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit - of course, and again, all gifts from God are received by faith.
I think Chaz4jc gave the answer I would have given about the universality of believers receiving the baptism of the H/S. But my question to you is more rudimentary - and that is - what is at the core of your unbelief? How about this to help your doubt - what if there is a, say, 50% chance it's true? Would that be enough for you to seek?
I suppose the simple solution to helping your faith is that if you received the baptism in the H/S - you then would believe, and I certainly have many examples of such in my congregation. However the catch 22, if you will, is if you don't believe at some level, you can't receive.
So that leads to another interesting question - what is the "critical mass" amount of faith required to receive from God? Whole heart? Part of your heart?
This is not an argument, merely an explanation:
At the core of my unbelief is the fact that although over the years I have sought and have prayed (and that right fervently at times) that God would give me more of his Spirit, I have never experienced anything like what I see described in the pages of the New Testament.
Wrapped right around that core of unbelief is the additional fact that I know many other Christians who have had the same non-experience.
Again, not an argument, just an honest explanation.
When you say that you've prayed to receive 'more of his Spirit' - are you saying that you have prayed to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?
Alrighty then!!!
Now that I know you are seeking after a greater blessing from God, and not making the same old arguments I have heard time and again- we can talk!
I wouldn't give you a 1,2,3, procedural in my earlier comments just because of the experiences you and others you have mentioned have had. I do not want to add to your unbelief in any way. That having been said...
I want to share with you some observations I have made in 35 years as a Pentecostal believer.
First, let me share the wisdom of my favorite Steven Curtis Chapman song "God is God"- He will do what He wants to in His own good time.
What I have seen is that everyone's testimony of this experience is different in detail, but similar in content. My wife grew up in the United Methodist Church in the DC suburbs and never heard anything about Christ's death burial and ressurection until she was 17 years old and went to a camp meeting. There a retired Presbyterian pastor shared the Gospel with her and led her in prayer to accept Christ. He then told her to come talk to him again later that afternoon because he wanted to tell her that there was more to what she had just experienced. In the afternoon meeting he explained the baptism in the Holy Spirit and laid hands on her as they prayed for her to receive it. I, on the other hand had been saved for six months before someone told me about the next blessing that was mine, and I prayed for it for six more months before it happened early one Thursday morning during an all-night tarrying session. I was surrounded by believers who were praying for me when God shut down my over-active mind and laid me out right on the floor. When I woke up I was praising Him in a language I never learned.
I could share many other stories from people I have met, but what I have learned from all of the stories is some of the common threads: after they were taught about the gift of the Holy Spirit most (not all) of them had to remove themselves from an atmosphere of unbelief, spend some time learning from and observing people of faith and then most that I have talked to had other Spirit filled believers lay hands on them and pray for them to receive.
First about an atmosphere of unbelief. Jesus did not perform many miracles in his hometown because of their unbelief. Unbelief is a cummulative condition- it seems to grow exponentially. Unbelievers feed each other unbelief. Unbelief is contagious and on this continent it hangs like a cloud over most of the church. When I leave this country to travel to South America or Africa, I can feel the unbelief fall away as I leave our airspace. Maybe that is why they are seeing revival accompanied by miracles in their churches and we are seeing apathy and frustration in ours.
I would recommend that you spend some time with Eric, and some of the men in his congregation and observe how the Holy Spirit leads their services in a dynamically powerful, but also a very orderly fashion. Then maybe spend some time alone with a few of them and have them lay hands on you and pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
No, I am not saying that you must change churches ( unless the Holy Spirit leads you to), in fact I am going to pray that God will fill you with the Holy Spirit and then use you to tell others in your church all about it!
I am saying that you should separate yourself from those who would try to drag you into their unbelief with vain arguments from man's wisdom, spend some time in conversation with your Father about your unbelief and ask for Him to put it behind you. Then spend some time with people that have contagious faith, and let them help you ask your Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
You have already heard that the promise is yours. Can you think of any one thing that makes you less deserving of the gift of the Holy Spirit? If you can- call that thought a lie of the enemy because none of us really deserves it. If we deserved it, then it would be called a reward- not a gift.
I would love to pray for you myself, but my arms won't stretch that far. I can commend to you our brother Eric, because I have spent time with him and have seen his faith in action. Spend some time with him and I will be praying that God will give you the desire of your heart.
Brad - how many days of continuous seeking did the 120 do in the upper room before they received?
Why didn't they give up?
Chaz, Lots of points to address, I'll try to do so soon. I do appreciate your prayers.
Eric, I don't know how many days altogether, but I imagine they didn't give up because they had a specific promise: "you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit," given with reference to a specific place: "not to depart from Jerusalem" and to be fulfilled within a fairly specific time "not many days from now."
Brad - correct - and Acts 2:38-39 is a specific promise for whom?
For all whom God would call.
Well there's your answer my friend. We've been given a specific promise from the Word to seek and receive the Holy Spirit. And not only once, but as stated in Eph 5:18 (other passages as well) - The present tense of “be filled” implies a continuous action “keep on being filled”.
Here's another question for you - is the ultimate goal for every human to merely get them to believe in Christ - or call on Him?
