I have a wonderful encounter with the Holy Spirit. It is beyond the baptism of the Holy Spirit - He entered my life! From personal experience three things happened:
1. The Word of the Living God became absolute life to me. I just fall in love of the Bible. I have no less than 20 Bibles in my possession. I prefer the NKJV and so I have many Study Bibles in this version. No longer did I read a little from Matthew and a little from Psalms. I opened the Bible and felt as if I were inside it - seeing it "live and in living color." The voice of the Holy Spirit led me to a great adventure in the Scriptures.
2. My prayer life changed dramatically and completely. Gone were the hours of praying, yawning, and repeating myself. I prayed because I want to and not because I have to. The Holy Spirit urged me to pray. The Holy Spirit and I were in conversation. He made God real. He gave me power and a boldness that made me feel ten feet tall.
3. He transformed my daily Christian life. I actually began to sing and don't know why until I read the Words: "Be filled will the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in my heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:18, 19).
What began to happen to me was not natural - but supernature! The Holy Spirit had taken over. He began to baptize me with a love for people - even those who I considered "unlovable" earlier. It was exactly as the Word declared: "The love of God has been poured out in our heart by the Holy Spirit who was given to me" (Rom. 5:5).
I became such a changed person that my natural instincts and reactions were replaced by the leading of the Holy Spirit. I learned what it meant to "crucify the flesh." And I realized that I couldn't do it my self - "For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Rom. 8:13, 14).
How are you led by the Spirit? You become familiar with His voice. You recognize it. You respond to it. And the more you fellowship with Him, the deeper the relationship becomes.
To be familiar with the voice of the Holy Spirit
How are you led by the Spirit? You become familiar with His voice. You recognize it. You respond to it. And the more you fellowhip with Him, the deeper the relationship becomes.
First manifestation of the Godhead
From the beginning of time, God made the person and the power of the Holy Spirit clear. In fact, the Holy Spirit is the first manifestation of the Godhead in Scripture - "And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (Gen. 1:2, NKJV).
When God created Adam out of the dust of the ground He began by forming mud. That mud was absolutely dead until the breath of life came. The Bible says that God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of live and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7).
The breath of God is the Holy Spirit. Here is how Job described it: "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4).
The moment God breathed into Adam, he came alive. When Adam opened his eyes the first contact he had was with the Holy Spirit. For He was the breath that flowed through Adam's body and remained hovering over him. Adam stood up completely filled with the presence of God.
The Scripture tells us that God the Holy Spirit was the power of creation. "By His Spirit He adorned the heavens" (Job 26:13).
What is even more exciting, however, is that God wants to take that same Spirit and give Him to you and me. He actually wants to "pour" Him on us: "Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful fiels" (Isaiah 32:15 16).
What a wonderful promise. God wants to pour His Spirit on you. He wants to breathe His Spirit into you. He wants you, like Adam, to come alive.
Realizing that the breath of God is the Spirit of God was for me like discovering a buried treasure. When the Almighty speaks to you, you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who communicates the voice of God. The description of God the Father's voice is recorded in Job: "Hear attentively the thunder of His voice ... He thunders with His majestic voice ... God thunders marvelously with His voice; He does great things which we cannot comprehand' (Job 37:2, 4, 5).
The power of God's Voice was more than the people of Israel could understand.
God directly spoke in the New Testament
In the New Testament, there were only three times that God actually spoke:
1. He spoke of Jesus: "And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well please'" (Matt. 3:17).
2. Jesus Himself asked the Father to "glorify Your name." And here is what happened: "Then a voice came from heaven, saying, 'I have both glorified it and will glorify it again'" (John 12:28). The crowd who heard it said it had "thundered" (John 12:29).
3. When the clouds surrounded the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration and God said: "this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him" (Matt. 17:5).
The voice of God produced an awesome result. "When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, 'Arise, and do not be afraid.' And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only" (Matt. 17:6 - 8).
The Holy Spirit spoke to the Old Testament prophets
The voice that was heard by the prophets was that of the Spirit - not the voice of the Son or the Father.
Isaiah talks about hearing the voice of the Lord saying: "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed" (Isaiah 6:9, 10).
But who was really speaking? Was it really the voice of the Lord? Or was it the voice of Jehovah on earth - the Holy Spirit? To find out, let's look at that same Scripture as it was repeated in the book of Acts.
Paul, in Rome under the watchful eyes of a guard, preached that - "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers, saying, "Go to this people and say: 'Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive; for the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart and turn, so that I should heal them'" (Acts 28:25 - 27, emphasis added).
Who really spoke those words? What Isaiah attributed to the Lord, Paul clarified as being spoken by the Holy Spirit.
It is true that the New Testament explains the Old. Here is another example. In Jeremiah we read: "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:33, emphasis added).
