When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others were mocking and saying, “They are full of sweet wine.” (Acts 2:1-13)
Dear Gracyn,
You have been raised in a family that believes God is the same yesterday and today. That is how I believe as well. You have been taught that all things are possible with God. Me too. However, unless something dramatic happens (and it may) between this writing and your reading, tongues of fire may pose a challenge for you, since that is the only time we know this happened.
You have family members who believe Acts 2 was an isolated phenomena. You have others who believe it is normal Christianity for the Spirit to express himself when they gather. A part of your family will run from any supposed recurrences of Acts 2. Others will gather together and invite the Spirit to express himself. You may feel a wee bit of tension around things of the Spirit but press on dear child for your origins go back to the breath of God.
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
God is the same yesterday and today but this does not mean that the Spirit must manifest Himself by speaking in tongues or causing drunkenness as a required after affect. One of the things that is the same about God yesterday and today is his tendency to not do things today the same way he did them yesterday. Then how do we know what God is going to do? (You are very big, as was your mommy, on wanting to know what is next.) More often then not, we don’t. Because of the potential tensions surrounding His ministry, I would like to tell you how God introduced me to the Holy Spirit.
In a few other places I have told you that Jesus rescued me in a dramatic fashion from the life of a prodigal son. This was the work of the Holy Spirit although He did not get as much credit as the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is God’s Life on earth. Nothing is truly alive unless God breathes upon it again. I was born again compliments – a secondary breathing of God.
I have also mentioned that God was powerfully revealed to me between the city limits of Enid and the McDonald’s, midway to Tulsa. This too was the work of the Spirit. The Spirit was left on the earth after Jesus ascended to reveal the Father and the Son. Was this the baptism of the Holy Spirit? I don’t think so but it certainly qualified as an immersion on my scale of measurement.
The where and the when of my conversion dictated that I would initially understand the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an exclusive experience secondary to salvation so it was only normative for me to seek this addendum. It happened in an upstairs bedroom in the Mobley residence in Tulsa. Doug Mobley led me in a short prayer asking God to give me the gift of tongues. He told me to simply provide the breath and the movement of my lips and the gift of tongues would be mine. To my utter astonishment a string of 3 or 4 sentences, composed of odd sounding words, escaped my lips. To this date these very same sentences are available to me at any moment.
My upper room experience was not an ecstatic or a dramatic moment. In fact, at no time has my new tongue produced a single goose bump or tear. My sentences are not the same type of sentences spoken in Acts 2. Those people were speaking the languages of that part of the world, and they appeared as though they were drunk. I am not even tipsy when I say my sentences.
It would be more accurate to say that I pray my sentences. Since no one else understands my words, I believe they are a private language of prayer. Since 1976 I have used this prayer language off and on. My new words have never produced any kind of revelatory experience, nor can I trace them as a cause to any affect. To this day those sentences remain a mystery to me.
1976 was a theologically tumultuous time in Tulsa. Matters of the Holy Spirit were splitting churches everywhere. One prominent ministry I tracked on the radio declared with certainty that being baptized in the Spirit was essential to salvation; that speaking in tongues was evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit; therefore to be born again one must speak in tongues. I bought into this and did some damage with it before I could repent. Today I believe this was a false doctrine. This ministry eventually softened the language around this aspect of their teaching.
I believe that when Jesus entered my life I was born anew, baptized in the Holy Spirit. I believe his breath entered into me and I became a living being, once again. When I say I am born again, I am saying that I am a temple of the Holy Spirit. What happened in the Mobley’s upper room was not the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a release of his Spirit who was already in me, having given me new life, having made me a new creation.
Sweetheart, we each have to come to know the Spirit. Your experience will differ from mine but I will say, (right or wrong) I am repelled by things done in the name of the Holy Spirit that are bombastic, egocentric and tainted with certainty. These things are profoundly inconsistent with my experience with Him. If the breath of God is anything, He is a blessed mystery. I pray that you will come to know Him every bit as well as you get to know Father and Jesus and that his gifts will flow from the new life you have in Him.
FYI. You are seven upon this writing and telling on your sister is not a gift of the Spirit.
Love,
Pop