God's Lifetime Guarantee?

Scripture

13And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. 14The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

Ephesians 1:13-14

Observation

When The Holy Spirit poured out on the 120 Jewish believers in the Upper Room  in Acts 2 it was God’s Guarantee that everything He had promised through Jesus was now theres! When The Holy Spirit poured out in the home of Cornelius and all the Gentile believers in Acts 10 is was God’s Guarantee that everything He had promised through Jesus and to the Jewish believers was now theres!  When we are baptized in The Holy Spirit it’s God’s Guarantee that everything He promised and provided to the First Century believers belongs to the 21st Century believer that surrenders their life to Jesus!  It’s a guarantee about past promises but also future fulfillment. The Greek work Paul uses, arrabōn, means:  A pledge, down payment, deposit, earnest payment. A first installment with a guarantee of full payment later. This word was borrowed from commercial and legal language in ancient Greek and Semitic cultures. It originally referred to a partial payment made to confirm a future full purchase. Once you gave the arrabōn, it was legally binding—you were saying, "I’m serious, and the rest is coming."  It’s only used three times in the New Testament (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5) and each time it’s regarding the work of The Holy Spirit in our lives.

Application

You ever buy something with a "lifetime guarantee"? I read a story illustrating how empty this word has become in our consumer driven culture. “A few years ago, I bought a toaster that came with one. I thought, "This is it. My last toaster ever!" Two months in—boom—it starts shooting smoke instead of toast. So I dig through my junk drawer, find the receipt, and call customer service. After pressing “2” for English, “5” for small appliances, and “9” to hear the terms of the warranty read by a robot, I finally get to a person. She says:“Sir, the guarantee only applies if you didn’t use the toaster near a heat source… like your stove.” …It's a toaster! Of course it’s near the stove! Then she says I need to ship it to a warehouse in New Jersey—at my own cost—and wait 6–8 weeks for evaluation. I gave up. That “lifetime guarantee” turned out to be more of a "maybe-if-you're-lucky" coupon." We've all experienced this kind of frustration where "guarantee" becomes an empty word. The fullness of The Holy Spirit is our guarantee and thankfully He has no fine print. When God guarantees something, there’s no asterisk, no loophole, no return policy. The Holy Spirit is not a customer service rep—He’s a covenant seal. It’s the promise that the best is yet to come! Cyndi is a great Real Estate agent, the best, though I might be a little biased. She always comes home happy from work when the buyer pays their downpayment on the home because it means, barring some crazy situation, this house is going to close. God would no more walk away from us than a person would walk away from a home they put a downpayment on. You don’t buy a home to never live in it, and we’ve been bought by The Blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit is proof we are His Home and we get to make our eternal home in Him!

Prayer

This Sunday is Pentecost and I love this powerful reminder that Jesus, You aren’t keeping Your distance, You are drawing me closer. I’m so thankful that there’s no limit to Your love or Your power and that there’s never a moment when I’m not in You and You’re not with me! I have seen You do so many things, but this reminds me I haven’t seen anything yet! Holy Spirit move through me and fill me as You remind me that this has nothing to do with close or far I feel to You on any given moment.  You are my guarantee that the best is yet to come and You are with me every moment!