Revival: Baptism of Fire - Revival: Baptism of Fire!

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So today I'm going to talk about revival and the baptism of fire.

And when my daughter Anna was doing the graphic, as you see up there, I thought Johnny Cash would really like that ring of fire.

I thought it was really good.

But when we look at the New Testament church, we see a church that was fired up.

When we look at the American church, we look at a church that's unfired up.

And so God wants to bring fire.

God wants to rebaptize his church.

This is called a great awakening when it goes from individual churches to the corporate national level.

And I believe that's what we need in this country.

Sometimes I call it a kingdom of God revolution.

You're the church.

Every one of you in this room are the church.

And so the church is not a building.

The church is not a denomination.

The church is you.

And so what God does corporately always begins in individual lives.

And so I believe that God wants to do it again.

I believe God wants to move in power again with a baptism of not just belief and water baptism, but a baptism of fire in our hearts that transforms us and makes us powerful witnesses for Christ.

Now, J.

B.

Phillips wrote a little book many, many years ago called A Letter to Young Churches, and it was his commentary on the epistles.

Many of you might not know what the epistles are.

The epistles are the letters that we have in the New Testament.

So, Exit, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the rest of the New Testament would be called the Epistles, okay?

And so he gives a preface, and here's what he writes.

The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us, it is primarily a performance.

To them, it was a real experience.

We're apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code or at least a rule of heart and life.

To these men and women, it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether.

They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ living in them.

Mere moral reformation will hardly explain the transformation and the exuberant vitality of these men and women's lives.

Even if we could prove a motive for such a reformation, and certainly the world around offered little encouragement to the early Christians, we're practically driven to accept their own explanation, which is that their little human lives had, through Jesus Christ, been linked up with the very life of God.

Those early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literally sons and daughters of God.

They were pioneers of a new humanity.

They were pioneers and founders of a new kingdom.

They still speak to us across the centuries.

Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we might achieve what they achieved.

And so, men and women, I believe God wants to move across this land in revival power and revival fire.

And I believe he wants to start right here.

And in the first service, God came down in a mighty and powerful way during worship.

Kind of unexpected, but he did.

And he's going to do that in the second service too.

He's going to touch those that are hungry for God, those that want a touch of the Spirit, those who want to be baptized, not just with an intellectual understanding of who God is, but a powerful endeavor of the Spirit being transformed by the fire of God to give us a boldness and a tenacity that is supernatural.

The urgent need of our church today, as blessed as we are with the recent election, is not just that, but rather individual hearts being transformed by the power of God.

And God wants to come in fire and He wants to come in power again.

He's gonna do it again.

He has done it, and this is the nature of God.

I don't have time, but if I were to take you through from the beginning in the first century church all the way to the present, I would give you revival after revival after revival.

Dozens and dozens of times God shows up with what we've called in America great awakenings.

Moves of his spirit, he wants to do it again.

And I believe that J.B.

Phillips speaks to us of a standard, a standard of how God moves, that God wants to do in Colorado, in Colorado Springs, in the Road Church, beginning today as his power is poured out.

So John the Baptist, John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets.

So John's baptism with water was the last of a particular dispensation related to a baptism of water that was going to change with the coming of the Messiah Jesus.

This is what John said.

I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to lose.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit in fire.

In other words, the baptism of repentance from our sins is not good enough.

There's going to be something more than just a baptism of repentance.

There's now coming a man.

There's one coming who will baptize you with water for sure, but that repentance will lead to power through a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.

A new day was coming.

And so we have a church in America today that's way more concerned about liturgies, covenants, and criticizing the rest of the church than a baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit.

We have a church today that's much more interested in kind of getting all the denominational policies worked out than a baptism of fire and power.

A church that is way more involved in evangelism, which is great.

I believe in evangelism, it's wonderful than they are in being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire.

So it all begins, though, with being born again.

So men and women, if you're not born again, you don't even have the Holy Spirit.

So you should get born again.

What do I mean by that?

Well, the Holy Spirit comes upon those who put their faith in Christ.

