RIBS

           Some actions have simple results. My parents would tell me to take out the trash. At that time, we lived on an acre and a half and the trash heap was an old abandoned basement hole that was about 75 feet from our small house in the country. In the winter months, it was always dark and it seemed as if the wind was always blowing causing the three apple trees and a row of Lombardi Poplars to be continually moving their branches. In the darkness, I could just get enough of a glimpse of movement to cause chills to run up my back. I would run out there, heave the garbage and hope it landed somewhere in the large hole and immediately run back to the only light available, that of the door from which I had just come. It was a simple act but one that made me fearful of things lurking in the dark. Simple acts have simple results. Other acts have greater results that have many other things along with them. Such is the act of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Jesus Told Nicodemus that he must be born again. It is a simple act yet has compound results. First Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.” 

          Many, but not all people, can recount the day and perhaps even the hour, when they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. In that precious moment many things took place which remain with the individual. Some of those things are connected with what takes place through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. There are four acts that take place which I like to refer to as RIBS. It is easy to remember. In an instant, you are regenerated, indwelt, baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit. It all took place as sparks of smitten steel as mentioned in the hymn, “And Can it Be?” At the moment of salvation, we are made new in regeneration. We are also indwelt with the Holy Spirit as today's passage describes our current condition. We are baptized into the Body of Christ and we are sealed with the Holy Spirit as the earnest of our inheritance. We should be about ready to jump up and shout, “Hallelujah!” This goes on throughout the life of the believer. Where you and I go and what we do is always accompanied by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. We are exhorted to neither grieve nor quench the Holy Spirit in our lives and yet we do it all the time. There are many times when our conversation, our expressions and our deeds to not match the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The non believer is left to the product of his or her circumstance but the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore dwells in victory in this life over those circumstances. No matter what is going on around me today, I can rest in the good news that the Holy Spirit has indwelt me and every believer around the world. Where we go He goes and what we do, He is right there with us. Praise God today for His presence in the life of every believer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.