‘You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’ (Acts 1:8, NKJV)
Today the Baptism of the Holy Spirit seems to have lost the significance of the Biblical experience. When people are prayed over to receive the Holy Spirit and they then speak a few words in tongues – that’s not it! Jesus said, in Acts 1:8, “You will receive POWER when the Holy Ghost comes on you!” Do we really understand the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?
Whether you are a man or a woman, someone just like Peter – you and I have to think again and ask God to baptise us again WITH FIRE, TO PUT POWER BACK INTO US! TO PUT THE FIRE AND THE POWER BACK INTO THE CHURCH!
‘The burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night until morning, and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it… A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out.’ (Leviticus 6:9, 13)
In the Old Testament, in Leviticus 6:9,12-13, God gave the command to the priests: when you bring the meat offering to the altar – you light a fire and it burns the sacrifice. But the command of God was that THE FIRE ON THE ALTAR MUST NEVER GO OUT! Today, if you want to receive this Fire from God, then your life needs to be the sacrifice on the altar of service to God, then I believe that the command given thousands of years ago still applies today, that fire must NOT go out. At the age of 13 years, I was baptised with the Holy Ghost and FIRE! I will not let that fire in me go out! I’m over 80 years old and this is the secret: what the priests had to do to keep the fire burning on the altar was to KEEP ADDING TO THE SACRIFICE! You’ve got to keep putting more sacrifice on your altar, more and more – that’s what we need today! The tragedy today is that too many believers claim they are baptised in the Holy Ghost – but where is the evidence of the fire?!
The challenge to the Church is this: YOU light the fire under the sacrifice, and when you light that fire, THAT FIRE MUST NEVER, EVER GO OUT! And there is only one way to feed fire, throw more onto it, put more sacrifice on the fire! If the fire is not burning in your life through the Holy Ghost, it’s because you are not putting enough sacrifice on the altar! We’ve got to have the same transformation in our lives as Peter had!
Our God is a God of power and authority. The Holy Spirit will not only give us Fire, but also the power and authority that God has. If you don’t have enough power in your life, if you don’t know God well enough, then the Holy Spirit in you will give all of that to you. I have an experience with God, which is not academic, it’s practical. My God is the God of the impossible who works miracles!