As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit gives you the ability to have faith in Christ.

I remember in my life, you know, as at 18, um, growing up in the church, going to catechism class, being baptized as an infant, all that stuff, my dad a pastor, and everything.

Um, and yet it hadn't really moved about 12 inches.

So I had it all up here, but I didn't have anything down here yet.

It's about 12 inches.

For some of you, it's 14 inches or 16 inches.

You got big necks, okay?

But the baptism of the Spirit follows the baptism of repentance, which is that in which we give our life to Christ.

And that's what the Holy Spirit does, He gives you the ability to give your life to Christ, where you didn't have it before.

And I remember as a young guy, as I was saying, I was a freshman, and I was not interested in anything religious, even remotely religious at all.

But then something began to move in my heart.

And I wanted it, and I didn't want it before.

And then I wanted, well, what's that?

That's the Holy Spirit around me.

That was the Holy Spirit moving around me and placing a desire for him in my heart.

And so I gave my my life to Christ.

And so there was this guy, one of the leaders in Jerusalem, named Nicodemus.

And Nicodemus, trying to figure out who this Jesus is, came to him.

And here was the exchange.

I say to you, Nicodemus, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he's old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus said, Most surely I say to you, unless one is born of water, meaning birth, not speaking of a baptism here, born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

So the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to believe, and then the Holy Spirit comes in when we believe.

So every one of you in this room that have given your heart to Christ, you have the Holy Spirit.

Okay, you have the Holy Spirit.

Now, some of you in this room have never received Christ.

And you're you're listening to all the stuff that you hear every Sunday, you come here and you go, I can't do that, or you try to do that, and you never can do that.

Well, that's because you don't have any power.

And the reason you don't have any power first is because you don't have the Holy Spirit yet.

So today, as we come to the end of the service, enduring worship, receive Christ.

Smartest thing you'll ever do.

Okay?

And so you get born again.

That means that you're reborn spiritually.

Does that make sense?

You receive the Holy Spirit, you're reborn spiritually.

Okay.

So the ability to believe in Christ comes from the Holy Spirit.

And then you're sealed.

You're sealed by the Holy Spirit.

So Ephesians 1 says, in him, when you trusted in him, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of your inheritance.

So here's what it is.

When you receive Christ, you get the Holy Spirit.

Now, what's that mean?

That means that it's a guarantor, it's a down payment of what you're going to get in fuller measure later, both through the baptism of fire from the Holy Spirit, but also when we get to heaven.

When we get to heaven, you'll have it all.

So we have a little bit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control in this life.

And it's kind of ebbs and flows, right?

Everybody go like this if it ebbs and flows.

And if you're not doing that, then your spouse is giving you an elbow right now in your ribcage.

Because you know, sometimes you're not full of love and you're not full of joy.

So it's the already of the kingdom, but the not yet of the kingdom.

So it's not complete.

So what happens is you receive the Holy Spirit, but there is a measure of the Spirit that we probably won't totally experience in this life.

But what he's saying here is there's a fullness that can come even in this life.

Now, this was true of the disciples.

You're saying, well, when is Steve going to actually open the Bible?

Okay, I'm getting there.

Okay, we're gonna get to the book Acts.

This is all a preface, this is all a lead up, all right?

So, with the disciples, they're with him for three and a half years.

Every day almost.

Probably every day they're with Jesus.

And one day after he rose from the grave, he came to them in John 20 and he said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

He said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

You everybody get that?

Say, receive the Holy Spirit.

So the disciples, when we're gonna pick it up in the book of Acts, had already received the Holy Spirit.

They had the Holy Spirit.

It's really important, really vital and dynamic to what I'm trying to say here.

Because you can have the Holy Spirit and still be full of fear.

These 120 were full of fear, man.

They are confused, they don't know what's going on.

How many of you would like Jesus to come back like tomorrow?

Okay, if everybody who's over 50.

Okay.

Because I know all you others say, I mean, you you you want to get married and have sex and stuff.

I know.

Okay.

So, so they wanted, they're looking out on the tundra, man.

