“When they prayed, the place where they were gathered trembled; they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and courageously proclaimed the word of God. “(AT 4. 31)
In Acts 1. 8, Jesus promises that the Spirit will descend upon the disciples, giving them the power to be their witnesses. At Pentecost, we read in Acts 2. 4 that these brethren were filled with the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and announced God’s greatness in advance. .
- However.
- Acts 4 brings us something interesting.
- Something that challenges our concept of filling the Spirit as something unique and not repeatable in the Christian life.
- After Peter and John return from the Sanhedrín and report to the church what had happened.
- The church prays unanimously and.
- In Acts 4:31.
- We see a second fill of the Spirit of the same believers who were at Pentecost.
- In this fullness.
- There is no sign of tongues.
- But there is the power to testify: “Boldly.
- They have proclaimed the word of God.
- “Pentecost and this second fill come from the Spirit who gives the power to bear witness to the ends of the earth.
That is, no matter how you think about the subject of baptism and languages, there is a theological reality that encourages us all to seek the fullness of the Spirit, in the plural, there is also a historical reality. From the Puritans, to some of these spiritual fills we have called them awakenings or awakenings, that is, it is an experience that includes charismatics and cessationists.
So the question is how to seek the fills of the Spirit?First, we must remember that these fills are under the sovereignty and freedom of the Spirit. We cannot actually manufacture them (but forgeries abound), nor force the Spirit of God to submit to the creature.
However, we must not ignore human responsibility. The sovereign God who determines the end also commands the means, so we must take possession of the ordained means of grace.
We could systematically investigate the Bible, but the texts of Acts present us with a common element in both fillings: both before Pentecost (1:14) and during the second filling (4,24), the church prayed together, and Luke points it out using the term “unanimous”. Community prayer is the common element we see in Acts and something we can also observe in many stories of revivals throughout history.
This reflects Jesus’ promise to ask the Father for the good gift of the Spirit. Luke 11 has a prayer block from verse 1 to 13, which begins with a petition to the Lord to teach us to pray and end with?Heavenly Father [give] the Holy Ghost to those who ask?. In the midst is the prayer of our Father, who guides community prayer (Our Father?) To prioritize the sanctification of God’s name, to cry out for the coming of his kingdom, to ask for daily needs, and to pray for forgiveness of sins and the deliverance of temptations; the parable of the unwelcome friend, who urges us to pray diligently; And the famous encouragement to prayer?, I asked, and will you be given ?, which reminds us that our Father wants to give us good gifts.
Then, without praying individually, we must relearn to pray unanimously as a church and we must relearn to insist on the good gifts of the Father. Awakening will never come as long as our Sunday meetings are poor in prayer and our prayer meetings are. Just as Delilah cut off Samson’s source of vitality upon discovering the secret of his strength, Satan deftly seeks to cut the prayer, the secret of our strength, of the life of the church.
So here are some practical stimuli
Beloved, it is this kind of filling that the Brazilian Church urgently needs, whether traditional or Pentecostal, the Spirit is a gift of the Father who already lives in each of us, but we only hear of the manifestation of her power. seek the fullness of the mighty Spirit to be witnesses of Christ.