Fight the Good Fight of Faith, English Edition

Lesson : The Endowment We Receive • 

3. “How do you really know when you have the Holy Spirit?” A young Christian was troubled about a conversation she had on the bus with a person who said that they were a “Pentecostal” Christian. This person told her that she needed to get the Holy Spirit, which would be shown by her “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” followed by her speaking in tongues* . The young sister in reply said, “I learned last week in Bible Study that every person who repents and believes in Jesus is sealed with the Holy Spirit, and that he lives within them immediately when they believe. We also learned that he gives us gifts to help us serve other Christians in the body of Christ, and that tongues are one gift of the Spirit – but does every Christian have to have every gift? How does that work?” The sister is now interested in finding out more about the Holy Spirit – how should she proceed to learn? In the last session ( The Entrance We Get ) we learned that when we believed in Jesus, we were baptized into Christ, and inherited a host of blessings in Christ. Now we will explore some of what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit, his work and blessing in the lives of believers, and see how he provides special gifts and abilities to help us grow and become strong as we walk with the Lord in his Story, fighting the good fight of faith. The Holy Spirit is the pledge (down payment) of the future inheritance that we as Christians will receive when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to establish his Kingdom. The Spirit gives every believer a spiritual gift in order to edify (build up) other members of the body of Christ in the local church. The Holy Spirit comes to indwell every believer; no one is left out because the Body requires the participation, contribution, and involvement of all members of the body. Through his grace, God also provides us with forgiveness, and freedom from sin, guilt, and condemnation so we can serve others in Christ’s name with courage and boldness. He enables us to grow as we reflect upon the Word of God (theology), exalt his name in the Word and through the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *Speak in tongues – When the Church was birthed by the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2), believers received gifts from him, including the ability to speak in languages they did not normally know how to speak. This gift is mentioned in the New Testament as available to believers for their upbuilding (1 Cor. 12.1-31), while in other instances new believers were given this same ability to speak in languages they had not learned, upon receiving Christ by faith (e.g. Acts 10.44-46). In some churches today, it is believed that every Christian must follow this pattern of speaking in a language they have never learned, while other churches believe that this is a gift of the Holy Spirit, bestowed on some and not others. Other churches believe that speaking in tongues was only for the early church and that this gift is not given to believers today.

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