“Gifts Of The
Spirit, Part 2: The Fruit Of The
Baptism Of The Holy Spirit”
By
Jim Bomkamp
1.
INTRO:
1.1.
In our last study, I gave a
background or framework within which I believe that we need to look at how
spiritual gifts are supposed to be used within the church. I covered the following things:
1.1.1. The Purpose For Why We Are Here
1.1.1.1. To
start off this series on Spiritual Gifts, we saw that it is important that we
first of all come to grips with what the scripture teaches about why God has
created us as people in the first place.
We were created by God ‘for His good pleasure’,
or in other words so that we might please Him.
1.1.1.2. There
are many verses in scripture which teach and allude to this, such as:
1.1.1.2.1.
In Phil 2:12-13,
the apostle Paul wrote that we are to work out own salvation with fear and
trembling for God is working with in us to ‘will and to work for His good
pleasure’, “12 So then, my beloved,
just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more
in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is
God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
1.1.1.2.1.1.
We saw that this should seem obvious to all,
however in the church at large today it appears that many people have forgotten
this.
1.1.2. God is sovereign
1.1.2.1. We
in the church need to be seeking what God’s will is in any matter, and we must
also realize that God is the One who is leading and working, for it is His plan
that is being unfolded in our lives and within the church.
1.1.2.1.1.
Jesus told Peter that upon this rock (the
truth of His confession of Jesus as the Son of the Living God), ‘I will build My church’
(Matt. 16:18).
1.1.2.1.2.
The church belongs not to man, not to it’s
human leaders, not to the community within which it has formed, but to Christ.
1.1.2.2. In
1 Cor. 12:18, Paul writes about the
fact that it is God who calls each person into a particular body of Christ just
‘as He wills’, “18 But now God has
placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.”
1.1.2.2.1.
Each of you who are in this body of Christ
here tonight have been called by God to be a part.
1.1.2.3. In
1 Cor. 12:11, Paul wrote that the Holy
Spirit is the One who distributes the gifts of the Spirit sovereignly, ‘just as
He wills’, “11 But one and the same
Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He
wills.”
1.1.2.4. In
Col. 2:10 Paul writes that Christ
is the ‘head over all rule and authority’.
1.1.3. The Most Important Thing We Do Is Worship God
1.1.3.1. We
observed that we should have the perspective that everything we do as
Christians should be an act of worship.
1.1.3.2. In
Acts 13:2, we saw that the early
church did not have any big evangelistic planning session in which they brought
in the marketing experts of their day and studied demographics so that they
could see how to best propagate the gospel across the world, instead they were
constantly spending their time before the Lord, ‘ministering to the Lord’ and
fasting, and then it was the Holy Spirit who spoke to them and led them upon
the first missionary journey to the Gentile world to preach the gospel.
1.1.3.3. God
always directs those who are true worshippers of His and uses them in a great
way, just as He directed the first missionary journey in the book of Acts.
1.1.3.4.We
saw that what often hinders God from giving us spiritual gifts or perhaps
growing us in the use of our gifts is that we are not good worshippers, and if
He were to give us gifts or increased our gifts we would not use them to
worship Him and give Him glory.
1.1.4. Judge Everything By the Word Of God
1.1.4.1.We
are not to check our minds at the door when we come together to worship with
other believers. We aren’t to just let
our minds go and not critically evaluate every supposed movement of God or
manifestation of a gift.
1.1.4.2.The
Word is the only measuring stick that we can use to evaluate whether or not
something is from God, and God expects us to look to His Word to judge any
supposed work of God.
1.1.4.3.Calvary
chapel goes right in between the two different church groups, for though we
believe that the gifts of the Spirit are for today, we also believe that we as
Christians are responsible to follow the scriptural injunctions commanded us
concerning how we are to allow those gifts to be used. God’s Word teaches us a very delicate
balance that we are to have, as can be seen in 1 Thess.
5:19-21, “Do not quench the
Spirit; do not despise prophetic
utterances. But examine everything
carefully; hold fast to that which is
good.”
1.1.4.3.1. We
are to allow people to prophesy within the church, and we must be careful not
to quench the Spirit (which we will discuss more later), however we are also to
‘examine everything carefully’.
1.1.4.3.2. Whenever
a spiritual gift is supposedly being manifested in the church we ‘all’ need to
seek the Lord as to whether or not this gift is really a work of God or
not. To do this we should ask three
basic questions:
1.1.4.3.2.1.Does
it line up with the scripture?
1.1.4.3.2.2.Does
it line up with what we know of the nature of God?
1.1.4.3.2.2.1. James 3:17 is a good place to go for this, “17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle,
reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.”
