 Welcome to Foundations of Faith. Today I want to talk to you about the power or the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As you know, when you are born again, when you are saved and become a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes in and dwells every believer. The Holy Spirit is the one who regenerates us, gives us new life. The Holy Spirit dwells within us and seals us, seals the fact that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts us. The Holy Spirit is the one that teaches us and guides us and leads us into all truth as believers. But the Holy Spirit is a person who Jesus said would also empower those who would be his followers. In Acts chapter 1-8, Jesus is speaking to his disciples just before he ascends to the right hand of God the Father. And he gives them an instruction. He says, I want you to go into the city, Jerusalem, and I want you to wait for the promise of the Father. He said, which you've heard from me when I said to you that you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. And he said in verse number 8, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world. And what we see is the disciples did that very thing. In Acts chapter 2, it says that they were waiting 10 days praying in the city of Jerusalem before they would even dare venture out to fulfill the great commission of preaching the gospel in all the nations of the world. And they were praying and waiting for God to pour out the promised Holy Spirit in power upon their lives. Acts chapter 2 verse 1 says, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, when they were all gathered together, it says that there came a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind and the Holy Spirit filled every one of the 120 who were gathered and they all began to speak in other tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them the utterance. Well that drew a huge crowd of people, thousands of people gathered around because they heard and saw these disciples who were prophesying and speaking in other tongues being filled with the Holy Spirit and they thought to themselves, what does this mean? And what we see immediately is that Peter, the preeminent apostle who just 40 days earlier had denied even knowing Jesus, steps forward and he begins to preach the greatest sermon in church history. He said, these are not drunk as you suppose, but this is a fulfillment of what Joel chapter 2 said, when God promised, the Father promised that in the last days I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and there will be an outpouring and an unleashing of supernatural dynamic power. And he said, this is that which was prophesied by the prophet Joel. What they experienced in Acts chapter 2 is called the infilling or the baptism in Holy Spirit and it is the empowerment that God promises to every believer. Now you receive the Holy Spirit when you are born again, but this is different than just the Spirit in dwelling you. This is the Holy Spirit coming upon you in power and anointing so that you, like the disciples, can be his witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Acts chapter 2 verse 38 says this promise, the promise that they spoke of was for you, for your children, for your children's children, as many as are far off or that the Lord will call to himself. Here's the good news, the promise of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is not just for a few people in the early church period in the book of Acts. It's for every believer that the Lord will call to himself. It's so that you can be empowered, that you can be filled and that you can receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit as the overflow expression of your walk with God and be fully prepared with power for ministry. We find this pattern throughout the book of Acts. We find it in Acts chapter 8. We find it in Paul's conversion to Acts chapter 9. We find it in the rest of the book of Acts that believers believed were baptized and then the Spirit came upon them or endued them with power from on high. And oftentimes the overflow, the primary or the principal overflow is the ability to speak in other tongues, to pray in an unknown language, a heavenly language that the Father gives you. This gift is available for any and all believers. Even though we don't hear a lot about it in the modern church, it doesn't diminish the fact that it is a promise for you. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 5. He said, The baptism in the Holy Spirit is just like water baptism, an immersion into the dynamic supernatural life of the Spirit and the release of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But it's just the beginning. We're all called to not just be filled once, but to live a life where we're continually filled over and over and over with the person and the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to encourage you, if you've never received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, to study the Scriptures and to also pray a prayer that the Lord Jesus would fill you just like he filled and baptized the disciples with the power of the Holy Spirit. We live in a day where as Christians, we need all the power that we can get of the Holy Spirit to walk supernaturally in the dynamics of the Holy Spirit, demonstrating not just the words of the Gospel, but the power of the Gospel. This is a gift for you, it's a gift for everyone, and you can have it if you'll just simply ask Jesus to baptize you in the Holy Spirit.