Tina Out Loud!: Be Filled With The Holy Spirit

What’s In The Brown Bag?

2 Timothy 4:2 -“…proclaim the Message with intensity; keep your watch. Challenge, warn and urge your people. Don’t ever quit." (The Message)

I heard a story a while ago which went something like this: There was a man in America who walked into a poor town one day with just the suit that he wore and a brown bag. He decided he would turn the town around. Within a few years this town was economically thriving and the town’s people decided to throw a celebratory party. The man who had turned it around gave a speech which started: “I turned up 5 years ago in just the suit I was stood up in a brown bag and I decided to turn this town around and now we have…….” He gave thanks to all those who worked with him and the party continued. As he left the stage from which he had been speaking he was surrounded by reporters who said that they just had one question: What was in the brown bag? The man replied “$3,000,000”.

Whoever we are (and we may look like a ‘brown bag’ on the outside!) we possess knowledge, insights, words from God that can encourage, correct and change lives around us. This is our $3,000,000.

What’s in your brown bag? What can you share?

I’ve decided to share the contents of mine. Some of it you may think is worth $3,000,000, some $3. However, if it benefits one person then this is good enough.

2 August 2009

Be Filled With The Holy Spirit

Acts 4:8 -10 - "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed."

Acts 2:4 - "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

Acts 4:31 - “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

Points to remember:

1) Prayer can precede being filled with the Holy Spirit. . When we step out to witness we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Why only ‘can’? We have to have the knowledge of this and the desire to be filled. We need to ask. When we ask and we receive these times of prayer and witnessing are powerful.

2) We can be filled individually and we can be filled corporately. In Acts 2:4 and 4:31 the corporate infilling came after a time(s) of prayer.

3) Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit more than once. He was present in all three situations mentioned in the Bible verses above. Ephesians 6:18 tells us that we need to be continually filled: “…be filled with the Spirit.” It is not clear in the Bible as to why (unless someone can enlighten me), but many a great man and woman of God have said in the past that we ‘leak’ as we sin (light and darkness cannot dwell in the same place) or as we minister and witness to others.

Tina Out Loud!

What’s In The Brown Bag?

2 August 2009

Be Filled With The Holy Spirit

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