Chapter 7: Receiving the Holy Spirit
THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT EXPERIENCE
Perhaps you have been hearing the experiences of those who have already begun receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (BHS); and you’re hearing people describe how they have a special closeness with the HS and are even receiving miraculous answers to prayers. So you are wanting to have the same experience yourself. It is entirely possible. But it requires devoting yourself to a lot of prayer. This is a most essential element.
Physical Manifestations:
You will soon hear, if you haven’t already, people describing experiences where they “know” that the HS is with them, and that they have “physical manifestations” in their bodies, and some are even “hearing” the HS speaking to them. Upon receiving the BHS, some of the sensations that may be experienced are the following: a sensation of warmth all over the body, or in certain areas; a feeling of tingling all over the body; sensations of either lightness or heaviness; a feeling of energy flowing through your body; or a sense of being hugged from the inside.
At first hearing about this may cause you to be taken back; because this is something we haven’t heard taught in most Christian churches, and you’re worried that it might be some kind of new fanaticism. And yet, as you listen, you don’t hear anything that contradicts the Bible; and the people relating these events seem sincere enough and don’t look crazy; and through it all there is something pushing you to keep studying and not give up even though the ideas are new. A little voice inside tells you to keep at it.
Let me try to reassure you: This concept is in perfect harmony with the Bible; it’s not heresy.
Mt 3:11, “He (Jesus) shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” The same thing is recorded in Lk 3:16. We read in Mt 10:1, 7-8, “He called His disciples and gave them power against unclean spirits and to heal all manner of sickness. … He sent them saying, ‘Preach the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead & cast out devils.’”
Here is God’s Word to us: that we are going to be given the HS with fire, and then have power to cast out demons and heal diseases. But even though these statements are as clear as can be; as we’ve read them and re-read them through the years, we’ve stopped believing that they mean what they say. We’ve changed them to mean that there is some special event right at the close of time where only those who are living then will get some special powers in the Latter Rain event. Yet this is not what the verses say. They say all His disciples in all times can have this if they will truly believe in Him. Jn 1:12, “As many as received Him, to them He gave power to become the sons of God.”
Stages of Growth:
First, please understand that you will not reach the same level that others are at immediately. There are several stages of growth, and reaching each one takes time. But with the attitude of the turtle in Aesop’s fable of “The Great Race”, and working at it steadily, you will get there.
In the beginning of your experience, you somehow sense there is a possibility of a relationship with God closer than you’ve ever experienced before; and you want it. But you don’t know what to do to get it. The most important thing throughout the entire process is lots of prayer. You can’t grow without it. And no matter how much you’ve been praying up until now, if you don’t yet have the close relationship you want, then you need to pray more.
As you put into practice the prayer techniques* that you are learning, you find new things begin to happen. As you search for a Bible promise that matches the request you’re wanting to make, you see old verses taking on new meaning now that you have come to view them as potential promises. You also begin taking these promises to be applicable to you; not just to everyone in general, but to you personally and for this situation specifically. You feel as if God is telling you this verse is meant to help you at this time.
(* An explanation of several prayer techniques is given in Chapter 11.)
As you are praying for a situation, claiming a promise, and praying longer and stronger than you ever have before, suddenly you find yourself getting a strong sensation of “Peace” about your request; you feel sure it will be granted. This is a feeling of calm about the situation and an inexplicable sense of assurance that all will turn out well. This is a new step for you: to experience a Peace that lets you know the prayer is heard. And you wish you could have had sensations like this through all the past years you’ve been praying. Jb 33:14-18 (in part), tells us, “God speaks in various ways, yet we do not perceive it.”
The next stage of growth is to actually receive the experience of the BHS. In this stage you will not only have a sense of Peace, you will feel some sort of physical sensation in your body. We can’t tell you exactly what you’ll feel, because it varies from person to person. But we’ve already described several of the typical physical manifestations. It may be one of these, or something completely different. The HS works with each of us as individuals and speaks to us in the way we each can understand and accept. We can read how Peter experienced it: 1Pe 1:8-9, “Though you haven’t seem Him, you love Him and believe in Him, and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy.” He was filled with a sensation of joy he described as “inexpressible and glorious”.
Once you get the BHS, be very careful to keep it. It’s not hard to lose, but it is hard to get back. Once you have it, work hard to keep aware of it; and if you feel it growing weaker, pray and pray until you find what’s wrong.
