[Christ Manifested in Us] Part 2Sample

Receiving the Spirit by Faith

Paul wrote to the Galatians, “This is all I want to know, ask, find out, investigate, and research about you Galatians: did you receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing in faith?” 

I would also like to ask Gentiles a similar question today: did you receive the Holy Spirit because of a ritual? By the laying of hands? For being part of a denomination? For feeling something nice during a service? For speaking in tongues? Or was it by hearing in faith? 

If you thought or were told that you did not have the Holy Spirit in you, today I tell you, if you heard the good news, believed them, and received them by faith, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. 

You are God’s dwelling place in the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, and living in the Spirit. God declares about you in Galatians, “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father’.” Are you a son? When it says “sons,” it includes daughters. In human terms there are male and female; in the Spirit, there is no male nor female. Even if you are a woman, in the Spirit you are a son because there is no gender in the Spirit.

Even if you are a woman, you are a king, you are a priest to God, you are a competent minister of the new covenant. In Christ, there is no difference between male and female. We are one in Him; we have the same Spirit. God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, by which we cry out, Abba Father!

The Spirit cries within us the truth that our father is not Adam, but God. Our provenance is divine; we’re identified not only with His blessings, receiving an inheritance from the Father. We identify with the Father’s purposes and business. His business is my business; everything about Him is mine, and His purpose is my purpose because He’s my Abba. What He desires I desire. His mission is my mission, because He is my spirit’s Father—Abba.