II Timothy 1:6 – “Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift
of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
I want to start this word by stating this fact: The single
most important experience that a person can have in their life is to meet
Jesus, to have their sins forgiven, to become a child of God, to be redeemed by
the blood of the lamb and have theirs name written down in the book of life and
to know that Christ lives in their heart. That is the single most important
thing that can happen to a human being.
It doesn’t matter whether you are
“good” or how much of your time and money you give, you must be born
again! Jesus told Nicodemus in John
chapter 3 that unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of
Heaven.
Once you’ve been born again, the second most important thing
that can happen in your life is to Baptized with the Holy Spirit. Jesus believed the Baptism of the Holy Ghost
to be so important that he commanded his disciples not to leave Jerusalem until
they had received it. (Acts 1:8)
Acts 2:1 - When the day of Pentecost came, they were all
together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came
from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire
that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Why is this Holy Ghost so important? Because the Holy Ghost is the power of God,
filling the human vessel, allowing us to live lives that reflect the image of
His Son (Romans 8:29), so that we might become His witnesses and advance the
Kingdom of God. The Holy Ghost is God’s supernatural
way of equipping us to fulfill the great commission and to carry on the
ministry of Jesus.
What was the ministry of Jesus? “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news
about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues,
and everyone praised him. He went to
Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the
synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the
prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is
written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim
good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set
the captive free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” (Luke 4:14-19) Jesus
came to seek and to save that which was lost, to comfort the sick, to reach out
to those in need, establish the Kingdom of God and to destroy the works of
Satan.
I John 3:8 – “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested
that he might destroy the works of the devil.”
Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today
and forever.”
Jesus ministry has never changed and we have been commissioned
and anointed to continue his ministry in the earth. If you read the book of Acts you will discover
that is an account of the NT church in her infancy, it is the record of how the
Holy Ghost operates through yielded vessels.
The book of Acts is the pattern for the church.
Mark 16:17-18 - And these signs will follow those who
believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new
tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will
by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Signs, wonders, miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost are
the defining characteristics of the NT church. To put it more simply, the Church
acted just like Jesus; they healed the sick, they cast out devils, and they
performed signs and wonders. How?
Through the Power of the Holy Spirit!
There are a lot of things that are lacking in our lives
today, but of all the things that we need, it is a fresh anointing of the Holy
Spirit. We need an invasion of the Holy
Ghost. We need God to storm our
services, we need a divine interruption to “our” agendas, and we need the Holy Ghost
to show up like He did on the day of Pentecost and fill God’s people with power
from above, power to be His witnesses! We
need a sudden, undeniable, supernatural stirring of the Holy Ghost!
We need to pray like they did in acts 4:29-31, “Now, Lord,
look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they
may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and
wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they
were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”
Come on Lord, stir us up!
We need an invasion of your Holy Ghost today! Something that originates from heaven,
something that will shake us up, something that will wake us up, something that
will stir us up, and set us on fire!
We need a divine interruption of our speaking by His
doing. You can be saved right now, you
can be set free right now, you can be healed right now, you can be delivered
right now, and you can get your miracle, or your breakthrough right now! Everything you need is breath of God away,
but it can only come to you through the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost.
I started with Paul’s words to Timothy, but he might as well
been speaking to us. If there’s one
thing we’re missing in many of our lives today, it is the vitality, the life, the
fire, the power and the anointing of the Holy Ghost.
We can look at the world, we can try and blame the
government, we can claim religious persecution or the atmosphere of our
society, but the truth is that we have no one to blame but ourselves. We are the keepers of our flame. Every person is responsible to stir up the
gift, the flame that is in them and it is our job to keep the fire
burning. We have to stir up the gift!
There is an anointing in you, a fire in you, it may be low, and
it may seem like just a flicker, you may think it has gone out, but if you’ll
begin to stir the embers a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit will begin to blow again
and the fire will burn.
We can’t afford to let the fire go out, it’s too close to
midnight, too close to the end and the bridegroom is drawing closer. There are people who are falling asleep all
around us, still singing the same songs, still saying amen and hallelujah, but
the fire has gone out! It’s time for us
to stir up the gift that is in us, time to wake up our calling, time to wake up
our destiny, to stir up that anointing and wake up that fire!
I’ve worked on some pretty high performance engines in my
secular job, some that give you goose bumps just listening to the sound of them
roar and you can tell that their power is intimidating to every other car on
the road, but one thing is true about every one of them; if the battery is
dead, you’re dead in the water.
It doesn’t matter how much destiny is in you, or how many
gifts or callings are in you, unless they are activated by the Holy Spirit,
they’re dead.
I doesn’t matter how many God given dreams you have, or how
many prophecies you have been spoken over your life, they are not going to come
to fruition without the stirring of the Holy Ghost. When we allow the fire to be stirred in us,
we can activate the flame in others and then we become a threat to hell.
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