Luke 11:13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
I will end this section with a brief instruction on how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We have already seen that believers are filled with the Holy Spirit only after they are born again. This is the reason that our Lord Jesus taught us in the above-quoted passage of scripture to ask our heavenly Father to give us the Holy Spirit, for it is only the children of God that qualify to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And so we see that the first step to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to go before our heavenly Father and ask Him to give us the Holy Spirit. Our scriptural basis for making this request is that Jesus has assured us that God will grant our request when we ask Him to give us the Holy Spirit in Jesus' name.
Galatians 3:2-5 “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? … (5) Therefore, He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
We can receive nothing from the Father except by faith, and that includes receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit (James 1:6-7). As quoted in the above passage of scripture, the apostle Paul, in writing to the churches in Galatia, reminds them that they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit by faith when they heard Paul teach them about receiving the Holy Spirit. And so the second step to receiving the Holy Spirit is to believe that when we ask, that we receive, and thus in faith we thank Him for filling us with the Holy Spirit. As we have already seen, we can receive the Holy Spirit either through the laying on of hands or we can receive it directly from heaven. Each saint must decide for themselves where their faith lies, i.e. do they need someone to lay hands on them to receive or can they believe that the Lord will fill them directly from heaven? God will honour their faith either way. My testimony is that I was filled with the Holy Spirit without anyone laying hands on me. A few days after I was saved I attended a church service and someone asked me before the service began if I had been baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoken with other tongues. I had no idea what the person was talking about and did not have time to ask them what they meant as the service was about to begin. It was during the worship part of the service that the Lord filled me with the Holy Spirit and I instinctively knew that I could now speak in the other tongues that I had just heard about, and so that is exactly what I did and I have been speaking in tongues ever since.
Acts 2:4 “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Faith demands action, for scripture teaches us that faith without corresponding action is dead (James 2:17). And so if we believe that we have received the Holy Spirit from our Father, then we are going to have to take a step of faith and act on that. So what step of faith must we take? We are going to have to speak with other tongues just as the saints did in the passage of scripture quoted above. And so the third step to receiving the Holy Spirit is to speak with other tongues. So how do we do that? The Holy Spirit is not the one who speaks for us. In other words, He does not take control of our vocal chords and begin to speak through our mouths. All He does is to give our spirits their heavenly language. We are the ones who do the talking. Speaking with tongues comes from our spirits and not our heads. So do not try to imagine in your mind what words you are going to speak, because your mind has no idea what words you are going to speak. Do not say anything with your understanding either because your understanding has nothing to do with speaking in tongues. You are going to have to just step out in faith and begin to give voice to whatever words come from your spirit, no matter how strange those words may sound. You are going to have to articulate those words, i.e. you are going to have to speak those words as you would speak any language that you are learning for the first time by forming those words with your mouth. Do not open your mouth and expect words to come out all by themselves. Natural speech does not work that way and neither does spiritual speaking, for your spirit needs you to use your vocal chords. Therefore you must do the talking. You will find that strange words will start to be formed in your mouth. Just begin to speak those words and continue speaking those words as your heavenly language begins to develop. Remember that spiritual things are foolishness to the natural mind, and so if your mind is telling you that what you are speaking is rubbish just ignore that and continue to speak out those words. You will find that soon you will be speaking in other tongues fluently as God intended. Now it may be that when you are filled you will feel the tangible power of the Holy Spirit come on you in some manner, or you may not feel anything. Nevertheless no matter what experience the Lord allows you to encounter, you must still respond in faith by speaking out in other tongues.
Michael E.B. Maher
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