“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8
God has not left us alone. Not only did he come to us in the person of his Son Jesus, he also comes to us daily in the person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, more than simply ‘coming to us’, he dwells within us, never leaving us, always helping us, changing us and empowering us to live as followers of the Way.
Upon becoming a Christian the Spirit of God comes alongside our spirits and he witnesses to our spirits. He impresses upon us that we are in fact sons and daughters of God. The Spirit embraces our inner person enabling us to know deep within that we are dearly loved.
The teaching of Jesus and the experience of the early church however went much further than this. They held that the Spirit came in dramatic ways as well. He worked miracles, emboldened believers and bent the laws of physics. In Acts alone we almost find an A-Z of differing encounters with the Spirit:
Assurance, Boldness, buildings shaking, Crying out “Abba Father”, Demons being driven out, Evangelistic zeal, Fruitfulness, Joy, Languages, Miracles, Perseverance through suffering, prophecy, power, Rushing wind, Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, spiritual giftedness, submission to one another, Thanksgiving, tongues of fire descending and Unity.
Andrew Wilson writes: “Personally, I have never met a real Christian who has experienced none of these, and I have never met a real Christian who has experienced all of them… it appears that although the results of baptism in the Spirit are described in the Bible, they are not prescribed.”
