Copyright © S P Townsend
Westhill Episcopal Church
Sunday 26 April 1998
Receiving the Father’s Gift
Reading: 1 John 3:1-2, 18-24
Introduction
This winter we have been considering the way in which God is a Father to us, and how this affects us. Jesus invariably called God his Father, and He encouraged his disciples also to use this term of family relationship - “When you pray, say ‘Our Father ...’”. Well, what difference does this make to us? Suppose Jesus had started the Lord’s prayer with the term ‘Dear God ..’, would it make any difference? Yes, a great deal of difference. The relationship of a created being to its creator is a long way from the relationship of a child to its father. Father implies so much - shared characteristics, family relationships, benefits of unheritance, shelter, protection, and so on.
This week, following on from last week’s Healing & Renewal, service we are looking at one other important aspect of God’s fatherhood: receiving the Father’s gift.
God has given us many gifts. 1 John 3:1 says that God has “lavished” love on us. All that we have and experience comes from him, directed and delivered by His great wisdom and power. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. Jesus taught His disciples, in Jn 14:15, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever - the Spirit of Truth.” The Holy Spirit is a gift requested by Jesus, bestowed by the Father, for those who love Him and obey Him.
Col 2:6 says “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him.” How did we or do we receive Christ? We receive by faith - faith that comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Here is a principle then: the Christian life is a continual journey in which we grow in our understanding of God’s Word to us, and increasingly exercise faith to experience what is promised.
Since I can remember a sterile debate has gone on in Christian circles on the question of when we receive the Holy Spirit. It leads nowhere but to dissension and division. The correct and scriptural question is “Are you now filled with and led by the Holy Spirit?”
This debate led to confusion about whether or not we should pray to ask the Father to give us the Holy Spirit. Well, we shouldn’t be confused. Jesus himself taught us to ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, as Ian reminded us last week.
We receive forgiveness when we first become a child of God. Does this mean that we never ask for forgiveness again? Indeed not, and in fact repeatedly we and every other Christian Church celebrate Communion, seeking by faith that God’s grace will touch us and change us anew. So it is with the Holy Spirit. As God’s word awakens in you a realisation of your need for the Holy Spirit, then reach out with the prayer of faith and receive him anew. Does God then slap us round the face and say, “stupid child, don’t you know that I gave you the Holy Spirit when you first became a Christian”? Of course not! He delights to receive our requests for all that is good and true.
When you become a Christian you receive forgiveness. But suppose you didn’t know that. Well you might continue to live with a great burden of guilt upon you, weighing you down like the character Christian in John Bunyan’s story “Pilgrim’s Progress”. But as soon as someone shows you that forgiveness is a consequence of the atonement, why then you receive what God has always had available for you, and your guilt rolls away.
So when you first understand about the Holy Spirit, His presence, His fruit, His gifts, then you receive what God has always had available for you, with great rejoicing. And for many that very first time of experiencing the Holy Spirit’s presence and power can be a great blessing, accompanied by signs of His presence.
But we should never feel that having asked once that that is enough. We need to ask and keep on asking. We need to come daily in our personal walk with God, and regularly in our worship together, and ask God to pour out His Holy Spirit upon us, that we might receive His abundant grace to meet the needs of the moment.
Copyright © S P Townsend