The Holy Ghost is a gift, and a gift is received. Peter promised it to a crowd who had only just heard the gospel: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Jesus used the same word: the Spirit, “which they that believe on him should receive” (John 7:39). That is the key word on this page. You do not earn the Holy Ghost or work it up. You receive it.
They knew what was coming
Before He ascended, Jesus told the disciples what to do: “tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). He gave them a timeframe: “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). That was forty days after the resurrection (1:3). Pentecost came about ten days later.
They spent those days together in an upper room, about a hundred and twenty of them, and “these all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:13-15). They had been told what was coming, and they had surely talked about it and prayed about it. John was there. He is the disciple who wrote down what Jesus told Nicodemus: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof… so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). He also wrote how Jesus “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). They knew there would be a sound.
When the day of Pentecost was fully come
Acts 2:1-4
The rushing wind came only once, when the Spirit was first poured out. Everyone who received afterward spoke with tongues, and that is the sound Jesus meant for all: “thou hearest the sound thereof… so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
It happened in Jerusalem, the city that had crucified Him: the proving ground. Jews “out of every nation under heaven” were there for the feast, and each heard the disciples speak in “our own tongue, wherein we were born” (2:5-8). Luke names sixteen places, from Parthia and Mesopotamia to Egypt, Rome, Crete and Arabia (2:9-11). These were real languages the disciples had never learned.
Simple enough for three thousand
The first outpouring fell on the 120 who had waited. But the same day, Peter told the crowd that the promise was theirs too: “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (2:39). “The same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (2:41). To be added to the church is to receive the Spirit: “by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13).
The 120 had to wait for the day, because the Spirit had not yet been given (John 7:39). Since Pentecost there has been no waiting for a day. Jesus “hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:33). Three thousand people who woke up that morning not knowing the gospel received the promise before the day was over. Receiving the Spirit was never meant to be hard.
A gift is received
Jesus put it in terms any parent understands: “Ask, and it shall be given you… If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?… how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:9-13). Notice what this promise also settles. If you ask your Father for the Holy Ghost, He will not give you something false.
Throughout Acts, people received it in different settings: with hands laid on them in Samaria (8:17) and at Ephesus (19:6), and with no hands at all in Cornelius’s house (10:44). The setting changed. The gift and the giver did not.
What gets in the way today
If it is this simple, why do some people seek for a long time? Usually something is getting in the way. These are the most common hindrances:
The night a devil was cast out of me, my pastor asked, “Did you know God has a gift for you?” I told him that if God had a gift for me, I wanted it. A few weeks after I was baptized in Jesus’ name, I received it. But a friend had told me it would feel like a lightning bolt striking the top of my head and running clear down to my feet. When the Spirit came and there was no lightning bolt, I was sure I had not received it, and I started to cry. I was not going to pretend. Brother Wilson saw me and said, “I saw you get the Holy Ghost. Now the devil told you that you didn’t, and the devil’s a liar. You tell him I said so.” I had received the gift. What nearly robbed me of it was a feeling someone told me to expect.
Read the whole story →Children receive it too
“The promise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39). Children receive the Holy Ghost, often more easily than adults, because they do not overthink it. They ask, they believe, and they receive. Jesus said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). If a child can receive it, it is not difficult. And it is never too late. Reider’s mother received the Holy Ghost at eighty-three years old (his testimony).
Receive it
- Repent. Turn to God and lay down what you are holding on to (Acts 2:38).
- Ask. Your Father has promised to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him (Luke 11:13).
- Praise Him out loud. Thank Him and worship Him with your voice.
- Yield. When words you do not know begin to come, do not hold them back. Let the Spirit give the utterance (Acts 2:4).
The promise is for you, “even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39).