Wait for the Promise… (Part I)

After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples for forty days before he was taken up to heaven. The charge He left with the disciples changed them and changed the world!

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.” Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 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 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 1:4-8

As He gathered with the disciples, Jesus told them to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit. Up to this point, they were only familiar with water baptism, but things were about to change. As Jesus was going to be taken up to heaven, the Holy Spirit was going to come upon them. Jesus had talked to them about the Holy Spirit in the past. He had told them that it was better for Him to go so the Holy Spirit comes (See John 16:7).

Jesus did not consider the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a nice option for His disciples but a necessity! They needed to be empowered for the work of the ministry and the opposition that they were going to be faced. The Holy Spirit was also going to help them and teach them what they needed to know. 

At this point, the disciples were still not clear about how the Kingdom of God fit with the kingdom of Israel. They still saw everything through the lens of being Jewish and desiring for the kingdom of Israel to be re-established. Their mindsets had not changed yet.

Have our mindsets changed about the Kingdom of God!?  Or do we still hold on to what we know from decades ago!? Some have grown in churches that did not teach or train people on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So they still have reservations about the baptism of the Holy Spirit regardless of what the scriptures tell them. For others, they are used to the emotional aspect of being filled with the Holy Spirit. As a result, they want to completely be led by Holy Spirit even though they are not willing to invest time in reading/studying their Bible!

The scriptures provide a perfect balance between being established in the word of God and being led by the Spirit of God. We need both to be successful in navigating through life, understanding the will of God, and reaching others for Jesus. 

Jesus came to bring a paradigm shift. If it wasn’t for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the disciples would have gone back to fishing and remained in their little communities. They would have been just ordinary fishermen who were touched by a special man, and that would have been the end of the story. However, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a game-changer!

The disciples were touched by the fire of the Holy Spirit, and it changed them into bold men and women of God who were willing to leave everything behind, face persecution, and advance the Kingdom of God! If you study the book of Acts, you find that Jesus’ disciples fulfilled His commission of going to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth. All this began on the day of Pentecost when they were baptized and empowered by the baptism of the Holy Spirit!

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