INTRO: THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A SEPARATE EXPERIENCE
1) In John 20:22, we read that Jesus breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” – that’s the disciples receiving the experience of salvation where the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in them, but before he ascends to heaven, he instructs them to wait for another experience. Read Luke 24:49 – Tarry in Jerusalem to be endued with power from on high.
2) Acts 9:17 – After Saul encounters Jesus, Ananias meets him and calls him “Brother Saul,” indicating to us that he is now a believer. But then he says, “I have come that you may see again and that you may be filled with the Holy Spirit”. Notice that after salvation, there is another separate experience for the believer to be filled with the Spirit, which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
3) Acts 19:1 –As Paul travelled and came to Ephesus, he found disciples (If they were disciples, then they were saved). He asks them if they had received the power of the Holy Spirit, and they say that they weren’t even aware of the Holy Spirit. Then Paul lays hands on them, and they receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit and speak in Tongues. Again, we see that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a separate experience.
4 KEYS FOR THE BELIEVER TO RECEIVE THE OUTER ANOINTING
(1) REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT IN YOU ALREADY
John 1:12 – We receive the right to be children of God when we believe in Jesus.
Rom 8:16 – The Spirit himself bears witness with your spirit that we are the children of God.
You see, at salvation, you became a child of God, and the Holy Spirit comes in to dwell in you forever, and he witnesses to you that you indeed have become a child of God. If not, how is it that we know by revelation and of surety that we are saved?
So what happens at the baptism of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, who is already in you, begins to fill you and flood you from the inside with his power.
Bonus Point: The Holy Spirit is received at salvation. He is released at baptism.
Here’s the Scriptural basis: John 7:37-39 (NASB) – He who believes in me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living waters.
Notice that Jesus said, at the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who is in the believer starts flowing out of his innermost being – not out of heaven or out of the throne of God but from within himself. That is what Baptism means: The word BAPTISM is BAPTIZO (Gk): to immerse, to submerge.
->When the Titanic struck the iceberg, water first came into the ship, and then the ship sank completely. In the same way, the Holy Spirit first comes into the believer at salvation. At the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, He fills the believer.
Bonus Point: The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not rain from above but a river from within.
Bonus Point: The Holy Spirit Baptism is not a matter of you getting more of the Holy Spirit but a matter of the Holy Spirit getting more of you.
(2) RELAX IN THE FATHER’S PROMISE
In our Pentecostal circles, when an invitation to receive the Holy Spirit baptism is given, the first to come are the martyrs with pale faces, ready to take a beating for 30 hours!! But God’s way is to relax and receive the anointing.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father. Read Lk 24:49 – I will send upon you the promise of the Father. So tarry in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.
Therefore, we read in Acts 2:1-2 that the Apostles and Disciples were sitting (not running around chanting, striving or struggling for the infilling but were sitting) in the upper room, and then the Holy Spirit power came upon them and filled them.
Bonus Point: Stop striving and take the posture of rest.
Surrender is the Key: the more you get worked up, the more you are self-focused. Put your mind in the back seat, give up your understanding and let your spirit pray.
(3) RECEIVE THE ANOINTING BY FAITH
In Luke 11:13, Jesus teaches us that if we are evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more shall the Father give to those who ask of him the Holy Spirit. Firstly, the Holy Spirit is a good gift, and even more than that who the Father God wants to give His children, the believers. Secondly, notice that all you have to do is ask Him. Wow! Just a simple question is what is needed from the believer. When you ask Him he is faithful to fulfill that promise and baptize you. You now have a choice to either wait for feelings to validate what happened (which may or may not unfold) or to take it by faith and start to speak in Tongues.
Bonus Point: Don’t wait for feelings to confirm what you know from the word.
(4) RELEASE THE SOUND YOU HEAR IN YOUR SPIRIT
Beloved, you have been filled with the Holy Spirit even from the very first time you prayed with a sincere heart of surrender. Now it is your part to respond in faith by speaking in Tongues expecting the Holy Spirit to do His part and give you the words.
