“Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) John 7: 37-39
In the scriptures, we see there are two types of believers:
(1) those who have heard of the Holy Ghost and are hungry and thirsty for the fulfillment of that promise (day of Pentecost and Cornelius’ household), and
(2) those who have not heard of the Holy Ghost, but they are believers in Jesus Christ, and they need to be equipped with the fullness of the Spirit (Samaria, Saul, Ephesus).
The Father God wants to pour His Spirit out upon both types of believers, upon “all flesh,” because once you receive the Holy Spirit, you have received the supernatural power of God. Through the Holy Ghost, God is released in you with supernatural power to be a witness of Jesus (Acts 1: 8). The goal of God filling every believer is to get the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ out to all the world with supernatural power. For the price that Jesus His Son paid for the healing and redemption of all mankind, God the Father wants Him to be honored and exalted and glorified before the whole world.
Jesus said if any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. So, what is involved in drinking? First, let’s look at what is involved in examining, for before you drink something, you normally examine it before you drink it.
How do you examine something? You become aware of it, you look at it, you handle it, and you talk about it. You also might observe others who drink, and you see the refreshing and liberating effects the drinking has on them. With all that, you then often tell others what you have seen and observed. Having examined it, then, you are ready to drink.
How do you drink? Let’s use a bottle of water as our example (and remember, Jesus turns water into wine!). You take the bottle in hand personally. You are not just examining it any longer. You are taking it. You take that open bottle and put it to your open mouth, and you allow the contents to be poured into you. The vessel of the laying on of hands and the vessel of the preaching of the Word, are simply the bottle that carries the water to you. You take the water by faith (by believing the Word of promise), and you drink it down so it becomes yours inside you. You keep drinking it down until you are full, until you are free of all your inhibitions, and you are overflowing with the supernatural power to speak.
In drinking, you are acting on the realization that “This is mine! This is mine now!” You keep drinking until you yield to having the supernatural Biblical evidence of speaking in tongues, prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, teaching, preaching, or whatever else God wants coming out of your mouth and operating in your life by His Spirit.
God’s goal is to get you to speaking and taking action by His Spirit so you become the voice and demonstration of God in the earth. This is how Jesus operated. This is how the early church operated, and this is how He wants to operate by His Spirit in His people to accomplish His work in the earth today.
In the same way you initially drink, you can continue to drink of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the anointed one, and begin to understand everything you have in Him. You can do this every day for the rest of your life. This is called walking in the Spirit.
Sometimes we say hunger and thirst is required to receive the baptism of the Spirit. Jesus absolutely said those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled. But look the Ephesians of Acts 19: 1-6. They had not even heard of the Spirit! God can fill believers who have not even heard of the Holy Ghost. Paul instructed them to believe on Christ (the Spirit-anointed) Jesus. He baptized them in the name of the Lord Jesus, laid hands on them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. They were open, expectant and responsive, and God met them with His supernatural power.
Cornelius, in Acts 10, was hungry and thirsty for the things of God. He gathered his kindred and friends to hear what Peter had to say, and as Peter was preaching for them to believe on the Spirit-anointed Jesus for the remission of sins, they believed his word and the Holy Ghost fell on them as He did on the day of Pentecost—they spoke in tongues and magnified God. Then they were baptized in water in the name of the Lord.
At Samaria, in Acts 8, the apostles came to the new believers and instructed them and prayed for them, and they received the Holy Ghost. It was a simple transaction of instruction and impartation to the believers. There is no indication of tarrying, fasting and prayer, and no evidence of singing or striving to receive—just drinking in the Spirit from a God-sent vessel.
Saul, who later became Paul, after having a blinding encounter with the Lord, saw in a vision a man coming to him to restore his sight. Ananias, coming to Saul and putting his hands on him, told him the Lord sent him to restore his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately scales fell off his eyes and he got up and was baptized. Not a lot of instruction. No specific hunger and thirst for the Holy Ghost is related to us here, but we don’t know what all the Lord revealed to him in the three days of fasting and prayer. But we do know he was filled and spoke in tongues, as he wrote in his letter to the Corinthians— “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all.” 1 Corinthians 14: 18
On the day of Pentecost, the believers were hungry and thirsty to see the fulfillment of the promise of the Father of which Jesus had spoken. They were committed to receive what God had promised, and that they did with supernatural manifestations, among which was speaking with other tongues and liberated praise to God and bold, liberated behavior. There was only one Pentecost that initially ushered the Holy Spirit into this church age, but the same type event can happen today in any locality. We see what happened at Azusa Street and Toronto and many other places. When believers go beyond examining and start personally drinking, God fills them.
Today, if we are willing to go beyond just examining, and believe and drink, and keep on believing and drinking in the Holy Spirit, we will have the same supernatural manifestations of God in our personal life, and in the life of the church, as we read of in the Bible.
By hunger and thirst in committed believers, or by simple instruction for the hearing of faith and impartation by faith into the lives of open believers, either way, God wants to fill His people with supernatural power. This is basic, normal, Bible Christianity. This is following Jesus as Lord and Christ.
So, go beyond examining. By faith, start drinking, and keep on drinking, until you are filled to speaking out with the supernatural voice of God which is designed to set the whole creation free in the mighty name of Jesus.