Holy Spirit Encounters

Book of Acts

The book of Acts happens over the course of around 30 years. Its a record of the first 30 years of the church.

They didn’t have the 27 books of the New Testament that we have today until about 60 years after Christ was raised from the dead. Even then they were not put in one book yet.

The first book was written down about 20 years after Christ rose from the dead and the last one around 50 years.

In the book of Acts the first book was not written down until around Acts chapter 15.

(Very few people had the written Bible until the invention of the printing press. before then a book would cost about a years wage)

(During this time in the Jewish culture, communication was primarily oral. Memorization, even of entire books, was common and natural for them. So it is reasonable to suggest that the disciples of Jesus were committing to memory what they heard from Jesus, especially the teachings which ended up in their biographies.)

I believe the Church wasn’t confident that the Gospel was for the Gentiles until around 7 years later when Peter had a vision and the first Gentile Cornelius became a believer in Jesus and was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Even though Jesus said go into all the world.

I don’t believe they had the full revelation that was revealed to Paul at least until 17 years into church history.

We are talking about the great revelations in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Romans, etc..

Revelations of our identity and covenant with God.

All they knew was the Testimony of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Yet they turned the World upside down by the power of the Holy Spirit. By cooperating with the Holy Spirit. It was the Person of the Holy Spirit who empowered them, directed them, gave them understanding of what they were to do with what they were facing.

He spoke life into every part of their lives, for He was their life. This great gift of heaven made it possible for them to illustrate the life of Jesus accurately not only in character and compassion but also in miracles, signs and wonders.

They took their testimony of Jesus Christ that Jesus was alive in them and what God did for them and changed the world around them.

Do not listen to anyone who devalues the written Word of God. But also be careful around anyone who does not model a life of tenderness toward the Holy Spirit.

I think we have a advantage that the new believers didn’t have but yet they were walking in power that many churches are not walking in.

They have the Word and preach the Word but there is little moving of the Holy Spirit. There is little consideration of Him.

We have traded the power of the Spirit for nothing but teaching and the Word of God when we are to have both.

Leg example

It starts with a hunger.

John G. Lake

“By the end of that year, I believe I was the hungriest man for God that ever lived…. It was the yearning passion of my soul, asking for God in a greater measure than I knew…. My soul was demanding a greater entrance into God, His love, presence, and power.”

Lake and a friend went to pray for a lady in a wheelchair. As Lake was at the house he was baptised in the Holy Spirit.

Presently a great peace as I had never before known or experienced came over me—

a quiet of spirit, soul, and body. My being was soothed in a perfect calm, so deep, so quiet.

My mind was perfectly still.

it seemed as if I had passed under a warm tropical rain that was falling not upon me, but through me.

The realization of peace was such as I had never known.

The rain continued to fall upon me…. The peace—I cannot describe—that passeth all understanding.

It soothed my brain. It soothed my body. It soothed my spirit. I said “O, God, I did not know there was such a place of rest as this.”

The Change:

Then I became conscious of a change coming over me.

Instead of the rain, currents of power were running through me from my head to my feet, seemingly into the floor.

These shocks of power came intermittently, possibly ten seconds apart.

They increased in voltage until, after a few minutes, my frame shook and vibrated under these mighty shocks of power.

Then as I shook and trembled, the shocks of power followed each other with more apparent rapidity and intensity.

I could have fallen on the floor except for the depth of the chair in which I sat.

The shocks of power lessened in intensity and now have taken hold of my lower jaw.

It moved up and down and sidewise in a manner new to me. My tongue and throat began to move in a manner manner I could not control.

Presently, I realized I was speaking in another tongue, a language I had never learned. O, the sense of power. The mighty moving of the Spirit in me. The consciousness it was God who had come.

Lake prays for the woman:

Lake’s friend had not noticed that Lake was having this experience when he gestured for him to join in praying for the woman in the wheelchair.

Lake got up “trembling so violently” and put his fingertips on her head.

He “could feel the currents of power shoot” through him into her.

Lake said that when his friend went to pray for her, at the instant their hands touched, a flash of dynamic power went through my person and through the sick woman, and as my friend held her hand the shock and power went through her hand into him.

The rush of power into his person was so great that it caused him to fall on the floor.

He looked up at me with joy and surprise and springing to his feet said, “Praise the Lord, John, Jesus has baptized you in the Holy Ghost!”