How To Receive the Holy Spirit

"How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Luke 11:13)

Here is how to receive the Holy Spirit. First, present your body to Him (Romans 12:1-2). God can't fill what He can't have. Are you ready to present your mind, your personality, your spirit, your love, your ambitions, your all? That is the first thing.

Now the second thing is to "ask". (Luke 11:9-11). He could give the Holy Spirit without our asking, but He chooses to have us ask. "Ask of me, and I will give thee" is always God's order; so why not ask?

Acts 5:32 tells us the third thing to do. God gives His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him. Are to ready to do what you are asked to do - to live by the Scriptures as you understand them? Simple, but revolutionary.

The next thing is, have faith (Galatians 3:2). We receive Him by faith as we receive the Lord in salvation by faith. He comes as a gift of God to us in power.

The power to sin is one thing, the proneness to do so is another. Sanctification takes out the latter, but leaves the former, which is an attribute or necessity in a free moral agent.

~A. W. Tozer~