They're looking out on the tundra, and they're looking at it, and they're going, the Jews hate our guts.

We're probably gonna get martyred, we're gonna die.

It's a very bad day.

Even though Jesus is risen from the grave, he's talking like he's leaving us, like he's out of here.

Man, they wanted Jesus to come back.

They wanted answers to their problems.

Now, the receiving of Christ is step one.

Now, they didn't know this yet, but the receiving of Christ, as we look back now and we're and we're looking at the New Testament, and we see a church that's excited, that's fired up, that's even being martyred.

I mean, men and women are getting martyred in that early church, but they're so exuberant through the baptism of fire that Jesus had said he was going to do, which John prophesied he was going to do, and then he does.

In the book of Acts, we see something supernatural happening.

That's the baptism of power.

That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

So don't turn there yet.

I'm getting there.

Okay.

John, write down John 1.16.

Write down John 1.16.

It's kind of pivotal to what I'm saying.

Here's what it says: John says, and of his fullness, that's the Greek word pleroma.

Pleroma, we have all received grace upon grace.

Now, why is that important?

That's important, men and women, because there's a fullness that can only come through the baptism of fire and power of the Holy Spirit.

That's grace upon grace.

You know what that means?

That means it's ongoing, church.

It's not a one-time experience.

I mean, in certain circles, it's like you got to get the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then it's like you get it and then you've got it.

That's not my belief.

My belief is you get it and you keep getting it.

Okay, it's ongoing.

It's grace upon grace.

In my life, and I'll share a little bit more detail later, but in my life, I've had many baptisms of the Holy Spirit.

I've had many.

So that's that's the filling of the Holy Spirit.

I don't care what you call it.

I really don't care if you call it the filling of the Holy Spirit or the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

What I care about is get it.

Just get it.

Just get it, man.

And if you're hungry for it, you can.

If you're not hungry for it, you can't.

Listen, if you've got it all that you need, that's cool.

I'm not gonna, man, I'm not gonna argue with that.

Just live it out.

That's great.

But if you're hungry for more, God looks for hungry people.

Jesus said, if any one of you is thirsty, I will pour forth living water within you.

Now here's what pleroma means.

Pleroma, it says fullness here in our passage, but pleroma in the Greek means a full cargo or crew of a ship.

It's this idea of being fully loaded, man.

I mean, if I was giving it a different version, I would say, it's an AR fully loaded.

Okay?

It's fully loaded, it's ready to do its job.

Now they use crew and cargo.

It doesn't mean as much to us, you know, today, unless you're going deep sea fishing, I guess, or something like that.

But the word pleroma has this idea, locked and loaded.

Don't you want to be a Christian that's locked and loaded?

Raise your hand if you'd like to be a Christian who's locked and loaded.

All right, you're at the right church, because that's what we do here.

Good church.

Okay.

So in my life, I'm I get saved, I'm 18 years old, and I'm walking to biology class about a month or two later.

I'm walking to biology class.

And the Holy Spirit falls upon me, man.

I mean, it was crazy.

I'm just I've just got my books and I'm thinking about the test coming up, and then the Spirit of God comes upon me, and for the next three hours, I feel like I'm St.

Francis of Assisi and Brother, Son, Sister Moon.

I didn't take my clothes off, but I was, but I was just experiencing God in a fresh, new way, man.

And as I did, as I did, I remember I went up to an oak tree.

Now you're gonna say, this, Steve, you're so weird.

But I went up to an oak tree and I remember taking the leaf off.

It was in the fall, and it was it was a it had color to it.

And I went, whoa, God created this leaf.

And if anybody had been walking by said, look, God created this leaf.

They said, He get the guys in the white coats.

This guy's going nuts, man.

He needs to go to a mental institution.

But for the next three hours, I can't explain it.

It was almost like I was raised up into like a second heaven or something.

And I just experienced his presence.

And that's the only way I can say is presence of God leads to power of God.

Presence of God always leads to the power of God.

And so the presence came.

I never experienced that again.

It was a one-time experience, that was a one-time experience.

But then God began to move through me, and I'll tell you at the end of the message what he did.