Most of us stay at the beginning stage of the BHS for several months. Eventually we become ready for the next stage of our growth. After “listening” to the physical manifestations for awhile, you become much more attuned to the will of the HS. At this point He will take you from just “yes & no” question and answer sessions to placing complete thoughts in your mind. It’s as if you can almost hear Him speaking to you clearly. When this happens you do what you can to confirm that it’s His will, not yours. Then you proceed as guided. Is 11:2, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
There is even more to come in the next level. That is to experience the Glory of Jesus, as described in the Pentecost experience. But that is beyond what we’re discussing at the moment. Just be aware that God will continue helping you to grow to levels never before imagined. Ac 2:2-4, “Suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind, … and there appeared on them tongues of fire, … and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”
How to Use It:
With the physical manifestations of the BHS you have a powerful tool to help in your prayers. Once you start receiving some type of physical sensation, you can use this to tell when He is “there” and when He is not. Of course, He is always there; but He doesn’t always make Himself felt. By paying attention to these sensations you can start using them to communicate with Him.
In the beginning of your BHS experience you can use these sensations in three major ways.
1) If He is there, then your relationship with Him is OK; if He’s not, there is something you need to correct in order to bring Him back. You will be able to sense when He has left because of something you’ve done to break the connection.
2) If He’s there, but it feels like He’s pulled back; you can take that as an indication that there are evil spirits near by. In this situation you need to rebuke them and order them to leave. You can say this softly; but it must be out loud, because they can’t read your mind.
3) When you feel He is there strongly; you can begin asking a series of “Yes & No” questions.
A strong sensation from Him in response to your question is an affirmative answer; an absence of sensation in response to your question is a negative answer; and a weak sensation indicates something wrong with how you’re phrasing the question. With a series of questions from general to specific you can, with practice, get a pretty clear understanding of God’s desires for you.
As mentioned already, after you’ve grown good at conversing with Him through physical sensations and Y/N questions, He will move you up to where you begin to hear Him almost audibly. Then your questions can become more sophisticated, and the answers will be more complete; at this stage you will have fewer misunderstandings of what He’s trying to tell you.
Once again, the first step is to pray until you can feel He is present. Without His presence you can’t communicate with Him; whether you’re at the “Y/N” stage or the “auditory” stage. Once He is present, you’re ready to proceed with your requests. Jn 15:7-8, “If ye abide in Me and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it will be done for you.”
If you’re asking for something, it’s helpful to have a biblical promise to support your request.
There are promises available for healing, for money, for loved ones, and many other needs. If you’re seeking information or guidance, present your series of questions, moving from general to specific until you have the knowledge you are seeking. Je 33:3, “Call unto Me and I will answer thee and show great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
As you are asking your questions, and again after you’ve finished your prayer, it is important to examine very carefully what you think you heard, and examine your motives while asking. When we want something very strongly, it is easy to assume we were given an affirmative answer exactly according to what we want, when that was not what He really said. When this happens it can cause you to doubt Him for awhile. But if you’re honest with yourself, you know the problem was that you misunderstood what He was telling you due to trying to impose your will on Him rather than listening for His will for you.
When you do properly understand what He has told you, and you express faith in His word to you, then you will begin to see many amazing answers to your prayers. These answers can even rightly be called miracles. And these experiences will strengthen your faith tremendously.
1Sa 10:6-7, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy, and shalt be turned into another man. When these signs come upon thee, do as occasion serves thee, for God is with thee.”
Watch For Misunderstandings:
When praying to God you should determine beforehand if you are going to present to Him your will, or if you are going to seek His will. Both are acceptable. You are allowed to present your own desires. But there will be a difference in the results you receive.
We need to clearly understand that by endowing human beings with “free will”, He opened before us the possibility of following more than one course. First, there is His “ideal will” for us, His “Plan A”, so to speak. Then, there are any number of alternative choices we can make. Although by taking these other paths we may still reach Heaven, our circumstances are likely to be much more difficult. God lets us choose these ways if we wish. These then are His “permissive will”, or “Plan B”.
If we insist on a course different than He would choose, He will respect our decision. He doesn’t just reject us and leave us to suffer the consequences of our contrary choice; He will continue to work with us and continue to help us. It’s just we’ll then have difficulties to face that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
So in order to be shown the best way, be careful that you are open to His leading. 1Jn 2:27, “The anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you don’t need anyone to teach you: His anointing teaches you all things.”
Since God allows us to make our own choices, we must be aware if the responses we receive from Him represent His ideal will for us or if they are a result of acquiescing to our desires. When we want something strongly, it is easy for us to come to the conclusion that this desire is His will, when actually it is ours. As I mentioned, it makes a difference in the results.