This is exactly what the early Church did on the day of Pentecost: Acts 2:4 – They began to speak as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.
God will never override your freedom of choice – he waits for you to choose to cooperate with Him and initiate the speaking. When you do that, you will hear the sounds in your spirit and flow in Tongues wonderfully.
Bonus Point: The Holy Spirit will lead you, not drive you. He will empower you, but seldom overpower you.
->Bro. David Diga Hernandez talks about how a little girl is praying the ABCD. When asked why she was doing that, she answered: I’m giving God the alphabets but He will add meaning to it.
This is really what we do as we speak in Tongues: we give God broken words, stammering and sounds and our syllables and let Him divine add meaning to them.
CONCLUSION
The story of Jackie Pullinger and how the Holy Spirit’s baptism made a difference in Hong Kong, where she worked as a missionary
Jackie Pullinger made a commitment at a very young age in her Sunday school that she would one day become a missionary. When she was a young lady of 22, she began to see visions and dreams about poor people in need of help. She decided to go to Honk Kong, but no missionary society was willing to help her, stating reasons of age, qualifications and lack of experience. She decided to go anyway – she gathered all the money she had and could only afford to buy a one-way ticket. In 1966, she reached Hong Kong and took up a music teacher’s job at a school.
In the walled city, everywhere she saw were extreme poverty, prostitution and drug peddling!! She saw young girls waiting outside their huts with their baby siblings in their arms because their mothers were inside the house doing “business”. Young boys, many were addicted to drugs like opium and heroin (It was commonly called ‘chasing the dragon’), and many were part of the highly feared gang called the TRIADS.
Jackie tells in an interview in 1989 that many times she would see as many as 100 people ‘chasing the dragon’, high on drugs, and she had to climb over their legs to get through. She said in that interview that she wants to offer them more than a treatment centre – something real.
She began to reach out to them and share the love of Christ, but in all of this, she began to feel powerless; it seemed not to make an impact or carry the weight to make a difference. It was during this time that a spirit-filled couple encouraged her to speak in tongues every day before going out to minister. She had assumed that speaking in Tongues is the initial confirmation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So following their counsel, she spent time in prayer in the spirit, and from that time on, her prayers and ministry began to have a real impact on people, so that they were responding in faith and were receiving their miracles and their healing.
Many of the addicts who prayed for Jesus’ help found themselves freed of their addiction without going through any kind of withdrawal. Several reformed addicts joined Jackie in her work. At first, her work was opposed by the Triads, but the more the power of the Spirit impacted lives, and the way she conducted herself bore witness to her truthfulness, she won the trust of the gangs.
One night after Jackie’s youth club was destroyed by vandals, a Triad boss sent guards to watch the building and make sure it didn’t happen again. This same gang boss later arranged a meeting with Jackie. He told her that he didn’t want his gang members to be addicts any more than she did. She had succeeded where he had failed, and therefore he would support her as she helped to free get his men off drugs. Jackie’s response was uncompromising. She told him simply that she wouldn’t help the boys escape their addictions purely for them to become gangsters again. If they were to be followers of Jesus, they had to leave the gangs altogether. To her astonishment, the gang boss still offered to guard her house and renounced all claim on those boys who chose to become Christians. It was unprecedented in Hong Kong gang culture, where people were bound to the Triads for their entire lives.
As Jackie’s work grew, she found herself able to open a second house. By the time a third home was needed, Jackie, with the help of a couple of American missionaries, set up the St Stephen’s Society, which continues its work in Hong Kong and south-east Asia.
How a British girl of 22 years of age travels halfway around the world to an unknown people of an unknown tongue stricken with poverty, prostitution and drugs, and starts a ministry that would change the lives of thousands of people for Jesus is mind-boggling!! It would’ve been absolutely impossible without the Holy Spirit and his anointing!