The prophet writes, "says the Lord" (Jer. 31:31). But to understand the true source of that Scripture, you need to read it in the book of Hebrews: "The Holy Spirit also witneses to us; for after He had said before, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts and in their minds I will write them" (Heb. 10:15, 16, emphasis added).
Who said it? The Holy Spirit. Not only did He witness it, but the Scripture reveals that "He had said it before" (Heb. 10:10).
The Holy Spirit equals God
Many Christians are somehow brought up to believe that the Holy Spirit is less equal with God. We are somehow indoctrinated that because He comes third He is not really God. The truth is - The Holy Spirit is God, He is no less God than Jesus. He is no less God than the Father. He is as much God as the Father and the Son.
Jehovah is the name of the triune being - not the name of just one of them. The Father is called Jehovah. The Son is called Jehovah. The Holy Spirit is called Jehovah.
When God the Father speaks, He speaks through the voice of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus sent out the Twelve, He said: "Do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spiri of your Father who speak in you" (Matt. 10:19, 20)
Over and over again in Revelation we are advised, "He who as an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says ..." (Rev. 2:7, 11, 17). Whose voice should we hear? The voice of the Spirit.
Even Christ himself does not speak without the Holy Spirit. In Acts we read that He was taken up into heaven, "... after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen" (Acts 1:2). And in Hebrews we find that Christ offered Himself to God "through the eternal Spirit" (Heb. 9:14).
No one can hear the Voice of the Father or the Son directly
The Holy Spirit is the one who communicates heaven into your heart. He is the voice of God to you. Imagine what would happen if God the Father ever spoke to you audibly. You could not bear it. it is doubtful that you are even prepared to hear the voice of Jesus, described as "the sound of many waters" (Rev. 1:15). When John heard it, he fell at His feet, "as dead" (Rev. 1:17).
The Holy Spirit, however, takes the voice of the Father and the Son and makes it quiet, lovely, and perfectly clear for us to hear.
The mystery of Trinity made clear
How can God be one and three at the same time? God is one, but God is also three: Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
Look at it this way - God is like the sun in the sky. If you look at its brightness you see one sun. In reality, however, it is a triune sun that keeps our planet livable. There are three distinct elements: The sun, light, and heat.
And so it is with the Trinity. The Father is like the whole sun, Jesus is the light, and the Holy Spirit is the heat you feel. When you stand in the presence of the Father, what do you feel? You feel the warmth, the energy, and the power of the Holy Spirit. If you look into the face of the Father, whom do you see? "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," Jesus said to Philip (John 14:9).
I get excited when I think about the time I enter heaven. The Godhead will be there. When I stand before the Father I will see all three - the Spirit, the Son, and God Himself!
What does God look like?
There is not one place in the Word of God where the Father is described in detail. Stephen, "Being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaen and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55).
Stephen saw Jesus clearly, but when he saw the Father he could only see the "glory" that surrounded Him. Yes, God the Father has a form but no man knows what it looks like (Phil. 2:6). The Word says, "No one has seen God at any time" (John 1:18). But the Son came to reveal Him.
If you look closely at what Christ said, you will understand how the Spirit embraces the Godhead. Jesus said, "No on comes to the Father except thorugh Me" (John 14:6). And Scripture teaches that we are drawn to Christ by the Spirit. In other words, you've got to have the Spirit if you want the Godhead. When you embrace the Holy Spirit you are also embracing the Father and the Son.
Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth, says, "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3:17). That's right. We all confess that Jesus is Lord - but so is the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Jesus!
The Holy Spirit is omnipresent, but unfortunately liberty and freedom are not found everywhere. Some Churches feel more like a hostile prison than a house of praise. Why? Because the Spirit is not Lord in that congregation.
The Trinity is the Glory of God
We need to understant that the Trinity is the Glory of God. God the Father is the glory of God; God the Son is the glory of God; and God the Holy Spirit is the glory of God. But who manifests that glory? It is the Holy Spirit. That is part of His work.
How do you know that you have passed from spiritual death unto life? You know it because the Spirit told you. The Holy Spirit speaks right into your being - into your very blood and marrow..
In exactly the same way, we know that Jesus is alive. Not because we have seen His face, but we know He is alive by His Spirit. And that same Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit is for you and me - today
If there was one particular verse the Holy Spirit revealed to me that turned my life around, it was this: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen" (2 Cor. 13:14).
The more I studied this verse, the more exited I become. Suddenly I know that the Holy Spirit was for me - today.
Here is what the Holy Spirit showed me. When did we know "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ?" When He died for us. When did we know "the love of God?" When we saw the cross. They both refer to the past. But then we read, "the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all," I said, "That's it. The Holy Spirit is here to commune with me and be with me now!"
