"Repent, and be baptized every one ... and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38)
The continued neglect of the Holy Spirit by evangelical Christians is too evident to deny and impossible to justify.
Evangelical Christianity is Trinitarian: "Praise Father, Son and the Holy Ghost" is sung in almost every church every Sunday of the year; and whether the singer realizes it or not he is acknowledging that the Holy Spirit is God indeed with equal claim to be worshiped along with the Father and the Son. Yet after this claim is sung at or near the beginning of the service little or nothing is heard of the Spirit again until the benediction.
There can be no doubt that there is a huge disparity between the place given to the Spirit in the Holy Scriptures and the place He occupies in popular evangelical Christianity. In the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is necessary.
David Brainerd once compared a man without the power of the Spirit (the anointing - or baptism) trying to do spiritual work to a workman without fingers attempting to do manual labor: the figure is striking but it does not overstate the facts. The Holy Spirit is not a luxury. The Spirit is an imperative necessity. Only the Eternal Spirit can do eternal deeds.
~A. W. Tozer~
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