Lesson 4 · Upper Room Study Guides

Receiving the Holy Ghost

Jesus promised that His followers would be filled with the Holy Spirit — the same gift poured out on the Day of Pentecost. This promise is for you.

Key verse

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Acts 2:4 · NKJV

The promise of the Father

Jesus told the disciples to wait for the promise of the Father (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8). On Pentecost the Holy Ghost was poured out and filled them.

The evidence

When people received the Holy Ghost in Acts, they spoke with other tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance (Acts 2:4; 10:44–46; 19:6). This was the consistent sign of the infilling.

For you and your children

The promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off (Acts 2:39). Ask, and keep seeking — God gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him (Luke 11:13).

Search the Scriptures

Read these passages in your Bible

  • Acts 2:4
  • Acts 2:39
  • Luke 11:13

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Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

Work through it

Four accounts, read together

Read Acts 2:4, Acts 2:39, and Luke 11:13, then add the two passages the second section names: Acts 10:44–46 and Acts 19:6. Taken together those are the accounts in Acts of people receiving the Holy Ghost, and reading them in one sitting is how you see for yourself what happened each time. Begin earlier in Acts 2 so you have the Day of Pentecost whole rather than one verse from the middle of it. Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8, quoted in the first section, are the promise Jesus made before any of it, so they belong at the start of your reading. Luke 11:13 closes the circle: it says who gives the Spirit, and to whom.

What it asks

Ask, and keep seeking

The step is to ask God to fill you and to keep seeking rather than stopping short. The lesson supplies no technique for that and puts no timetable on it; it points to Acts 2:39 and says the promise is to you, to your children, and to all who are afar off. This is lesson four of six in the New Believer study, following baptism and coming before holy living, and the reading order matters, because the first three lessons set out what the promise is attached to. The series is free to read on the site and free to download as a booklet, and each printed lesson adds a fill-in-the-blank study to the teaching above. Your local church is the natural place to seek this alongside other believers.