Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

• Acts 1:5-8

“Why do we want to be baptized with the Holy Ghost? All depends on that ‘why’. If we want to be baptized with the Holy Ghost that we may be of use, it is all up; or because we want peace and joy and deliverance from sin, it is all up. ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost’, not for anything for ourselves at all, but that we may be witnesses unto Him. God will never answer the prayer to be baptized with the Holy Ghost for any other reason than to make us witnesses to Jesus. To be consciously desirous of anything but that one thing is to be off the main track. The Holy Ghost is transparent honesty. When we pray, ‘Oh Lord, baptize me with the Holy Ghost whatever it means’, God will give us a glimpse of our self-interest and self-seeking until we are willing for everything to go and there is nothing left but Himself. As long as there is self-interest and self-seeking, something has to go. God is amazingly patient. The perplexity is not because of the hardness of the way, but the unwilling pride of sin, the stubborn yielding bit by bit, when it might be done any second. The acceptance of the Divine nature involves in it obedience to the Divine precepts. The commands of God are enablings. God banks entirely on His own Spirit, and when we attempt, His ability is granted immediately. We have a great deal more power than we know, and as we do the overcoming we find He is there all the time until it becomes the habit of our life.
“The baptism with the Holy Ghost is the great sovereign work of the personal Holy Ghost; entire sanctification is our personal experience of it.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (December 17, from He Shall Glorify Me)

Rev. Chambers and I may have a slight difference of opinion about definitions here, but the essence I think is very important.  If we do not desire to be more like God, the Holy Spirit cannot baptize us with Himself.

If we do not get such baptism, then we do not have the full power of God to cast out temptation and avoid sin.

Rev. Chambers speaks similar to the Apostle John in 1 John where if we say we love God but we sin we are a liar.  But then John immediately follows that with if we sin we must confess and repent.

This bit of language in getting the cart before the horse is only part of the problem.

I led a promise keepers group in the Bible study one time and I asked the question to a group of retired men, “Do you fear the Holy Spirit?”

One said that he did not and the others in the group said that I should pardon his arrogance, in that he did not know what he was talking about.  In other words, they all got nervous when the discussion came up about the Holy Spirit.

Tyler Staton has a new book out, and I have not gotten it yet.  But the book was being discussed on a television show, and he said that in the last few hundred years we have had a great divide formed between two sets of Christians.  One set of Christians avoid talking about the Holy Spirit because it seems like a bunch of mumbo-jumbos (not his word, but you get the idea).  The other group has focused so much on aspects of the Holy Spirit that they almost forget the rest of the Gospel entirely.  In other words, we either think too little of the Holy Spirit or we think too much.

We need to find that happy medium.  We need to see what Jesus said in John 14-16 and learn who the Holy Spirit is.

But it really comes down to what Rev. Chambers asks.  Do you want to or not?

That seems to be God’s carrot.  He says, “All this and more are yours, but only if you truly desire.  Are you willing to give up what you want to get what I am offering?”

We should be saying, “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.  But do we really want it deep down?”

The sad thing is that the things that we want to hang onto in this world will not be there in the next.  We cannot take them with us.  And what God gives us in return is a change in our desires.  Those things that we cling to will no longer be desires and what we hope for ends up becoming a little bit of heaven here on earth.  Truly, the old is gone and the new is here.  It is just what you desire.

I am not totally there myself.  But each day, I want this world a lot less, and I desire the next even more.

As Rev. Chambers asks, “Why do we want to be baptized with the Holy Ghost? All depends on that ‘why’.”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.