The Holy Spirit

I recently purchased the book Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan and have been trying to find the time to read it. I find the premise of Chan’s book to be intriguing, mostly because I feel its an idea that is so true in my own life. In a sense, I’ve neglected the Holy Spirit. I think for most Christians today, its so easy to fall into this trap of focusing only on the Father and the Son, but the Holy Spirit being an afterthought. In the midst of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus, he ran into a situation where very much, there was a lack of understanding of the Holy Spirit.

Read Acts 19:1-22

In this passage, we see two drastically different responses to the Holy Spirit, in a sense one is a foil to the other. The first group, found in Acts 19:1-10 are the disciples in Ephesus who had not yet received the Holy Spirit. From reading the passage, these were not yet believers, though they were close. They were members of John the Baptist’s disciples, and were looking forward to the coming Messiah. When Paul preached that Jesus was the one they had been waiting for, they believed and the Holy Spirit came upon them. Then what? Acts 19:6 clues us into what happened next. “And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.” As a result of Paul and the disciples ministry in Ephesus, Acts 19:10 tells us, “This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” As a result of being filled with the Holy Spirit, their ministry grew and God was doing mighty things.
But what of this other group, the sharp contrast to the believers with the Holy Spirit? The second half of this passage gives the account of the Sons of Sceva, Jewish exorcists. Even as the Holy Spirit was doing amazing things through the earlier mentioned disciples, the Sons of Sceva wanted to do the same things. Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, they tried to cast out demons and what happened? They were quickly found out to be frauds and suffered for it.
I wonder how many of us run into this danger? Have we become so consumed with serving God that our ministry has completely shut out the Holy Spirit? I know for myself it was an eye opener, and even a call to repentance. God desires more that we allow Him to work in us than for us to serve Him but shut Him out of it. Spend some time asking for a better understanding of the Holy Spirit, that God would reveal more of himself through this person of the Trinity. Ask God to help you let the Holy Spirit take control and move through you. Its time that we stop thinking of the Holy Spirit as an afterthought, and start seeing Him as the reality He is, that the Holy Spirit is alive and working in us!

PRAYER CALENDAR
Monday: Pray for your relationship with God
Ask God to help you with the distractions and noise in your life that are keeping you from Him.