Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 024
Charismatic Distinctives, part 1
Acts 2:4
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
When was the last time you preached a message on the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Looking at the present charismatic church situation in the United States, it seems we have a lack of power when it comes to divine healing and demon deliverance. Could it be that we have neglected the first step—making it essential, critical, very important for believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit (with the evidence of speaking in tongues)? Being a charismatic/Pentecostal/full-Gospel church, there are certain distinctions that we embrace, but foundational to all of those distinctions is people being filled with the Holy Spirit.
In the Bible, the model was:
People were saved,
then baptized in water,
then filled with the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit infilling was a distinctive second act of God’s process. While we are ministered to by the Holy Spirit in the new birth and regenerated by the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a subsequent experience.
Evidence of a Spirit-filled life:
Manifestation of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12) How familiar is your church with those gifts? When was the last time you taught on them?
Deliverance from demonic powers.
Laying hands on the sick and seeing them healed.
A spiritual desire to become holy, to be more Christ-like, and the power to go with that.
Worship that is beyond natural response. Worship not just in Truth, but in spirit.
The infilling of the Holy Spirit is critical to the overcoming and victorious life that every church, every Christian needs. Yet it seems we have neglected this foundational stone. People being baptized in the Holy Spirit upon their conversion is not something that needs to be put off or something they need to wait for. Yes, they could use some teaching and instruction, but the biblical model is that hands were laid on them immediately after salvation and they received the Holy Spirit.
What do you do when you preach on the filling of the Holy Spirit, pray for it, and nothing happens? You do it some more. It’s the same thing you do when people don’t get healed when you preach on divine healing. It’s the same thing you do when you preach on salvation and people don’t get saved. You keep sowing the Word and believing God for a response.
How do you emphasize the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
First do a special series, 3 or 4 weeks, on the Holy Spirit. Promise your church that at the end of the last week, you are going to have a special time of prayer (maybe even a worship and prayer night) and people are going to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Cast that vision. Give the solid teaching, and answer some of the biblical questions that people have that might hold them back from receiving. Make this teaching and time of infilling a regular occurrence.
I think our reservoir is too low. I think if we will raise the Holy Spirit volume in our local body, we will see more of those Holy Spirit dynamic expressions that cause people to get set free.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
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