REFRESHMENT ANYONE?

Saturday 21 September

To whom He said, “This is the rest with which You may cause the weary to rest,” And, “This is the refreshing”; Yet they would not hear. Isaiah 28:12 (NKJV)

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, Acts 3:19 (NKJV)

Have you ever had a time where the sun is beating down on you so hard and you can feel the searing heat all over your body and suddenly in the distance you see someone holding an icy cold beverage? Your motivation to get some refreshment has rapidly increased.

In the same way that your body is refreshed by a cold drink on a hot day, your spirit is refreshed by speaking in tongues. Isaiah 28:11 describes this phenomenon ‘through stammering lips and an unknown tongue will He speak to His people.’

You have to remember, Isaiah saw this activity a vision and was the only way he could describe what he was seeing. He didn’t live in the New Testament era, so he had no understanding of what he envisioned.

Jesus made an enlightening statement to the woman at the well. He said in John 4:14 “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

We see water being used to describe the refreshing of the Holy Spirit. John 7:39, explains this in more detail. “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

So water here represents the Spirit. When we are born again we are ‘born of the Spirit’. To put it simply, we receive the indwelling of the Spirit with the capacity for the infilling of the Spirit.

This is an internal refreshing that takes place when we are ‘filled with the Spirit’ with the evidence of speaking in tongues. There are Christians who have never experienced this blessing before which can leave a lot of folks spiritually dehydrated. It ought not to be so.

Apostle Paul told every believer in Christ to ‘be filled with the Spirit’. It’s not a suggestion to be ignored but rather an instruction to be followed. If you want to be continually refreshed from within, then praying in tongues is the key.

Every Christian can and should take advantage of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. ‘Times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord’ happen in our lives when we ‘drink of the Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 12:13) . When was the last time you had your spiritual refreshment?

APPLICATION

Be intentional with speaking in tongues and make it a large part of your prayer life to walk in the refreshment of the Spirit every day.