Holy Spirit - You Have Not Because You Ask Not

If you have trusted in Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins and are following him, you have the Holy Spirit. Do not be deceived, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for God's children today. Do not reject them just because you were mis-taught or some misled Christian offended you when they said you have to speak in tongues to be saved. Tongues (foreign languages) is just one of the seven gifts the Holy Spirit gives to His children.

John 7 ISV

• 37On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and shouted, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to met and drink! 38The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have rivers of living water flowing from his heart.” 

• 39Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who were believing in him were to receive, because the Spiritu was not yet presentv and Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Do you realize we are told to desire spiritual gifts? How horrible it is that most teachers do not teach this and worse, they deny they are for today!! I spent most of my life being ignorant as to the gifts of the Spirit. Now I pray for them to be working in my life daily. Start reading your bible in 1 Corinthians 12 and discover the gifts that are given to God's children. Let God know you desire them!

1 Corinthians 14 ISV

• 1Keep on pursuing love, and keep on desiring spiritual gifts, especially the ability to prophesy.

The reason we do not receive what we ask for is made clear by the Apostle James. Remember, God tells us to be Holy as he is Holy. If we are filling our minds with trash and living a life of compromise, do we really think that God is going to give his Holy Spirit in great measure to us? If we live a life of compromise, we cannot be trusted as we would misuse the gifts. Even worse, we may be guilty of being hostile to God!

James 4 ISV

• 1Where do those fights and quarrels among you come from? They come from your selfish desires that are at war in your bodies, don’t they? 2You want something but do not get it, so you commit murder. You covet something but cannot obtain it, so you quarrel and fight. You do not get things because you do not ask for them! 3You ask for something but do not get it because you ask for it for the wrong reason
  —
  for your own pleasure
  .

• 4You adulterers! Don’t you know that friendship with the world means hostility with God? So whoever wants to be a friend of this world is an enemy of God. 5Or do you think the Scripture means nothing when it says that the Spirit that Goda caused to live in us jealously yearns for us?b 6But he gives all the more grace. And so he says,

“God opposes the arrogant

but gives grace to the humble.”c

7Therefore, submit yourselves to God. 

• Resist the devil, and he will run away from you. 
• 8Come close to God, and he will come close to you. 
• Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 
• 9Be miserable, mourn, and cry. 
• Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. 
• 10Humble yourselves in the Lord’s presence, and he will exalt you.