So where are my instructions as to where I'm supposed to go to receive this promise, and how long I'm supposed to wait there for it?
I've been to Jerusalem once, but I only had five days to spend there.
you sound like Nicodemus bro ;^) A reading of the rest of the book of Acts shows us that there isn't a particular place to go to receive the Holy Spirit. All that's required is faith to receive and a hunger to receive it (Him).
Brad - sorry, I guess I overlooked your sarcasm on "going to Jerusalem". If you are going to approach scripture that way, then I assume you've also cursed God to maintain your integrity per Job 2:9; or perhaps practiced Prov. 30:33 and are "wringing people's noses to produce blood"? ;^)
Back to your earlier question about the degree of faith I believe would be required to receive the baptism, I think, if the promise still stands, a mustard seed would probably be likely to do it.
But my question is, how specific a faith does it need to be? Why, for example, would the continual fervent prayer that God would give me more of his Spirit be less effectual than the specific faith and request that me make me speak in tongues (if that were the only sure proof of the baptism)? Why wouldn't it work to say, "God, give me as much of your Spirit as you give these days."?
Will God refuse his children an egg if they fail to ask for a specific kind of egg?
Do I believe God gives me his Spirit? Yes. Do I hunger for more of the Spirit? Absolutely. Have I put a limit on how much of his Spirit I want? Not in the least. Is that enough to get me baptized in the Holy Spirit in the same manner as the saints of old? It would appear not.
For the measure of faith - exactly, just enough of it to know God can do anything - a mustard seed.
But I don't think you are answering the question yet, bro. I don't think it's a matter you wanting more of God's Holy Spirit - I believe you do - but rather it's a matter that you simply believe it doesn't happen that way today - at least not for you. As long as someone feels that way, I don't suppose God will invade their lives in that manner, as God is not the well meaning mother-in-law that will force her "special recipe meat loaf" on her son in law.
We've talked about the measure of faith - but how about the "kind" of faith? I think that is just as important. Child-like faith is the key - because a childlike faith says, "God I don't need to understand, it may be outside of my tradition, it may be outside of my experience and context, but if it's from You - I want it."
A note of encouragement - I know someone who prayed for over 6 years to receive the Holy Spirit. He received the baptism at the hospital bed of a brother church member where he and another guy had gone to pray for healing. The baptism was really obvious, in that the man he was praying for was instantly healed. (I want to say he was undergoing chemo or radiation treatments, though I'm not sure about that detail.)
The point is like the song Chaz4jc mentioned: "God is God". For whatever reason God didn't anoint GS for over 6 years even though he was earnestly seeking, and even then the HS didn't come while G was specifically asking for the HS. In EVERY other instance of prayer we are encouraged to continue seeking, to continue asking, to continue in faithfulness until God answers. Praying and seeking the baptism of the HS is no different in that respect.
It was and still is very frustrating to me to have to continually seek after God. I don't like being dependent, having to wait, or being unsure of where God is leading. Many times I tend to hedge my bets in prayer. Heck, MOST or ALL of the time I hedge my prayers, not in genuine submission to God but rather in a lack of faith and giving God an "out" because I doubt He'll answer. (ie "God, if you don't want to, then OK, I guess you won't and I won't hold it against You.") God convicts me at times with something like "If you would only trust Me, I would give you far better than what you are asking."
God still answers many of my prayers, not because of the purity of my faith (it's not), but rather because God is good to bless His children even when we lack faith. God isn't an automaton who immediately pops out an answer to prayer when we finally cross some faith-threshold. Rather he answers, refuses, and convicts to bring us closer to Him.
Where there is faith, God moves, but those who doubt are like waves blowing this way and that on the wind and should not expect God to answer.
"Is that enough to get me baptized in the Holy Spirit in the same manner as the saints of old? It would appear not." I don't know you personally and so maybe I'm not understanding you correctly, but this sounds like giving up faith in Christ, not merely coming to a theological decision based on Bible study.
The 'argument' to me that makes the most compelling sense is not so much an argument as a principle of continuity with the early church that I am loathe to break without damn good cause. This is a function of having rejected cessationism as extra-biblical and dangerously tied to dispensational thinking. (I just can't find a way, in fact, to untangle the latter two.)
From there, I think it's a matter of taking a long hard look at the role of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant, the role of "Baptism" more broadly in the new covenant, and then figuring out why it was that this 'phenomenon' or 'praxis' of baptizing in the Holy Spirit took place in the early church and what that means for us.
That's not an argument, its a description of a process through which I worked.
Hi, by the way, Brad. :-)
I actually stumbled upon this having clicked on my own profile's "Classical Education" interest. And there you were! And here was a blog! I hope you read my comment.
Thrilled to have you visit, sir!
I catch where you're coming from. However, I take my preterism to provide at least some cause (perhaps not damned good, but at least good, though some might say just damned) for seeing some break in that continuity. Peter said that the supernatural manifestations of the Spirit were for the "last days." I am fairly confident that the apostles were living in the last days and that we are not.
Like you said, I don't see this as proof, necessarily, but it is at least what has allowed me thus far to keep my (weak) cessationism disentangled from dispensationalism.
BTW, nice avatar, quite mystifying.
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