Well, then we were in Okinawa, Japan, missionaries in Japan, and I'm crying out to God for more, and in the shower, bam, Spirit of God comes.

And I have a re-baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Again, I'll tell you more about that.

But but this continuous action is so, so vital.

Hear what I'm saying.

It's not a one-time thing.

We need it again and again.

It's grace upon grace.

Now, turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

So this is 120.

They're scared, they're fearful of the Jews, they have no idea what's going to happen next.

And they want a political answer.

They want a Jewish Donald J.

Trump to come into Israel and set them free.

Okay?

Look at verse 4.

And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, You have heard from me, for John truly baptized you with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

They're looking for political, military answer.

And he said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority, but you shall receive power.

Circle, underline, highlight, power, dunamis, dunamis power.

Where we get the word dynamite, dunamis power.

When, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

It's when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

This idea here of something outside of you coming upon you.

Okay?

So it's more than just receiving Christ.

You already have the remember, just a chat.

If we go back to John 20, which is on the left side of your page there in your Bible, one chapter over, they already have the Holy Spirit.

He says, When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you then shall be witnesses.

This is the word martyria.

It's the idea of you're gonna become martyrs for me.

You're gonna be so sold out, you're gonna be so bold that they're gonna kill you.

I mean, that's not exactly a great deal.

We're not hearing that in commercials if you're watching Georgia Wynn last night.

They beat Tennessee.

You gotta understand that.

That's really important.

Okay?

There were no commercials in the midst of big pharma commercials.

There were no commercials in there.

Hey, sign up and follow Jesus, and he will make you a martyr.

But they're hearing the word not witnesses, they're hearing it martyria.

They know what that means.

He said, You shall be my martyrs in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and most parts of the earth.

This power of God was gonna come in.

Four things.

Four things.

Number one, the baptism with water is not enough.

Listen now.

The baptism of water was not enough then, and it's not enough now.

Repentance of your sins is not enough to receive God's power most of the time.

And the reason I say most of the time is because we're gonna see in the book of Acts that sometimes, and this could be the case of some of you in this room, when you got, when you receive Christ.

You also receive power right then.

So I'm not gonna say when God can do it and can't do it, because sometimes He does it, bam, immediately, and then sometimes it's a second kind of experience that people have.

I'm telling you today, it's not just a second experience.

It doesn't even matter if it happened simultaneously with you getting saved.

I'm saying it should be a tenth, eleventh, or twelfth experience.

In other words, it's an ongoing work, it's grace upon grace from the Holy Spirit.

So that's what the second thing says.

Well, the next thing he says is you got to wait on it.

You're gonna have to wait until you get it.

And so, in some cases, some of you are gonna get baptized and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit today.

It's gonna hit you during worship, it's gonna hit you when we're praying for you, and it's awesome.

For some of you, it's not.

You're not gonna experience anything.

But what you're gonna do is you're gonna keep seeking God, you're gonna keep knocking on that door, and he's gonna come.

And he might come when you're in the shower, he might come when you're driving to work.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't put any kind of a code or formula to how God works.

I may be dumber than a pine tree, but I can tell you this I know I'm not God.

And so, how God works in your life, I don't know.

All I know is get it.

Just get it, man.

Because when you walk in the power and the fire of the Holy Spirit, you can become an overcomer.

You say, Well, I'm an overcomer.

Okay, great, but do you have the power to overcome?

Because that's how you become an overcomer, you have the power to overcome, and that comes from the Holy Spirit.

And then he says, lastly, he says, you will receive power.

You'll be powerful, you will be filled with the Spirit of God, and you'll be a bold witness for me.

He's talking to these people, and that's some of you here.

That's me so many times I can't even count.

Full of fear, anxiety, panic attacks.

Man, I know.

You you tell me some of your problems, and I go, I know.

I know.

But sometimes you get sick of being sick.

And so you start asking God, I need fresh fire, man.

I need a fresh fire I don't have I what you what got me to where I was two years ago is not getting to me to where I'm supposed to go in two years.

Right?