1.1.4.3.2.3.Does
the person’s life through whom this is occurring bear fruit for Christ?
1.1.4.3.2.3.1. Don’t
listen to someone who is not in submission to God because God does not work
through the lives of those who are disobedient.
1.1.5. The Scriptures Teach That There Is A Baptism Of The Holy Spirit For Believers
1.1.5.1.We
saw that the apostles received the Holy Spirit before the day of Pentecost:
1.1.5.1.1. In
John 20:22, we see that after Jesus
had been raised from the dead that He appeared to the apostles as the were
gathered together. When He came to them
He breathed on them and told them to ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.
1.1.5.2.Even
though the apostles had received the Holy Spirit they had not been ‘baptized in
the Holy Spirit’.
1.1.5.2.1. In
Matthew 3:11, John the Baptist told
his disciples that Jesus would baptize them with the Holy Spirit, “11 “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who
is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals;
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.””
1.1.5.2.2. In
Acts 1:8, Jesus told His disciples
to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit for He would come upon them in power,
and it would be at that time that they would be able to be powerfully used by
God as His instruments to preach the gospel to all creation, “8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and
Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
1.1.5.2.2.1.There
are three prepositions used in the New Testament to describe the various works
of the Holy Spirit in the apostles lives.
The Holy Spirit had been ‘with’
them, as we saw in John 20:22 He had also come ‘into’
them, but in these words Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would also come ‘upon’ them. This
is the work of the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
1.1.5.3.We
looked at the difference between the ‘filling of the Holy Spirit’ and the
‘baptism of the Holy Spirit.’
1.1.5.3.1. We
are commanded to be ‘filled’ with the Holy Spirit in Eph. 5:18, and this means
to be controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the allowing Christ to be Lord over our lives, and not
ourselves, and it is the walking according to the Spirit’s leading and not
according to the flesh (Galatians 5:16-34).
1.1.5.3.2. In
the book of Acts however, the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ always occurred
according the sovereign work of God when He just fell upon the people, or it is
recorded that ‘they were filled with the Holy Spirit’, indicating that it was a
sudden work that just seemed to come upon them.
1.1.5.3.2.1.I
mentioned that I like the definition that Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives for the
difference between the filing and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He says that it is like the difference in
rainy days. Some rainy days there is
just a light drizzle, other days it is a steady light rain, and then some days
there is just a downpour or deluge of rain.
The ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ is like the deluge of rain, for when
the Holy Spirit baptizes a person He comes upon them in power and they are used
in a mighty way by God.
1.1.5.3.2.2.In
every case in the book of Acts where the Holy Spirit fell upon them, the people
were immediately used in a great way in service for the Lord, and it also
seemed to involve powerful evangelism of some sort.
1.1.5.3.3. Since
the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ is a sovereign work of God we cannot cause it
to happen (as is the case with the filing of the Holy Spirit which we are
commanded to have moment by moment in our life each day), however there are
things that we can do to both hinder that work from happening as well as to
encourage it to happen.
1.2.
In our study today, we are
going to concentrate on what are the ‘fruits’ of the baptism of the Holy Spirit
in a believer’s life, as well as the gift of Tongues, what it is and how it
should be used
2.
The ‘fruits’ of the ‘Baptism
of the Holy Spirit’ in a believer’s life
2.1.
In the book ‘Revival’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
he explains that the history of God’s moving
mightily in the church has really been the history of the ‘Baptism of the Holy
Spirit’. From the
first day of Pentecost after Christ was raised from the dead, when He
inaugurated the inception of His church by causing the Holy Spirit to fall upon
His disciples all gathered together in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, until
modern times, the Lord has moved in the church by causing His Spirit to fall
upon men and women who were surrendered to Him and through whom He chose to do
a mighty work.
2.1.1. Lloyd-Jones
believed as do I that many people who did not believe that the gifts of the
Spirit are for this age nor that there was a ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ that
could occur subsequent to salvation nevertheless were baptized in the Holy
Spirit as God began to raise up a work in one area of the world or another
through them.
2.1.2. Lloyd-Jones
brings out that many of the men through whom great movements of God occurred
who did not believe that a baptism of the Spirit could occur subsequent of
salvation nevertheless wrote and talked of experiences that they had had which
indicate that they had been baptized in the Holy Spirit.
2.2.
The ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ has been
called by the church through the ages as ‘The Second
Blessing’ or the ‘Second Work of the Holy Spirit’,
yet these terms do not occur in the scriptures. However, we see in many places in the New Testament an indication
of a second work of the Holy Spirit occurring in the lives of those in the
church.
