But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).
The baptism with the Holy Spirit changes you. Let me explain why it should. The Greek word for baptize is baptizo. And this word simply means to immerse into something. When a person is baptized into water, the substance that they are baptized in or immersed in is water. The person’s relationship to water changes in that water completely surrounds the person baptized.
Well, then when a person is baptized with the Holy Spirit, what is the person immersed into? They are immersed into the Holy Spirit. I often use an illustration of a cup being filled with water, which is illustrative of a believer being born again and the Holy Spirit indwelling them. In the new birth, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in the believer. Then, I took the cup full of water and immersed it into a pitcher of water. The cup’s relationship with water changed. Not only did water fill the cup, but it surrounded it!
When you receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit literally encapsulates you, that is, he closes you in on all sides. Understand that the Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come when He left the earth and would be to the disciples everything Jesus was to them. The main job of the Holy Spirit is to make Jesus real to us!
My life took a dramatic turn with the Holy Spirit baptism in 1976. When the Holy Spirit engulfed me with Himself that Sunday night at 7:20 P.M., I had an awareness of Jesus that I never had before. As I worked the next day, my thoughts were constantly on the Son of God! I found myself relating my experiences throughout the day to my relationship with Jesus in a very natural way. I thought of my relationship with Jesus all the time.
The Holy Spirit brings spiritual power and insight when He comes into your life. You have this spiritual power and insight with the new birth in a measure. But with the baptism with the Holy Spirit it is magnified many times over.
If you’ve baptized in the Holy Spirit, I encourage you to walk in the light of the experience. Nurture your relationship with the Holy Spirit daily by spending time in the Word and in prayer and meditation. His presence will get stronger if you do. And if you have not yet received this precious experience, cry out to the Father for it. They that hunger and thirst after righteousness will be fill. If any man thirsts let him come unto me and drink! He promised to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!
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