I mean, there's there's obstacles now in your life that were not in your life three years ago or two years ago because you weren't even walking that closely with the Lord.

But when you start walking closely with the Lord and you're getting closer to the Lord, grace upon grace, you need more grace.

So sometimes we think of grace as salvation grace.

And that's great.

But grace, most of the time in the Bible is not about salvation, most of the time it's present moment power.

That's what grace means.

It's present moment power.

And so where you, you know, where you were living your life here, you had present moment power for here.

But now you're there and you need more present power from the from the Lord because you've trusted him and he's navigated you in to a new situation with new mountains.

And yet he says, if you have faith, you can move mountains.

Isn't that amazing?

Okay, so here's what happens in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So God can do this.

What we're about to read it, read about right now, God can do it again.

God can be poured out again on America.

God can be poured out again in Colorado.

Colorado's soul needs a revival, man.

Why not start here?

Why not start here?

Because what we need is we need a move of God's spirit in Colorado.

So in 1740s, a guy named Jonathan Edwards, who was so blind, he had to read his notes in front of him in the podium in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Great Awakening came.

And then a guy named George Whitfield, who was an evangelist from England, came over, and all across the seaboard, tens of thousands got saved.

Tens of thousands came.

It's called the First Great Awakening.

From about 1800 to about 1830, there was a second Great Awakening with a former lawyer named Charles Finney.

Completely different type of message than Jonathan Edwards, Holy Spirit fell.

That was the beginning of the abolitionist movement.

The abolitionist movement against slavery came through the second great awakening.

In 1904, there was a group of crazy people, black and white and Latino, came together while this guy put a basket over his head in front of the group so nobody would notice in there, and they prayed for a powering of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit fell out of Zeusa Street in Los Angeles.

And the Pentecostal movement has spread worldwide.

The greatest movement in Christian history.

Unbelievable.

Okay, okay?

How about that?

All right?

Well, in 1960, 1960s, late 60s, into the 70s, there was a group of hippies, you know, that were just hippie yippie people that smoked pot, did drugs, and ran around nude.

Okay?

And then the Holy Spirit hit them.

And bam, man, we had the Jesus movement.

And you probably saw the movie by Greg Laurie.

It's an awesome movie.

That's what God does.

He comes at different times in history and he reawakens a dead church.

And if you feel dead, welcome to the party.

Okay, we all go through life and death and life and death throughout our journey.

And what I'm talking about today is life coming through the fire of God being released upon your heart if you want it.

Okay?

Okay, so that's Acts 1.

They're all fearful.

Now Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all in one, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.

It filled the whole house where they were sitting.

Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire.

So they looked like fire coming down, and one set upon the other, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and look what happened.

They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now we know in this case that the languages that they spoke from were real languages that went out to all the people that were there on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish festival of Pentecost, and so people began to hear them in their own tongue, and I could go into, I could elaborate a lot on the reversal of the it's really the reversal of the Tower of Babel.

It's where God came down and he confused languages, now he comes down and he unifies through different languages and people groups.

Now look down at verse 11.

We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.

And they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean, which is the right question to ask.

Others were mocking, saying, Oh, they're just drunk, they're just full of new wine.

That's what always happens in revival.

When revival comes, you have your receivers and you have your detractors.

First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, Azusa Street, Jesus People movement, weird stuff happens.

I mean, you you tell your kid that they're getting their most favorite thing at Christmas that you that they've been saying they want, and then they actually open the present, and what they do, every kid's different.

But most of the time they do weird stuff because they're so happy, they're so excited.

Same thing with the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

When the Spirit comes, how you how you experience that is going to be different for everybody.

So that's why I don't believe in codifying this, I don't believe in formulatizing this.

It's like, just get it.

Just get it, man.

And so they get filled, they're baptized with the Holy Spirit in a mighty and powerful way.

And let's see what happens.

So, verse 14.

Peter, standing up at the eleven, raised his voice and said to the men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, heed my words, for these are not drunk, as you suppose.

