Jesus continued His conversation with Nicodemus by stating:
You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:7-8
Jesus likened the new spiritual life to wind blowing. The wind is not seen, but it can be heard. We don’t know its starting or ending point, but we can still notice it and see its affect when it is blowing. The spiritual life is not something tangible that we can physically or mentally grasp. While we should read and know the Bible, we also need to rely on the Holy Spirit to give us revelation, inspiration, and understanding. Just as the wind has real and powerful affect, so does the Holy Spirit has a powerful spiritual impact. We don’t have to understand everything about the work of the spirit to believe and appreciate its affect in our lives.
The natural wind is used to produced electricity and power, but it can also blow things away. The Holy Spirit has similar work spiritually. He empowers the believer, but He also blow away the dead things that do not produce life anymore.
The work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life is so important that following Jesus’ resurrection, He told His disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they receive it:
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 with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” …. 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 (1:4-5, 8)
Jesus told them that they needed the baptism of the Holy Spirit to receive power for the work He had for them. Without the empowerment and the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit, His disciples would not have been equipped to do the challenging and courageous work that God had purposed for them. Jesus was calling them to be His witnesses in their own neighborhoods, to the Jewish nation, as well as the foreigners that they knew nothing about. The task was great, and they needed the empowerment of the dynamic Holy Spirit to enable them to do this work.
Everyone who is born again has a regenerated spirit and God breathes the Holy Spirit into their spirit man and gives them new and eternal life. However, in the above scripture, Jesus was speaking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit which the disciples had never experienced before or knew anything about.
I will share more about the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the next devotional and His powerful affect in the believers’ lives.
