I’ve been a Christian for some 60+ years. Perhaps I should have forewarned you to find a seat and get comfortable before reading that opening sentence. 60+ years? Yes, 60+. Your surprise/shock may come from the well-kept secret explanation that I look so amazingly young because many years ago I may have had a sip or two from Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth near St. Augustine, Florida.
So, what’s happened in these years? Well, I’ve learned a thing or two from the Bible and life. Perhaps it would be better to state that I am still learning a thing or two. To be honest, even after these years, I still have some major questions about things in the Bible still puzzle me. For example, consider this deep theological question – did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? (Don’t start getting a know-it-all attitude. You’ve asked yourself the same question, haven’t you!) And, if so, were the belly buttons an “innie” while they lived in the garden and an “outie” after they moved out of the garden? Even more perplexing is the question about one of the animals that God created. The question is – How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? These and other thoughts could cause many sleepless nights.
I’m not the only Christian with questions. Here is a question in today’s church that I hear often as Vickie and I travel and minister in our Holy Spirit Rallies. The question – “Is it really God’s will for me to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?” Don’t shake your head in disbelief that anyone could and would ask this question. It is a commonly asked question.
To this getting old(er) man, the answer to this question uses absolutely no brain cells to give a response. The answer is, to use a colloquialism used often by Vickie, easy-peasy. It is a gigantic, humongous, Texas-size (that’s mighty big) Y-E-S! Just a few minutes of looking at Luke 11:13, Acts 2:38-39, and James 1:17 would make the Y-E-S crystal clear.
I could write several paragraphs to describe God’s great willingness and desire to bless His children with this baptism in the Holy Spirit, but I can’t give a better explanation than the one given by Charles Finney in his Lectures on Revivals of Religion written in 1868.
“God says he is more ready to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him than parents are to give bread unto their children. Here we are bound to believe that we shall receive it when we pray for it. You have no right to put an if, and say, “Lord, if it be your will, give us thy Holy Spirit.” This is an insult to God. To put an if into God’s promise, where God has put none, is tantamount to charging God with being insincere. It is like saying, “O God, if thou art in earnest in making these promises, grant us the blessing we pray for.”
With that question being answered, I’ll quit writing and go back to pondering about the wood and woodchuck.