Let me choose an example which is not too controversial, so as not to offend too many of you:
Suppose you’re a single girl in your mid-20s thinking it’s time to start considering marriage. Imagine that God’s Plan A for you is to wait three years then you’ll meet “Mr. Right”, with whom you’ll live “happily ever after”. But you don’t know this. So by not being careful, you begin praying contrary to this plan. Perhaps you pray something like this:
“Oh Lord, I know it is Your will that everyone get married because of the example You gave us with Adam & Eve. I know You must have someone for me, so I’m praying to find out who it is. There are two guys I think are kind of cute, and I think they’re interested in me; one is at work and the other is at church. Which one should I marry? What’s that? Your response is weak. Let me try a different way. I’ll flip a coin and You can make it land right: heads is the guy from work and tails is the guy from church. … Oh, it’s tails; good! He’s cuter; and I know it must be Your will that I marry someone religious. I’ll go tell the boy the good news.” …
* (later) … “Oh Lord, when I told the boy at church that You said we were to get married, he ran away and now he won’t take my phone calls anymore. Lord, what You told me must be wrong. No wait. I’m sorry Lord; You’re never wrong. This must be a test. I’ll just keep waiting for him until he comes around.” …
This example is a bit exaggerated to illustrate a point. But hopefully you can see the importance of knowing if you’re praying according to your desire or God’s; and the importance of being careful in how you phrase your questions; and the importance of not jumping to conclusions from just a single indication. Be careful and be thorough. Once you get to where you can hear God speak to you audibly and with complete thoughts, you’ll have far fewer mistakes. But even then if you’re not careful about imposing your own will there can still be errors in understanding.
There is yet another factor that comes into play and can cause your prayers to not be answered, or to be answered in ways different than you were expecting. When you intercede in prayer for someone, that person’s own desires and their level of faith will affect how the prayer is answered. When praying for someone else we must recognize that their desires for themselves may differ from our desires for them. There will be times when you pray for someone to be healed, but they have decided they’re ready to die. Or you may pray that someone’s bad situation be changed, but they don’t want it changed. In these unusual cases we must do as God does and respect their choices. However, we can pray for their salvation and for the HS’s continued ministry to them.
There will also be situations where you are interceding in prayer for someone and you’re sure it’s God’s desire to help that person; but nothing seems to happen. As you let that person know you’re praying for them and explain how God is willing to help them, you discover that they don’t have any faith in being helped. They don’t believe that anything will be changed. They’ve just resigned themselves to their fate and hope that things will be better in Heaven. This kind of person is not able to receive any miracles.
We read in Mk 6:1-6 that even after Jesus had traveled around Israel performing miracles, when He came back to His hometown He was unable to do much there because of their unbelief. So if Jesus cannot perform a miracle where there is no faith, we should not expect that the situation will be any different for us. The person being prayed for must have some measure of faith in order to receive God’s blessings. Ep 1:18-19, “I pray that your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the richness of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Summary:
The Manifestation of the Holy Spirit is given in degrees as we’re able to bear it & recognize it. When the HS first starts working with us, but before we become aware of His physical indications within us, when praying for a request He gives us a strong sense of “Peace” as a confirmation of His affirmative answer. Once we receive the BHS and become aware of the physical sensations He gives, He then uses these to indicate His presence. These sensations we refer to as a “shower of the HS” or a “manifestation of His presence”. After we become accustomed to sensing the HS’s presence, we then begin to hear Him speaking to us.
At each stage of spiritual growth we are guided by the HS. But we must gradually grow into closer and closer expressions of His presence. We are trying to learn how to recognize Him and progress into clearer manifestations so that we have fewer misunderstandings of His will and what He’s trying to convey to us.
When we begin to pray we seek to have His presence. We then use that presence to guide our continuing prayers and to open our understanding so we can grow to have greater levels of faith, greater measures of HS, increased understanding of God’s will, and more access to His power.
Finally, if only one or two people were able to have access to the HS, the situation would soon develop where multitudes would come to those individuals to pray “for” them so that God would grant their petition. Those one or two people would soon be overwhelmed with requests for prayer. It is much better if everyone in the church learns how to have this closeness with God.
There are millions of people who are in need of God’s help; so there must be thousands of disciples able to take God’s ministry to them. May every one of us learn the steps needed that we too can grow to higher and higher levels of communication with the HS.
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