Because that's what they're saying, they're drunk, they're just a bunch of drunk people, since it is only a third hour of the day, but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, men and women, we're living in the last days, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

And then it talks about dreams and visions, it talks about sons and daughters, it talks about slaves, it talks about men and women, and then it says there'll be dreams.

There's gonna be prophecy now, it's just gonna be released across the body of Christ.

Verse 21, whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved.

So there's this work of the Spirit that's gonna flow out like they haven't seen before.

It's gonna be poured out.

So verse 17 says it's poured out.

Look at verse 33.

Verse 33, being exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out.

He poured this out, which you now see in here.

The baptizing of the Holy Spirit was getting poured out.

Poured out.

So that's like some kind of a heavenly pitcher, man, that's got like Holy Spirit power poured in to his saints.

They spoke in tongues, 3,000 get saved.

Okay, now the same thing happens in Acts chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

So let's just go to Acts chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

So the baptism of fire continues in Acts 4.

Pretty interesting.

Before I get to the main point, look at verse 13.

Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled.

So what what you always see with the baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit is who God uses.

And who he uses is usually not the smartest people.

It's usually not the most well-connected people.

It's usually not the richest people, it's usually regular folks.

I hate to say this, you guys.

You just you guys are just regular folks.

I'm just a regular guy.

But, but when I get filled, and when you get filled with the Holy Spirit, you ain't regular no more.

Okay?

You people marvel at what God's doing through you because you've got power now.

You're baptizing power, and where you're you're pretty smart at math, you're pretty good at science or whatever it is that you're pretty good at.

Now there's something that exceeds that in your life, and guess what?

People start getting hungry for it.

They want it because they see it in you.

That's the key to powerful Christianity.

That's where the Spirit of God is upon individuals who start making a difference, and they don't give a rip what people think.

All they want is that power of the Spirit in their lives.

So people marvel at you.

Now look at verse 31.

This is Acts chapter 4, verse 31.

Acts 4:31

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken.

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is this is the same group with some others now, the 3,000 probably added into here.

They were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness.

So they're getting refilled, they're getting re-baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Now look at chapter 10.

In chapter 10, we see the spread of the gospel.

Now it goes to Cornelius, the centurion.

And Peter doesn't want to go to Centurion to the centurion's house.

He doesn't want to have anything to do with these unclean people, okay?

But but then he has a vision.

Let's pick it up at verse 11.

I saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth.

In it were all kinds of four-footed animals on the earth, wild beasts, creepy things, and birds of the air.

And a voice said to me, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

Peter said, Not so, Lord, for I've never eaten anything common or unclean.

All right?

And a voice spoke to him again and a second time said, What God has cleansed, you must not call common.

So that's his context.

The context is he experienced this thing, okay, with the Holy Spirit coming down through showing him that he was breaking that old dispensation of the law, you could now, basically you could eat anything, okay?

And even pork.

You could even eat, you could, you can now eat bacon, Peter.

It's okay to eat big bacon, okay?

And great applause has gone forth in both services when I said that.

Okay, now look at verse 44.

Look at verse 44.

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.

And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.

For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.

Alright, now turn to Acts 19.

Spread of the gospel.

Acts 19, verse 1.

Acts 19:1

And it happened while Apollos was at Corinth that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus.

And finding some disciples, he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

So they said to him, We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.

Now I'll just say for some of us in this room, that's your story.

You come out of denominational backgrounds where hardly anything about the Holy Spirit, except it was the third person of the Trinity and the most forgotten of the three.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghosts.

Okay, so they didn't know who the Holy Spirit was.

And then verse 3, he said to them, Into them what were you baptized?

And they said, Into John's baptism.

And again, men and women, that's the old order.

Then Paul said, John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him.

That is on Christ Jesus.

When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

That's step one.

They got baptized in the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and they prophesied.

So what are the characteristics of the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

What are the characteristics of the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Okay, first thing is you gotta be hungry.

Gotta be hungry.

Man, when I got saved, I was hungry.

I wanted everything I could get from God.

And I wasn't that day when I was walking to biology class asking for it, but all the buildup, man.

