Acts 8:15-17 When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

I couldn’t begin to say how many times I’ve heard this passage quoted by Pentecostals or Charismatics in talking about a “second blessing” of receiving the Holy Spirit after salvation. It is certainly a major influence on the practice of laying hands on people for various spiritual reasons. Where this all gets tied in knots is the whole matter of whether the gift of Tongues is the “initial evidence” of having been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I personally think the far more important point is that every believer needs to be baptized in and filled with the Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus told His disciples, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) In other words, “You can’t do it without Holy Spirit, so make sure He’s in you before you try anything.” We are so prone to think we can do things on our own! God isn’t stingy, so we don’t have to beg, but we do need to desire and be open. A close friend of mine was almost defiant when he was prayed for in a Charismatic prayer meeting, and God baptized him anyway! The proof that it was real has been in decades of ministry. There have been spiritual gifts, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, and there hasn’t been perfection, but there has been fruit, and I am sure God is pleased with him. The point is that if we are receiving Jesus as our Lord, we need His Spirit as our strength and guide. Anything less is certainly asking for failure.

As I have written at length before, I was baptized at age seven, and I think it was real. However, without the consistent, clear guidance of the Spirit, I quickly veered off into pride, and it wasn’t until I was 24 that the Lord said, “That’s about enough of that,” and called me to account. However, it was almost two more years before I opened myself to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit by faith. I’ve learned the hard way the futility of trying to do things without listening to and being empowered by Holy Spirit, so now I try to focus on doing what He told me: rest, relax, and rejoice in Him. Titles blur in talking about this sort of thing because as Jesus talked and prayed about in the Upper Room Discourse, God is in me and I am in Christ, but all of it is by the Spirit of God/Christ, who is certainly Holy. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) Human language isn’t up to straightening it all out, but God can and does reveal it to our spirits, if we are open to Him.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for Your patience with me, with the many times I’ve ignored Your Spirit. Help me neither quench nor grieve Him, but rather allow Him to fill me and flow through me, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!