By Andrew Williams
Acts of the Apostles 19:2 NLT- “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them. “No,” they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
Good morning fellow disciples.
There are many enthusiastic persons who go about preaching and teaching about Jesus without a proper understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 19 we see Paul encountering believers who had not heard of the Holy Spirit and had only received John’s baptism, which called for repentance of sin.
We see also that Apollos, who was an eloquent speaker and who knew the scriptures also taught about Jesus, but he also only knew about John’s baptism.
Acts of the Apostles 18:24-25, ‘Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. He had been taught the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy. However, he knew only about John’s baptism. ‘
Many of us today have gone out to make disciples and preach without being fully informed or without the baptism of the Holy Spirit and power.
This ought not to be so!
Remember that after His resurrection Jesus told His disciples that they should wait until they received the gift of the Father before they went out to make disciples. This gift, the baptism with the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered them to be effective witnesses.
Let us seek to know more about God and His gift to us. Let us go out empowered by the Holy Spirit to be effective witnesses/ambassadors for the kingdom of God!
Prayer: Lord, we want to be effective witnesses for You. Help us as we disciple each other, and fill us with Your Holy Spirit so that we can be effective witnesses for You. Amen