It was like the buildup of just asking and asking and asking.

Nothing was happening, wanting more.

And you guys, I got, man, the spirit came down, I told you already.

And then I led half of the gymnastics team to the Lord over the next few, the next couple years.

Almost, I mean, at one point, everybody on the team was saved.

Man, did that make my coach mad?

He was a partier.

Man, this guy was a party, he was a womanizer.

He was the worst example of a coach you could have.

And then we all got saved.

And what was a bummer for him is he didn't have anybody to party with anymore when we were on the road.

You guys go party with coach.

I don't want to party with coach.

I just got saved last night.

Good, good answer.

All right, let's go have a Bible study.

Well, I couldn't have done that.

Listen, you guys, I couldn't have done that if I wasn't baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Something was released into me through the power of the Holy Spirit, and I became a bore witness.

And then I'm in Okinawa, Japan, and man, there's all kinds of demonic stuff.

There's all kinds of weird stuff happening in Okinawa with the Utah.

The Utah's a priestess, a shaman down there, and I'm in the and I'm asking God to baptize me with the Spirit.

He does.

I speak in tongues the first time.

First one I didn't.

So you don't always have to speak in tongues.

But in this case, I did, and bam, man, we went forth.

Hundreds got saved.

Hundreds got healed.

We got to be known before the, even before the movie came out.

We were the Ghostbusters.

Okay.

So we got called on by the Baptist Church and others to come in because they heard we cast out demons and stuff, and we'd go to these houses, these haunted houses in Okinawa, and we kicked those demons out of there, man.

And that you guys have heard some of my stories.

Crazy stuff.

Okay, so the first thing is you gotta want it.

So Jesus, and write this down, we don't have time to go there, but look, write down John 7, 37 through 39.

On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood up and he cried out, If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink.

If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink.

He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

But this he spoke concerning the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in him would receive.

Because the Holy Spirit had not yet been given, because Christ had not yet been glorified.

Remember, they received the Holy Spirit after the resurrection in John 20.

So this is before that.

And he's saying, There's gonna come a day if you're thirsty, if you want it, Holy Spirit's gonna come upon you.

Secondly, we see most, not all the time, many times we see people speaking in tongues.

They begin to speak in tongues when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

You say, Well, what is that?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

It could be another language, it may be a heavenly language.

I don't know.

I don't try to figure it out.

Listen, I don't care what you call it, I just want you to get it.

Okay, and there are people who've never spoken in tongues and they're filled and baptized in the Holy Spirit and they're walking in power.

There's people who speak in tongues, they've received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they're living in sin.

So that's not the point.

The point is that we look at scripture, we have to acknowledge that this is true.

Thirdly, in every case though, in every case, when you're baptized with the Holy Spirit, you start to become bold as a witness for Christ.

You start to do things you'd never do.

You start to believe God for miracles you never believed before.

You begin to see things that you couldn't see, you begin to do things that you couldn't do because the power of the Spirit is upon you.

And then fourthly, and most important, God gets magnified.

God gets magnified in your life.

Where you've been doing dope, you quit doing dope.

When you've been shooting up heroin, you quit shooting up heroin.

When you've been sleeping around, you quit sleeping around.

And God gets magnified, and suddenly you get healthy.

You start getting healthy.

Raise your hand if you'd like to live a healthy life.

Alright, come on.

God of health made you to be healthy, and the most healthy thing you can do is get filled and baptized with power from the Holy Spirit because you ain't got what it takes.

And if you have what it takes, he didn't have to go to Calvary.

But he went to Calvary and died and rose again because you need him to have the power to do the right thing and to be set free.

And that's a good deal.

That's a good deal.

So when God is magnified, darkness flees.

When God is magnified, demons flee.

That's what we need in Colorado.

That's what we need in this city.

We need a few spirit-filled, spirit-baptized, fired-up believers who aren't afraid of demons and aren't afraid of the darkness and are not intimidated by the mountains in your life and say, with even a mustard seed of faith, I can move mountains.

That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit, folks.

That's what you're longing for.

Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.