2.2.1. In
Acts 8:14-17, we read of a very
interesting event, for Philip the deacon in the church in Jerusalem went down
to Samaria and became Philip the Evangelist and won many people to Christ, but
we read that the people had not received the Holy Spirit, however we know that
it must be the case that they had not received the ‘baptism’ of the Holy
Spirit’, “14 Now when the apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John,
15 who came down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit.
16 For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then they began laying their hands on them, and
they were receiving the Holy Spirit.”
2.2.1.1.Quoting
from my own notes concerning this passage, we see that, “This particular
section of verses has presented problems for commentators through the centuries
because it says that the ones who had believed in Christ and been baptized in
water had not yet received the Holy Spirit, yet the scripture teaches in many
places, such as Rom. 8:9 for
instance, that salvation occurs in a person’s life when they receive the Holy
Spirit and that there is no salvation apart from the receiving of the Holy
Spirit, “9 However, you are not in the flesh but
in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does
not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.””
2.2.1.2.The
problems associated with this verse can only be properly solved when we realize
that the people had received the Holy Spirit since in order to be saved they
would have had to do so, however they had not received the ‘fullness’ of the
Holy Spirit in the ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
2.2.2. In
Acts 19:1-7, we read of Paul finding
12 men who were disciples in Ephesus, and who had believed in Jesus, and thus
been saved, and yet they also had not received the Holy Spirit, “19:1 And it came about that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul
having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found some
disciples, 2 and he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you
believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a
Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said,
“Into John’s baptism.” 4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of
repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that
is, in Jesus.” 5 And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of
the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit
came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. 7 And there
were in all about twelve men.”
2.2.2.1.Notice
here that after being baptized in water that Paul laid his hands on these men
and Luke records that the Holy Spirit came ‘on’ them, indicating that they were
in fact baptized in the Holy Spirit at this point in time. Not only so, but they spoke in tongues which
is a phenomena that often occurred with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
2.2.3. I
personally tend not to like to think of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to be a
‘second’ work of the Holy Spirit or a ‘second’ blessing because as I read through
the book of Acts I see that the Holy Spirit just kept on falling upon
people. I think that there is a third,
fourth, fifth, and as many blessings of the Holy Spirit as the Lord deems fit
to give to us. I don’t want to limit
what He can do in my life and I want to always be praying for the Lord to do a
work through His Spirit in my life.
2.2.4. I
also see from scripture, in particular in many places in the book of Acts, that
a person does not necessarily need to wait a long time before receiving the
‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
2.2.4.1.In
Acts 10, for instance, Cornelius and his household received Christ and were
baptized in the Holy Spirit all during one sermon.
2.3.
Purpose For The Baptism Of
The Holy Spirit:
2.3.1. I
want to preface our looking at the ‘Experiential Knowledge of God’ that occurs
when a person is baptized in the Holy Spirit by talking first about the
‘Purpose For The Baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
The primary reason that God baptizes us in the Holy Spirit is not for us
to have an ecstatic experience with the Holy Spirit, but rather to empower us
for service. We see this very clearly
in Acts 1:8 for after Jesus told His
disciples to go to Jerusalem and tarry there until they received the baptism of
the Holy Spirit, He told them that the purpose for the baptism was that they
might be His witnesses, “8 but you shall receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part
of the earth.”
2.3.1.1.The
Greek word for ‘power’ that is used here is ‘dunamis’, and it is the word from
which we get our word for ‘dynamite’.
We Christians need the powerful anointing from the Holy Spirit in order
to be used mightily by Him in the work that He has given us to do.
2.3.1.2.The
‘baptism’ of the Holy Spirit was a pre-requisite for any ministry in the early
church, and thus the disciples in the upper room all had to wait and tarry upon
the Lord until they had received the Holy Spirit.
2.3.1.2.1. Jesus
Himself, the very and unique Son of God from all eternity, did not undertake
His ministry until He had been baptized in the Holy Spirit at His baptism in
the Jordan River. Only then was it
written that, ‘He went out in the power of the Spirit’.
2.3.1.2.2. We
saw already that in Acts 8:14-17 that when Philip had been used in a great way
there in Samaria to win people to Christ that the apostles immediately were
concerned to send Peter and John there to them to make sure that the Holy
Spirit had fallen upon them and baptized the people.
2.3.1.2.3. Likewise,
when Paul found the disciples of Jesus’ in Ephesus he immediately asked them if
they had ‘received the Holy Spirit’ since believing, and then when they said
that they had not heard of the Holy Spirit, Paul laid hands on them so that
they were baptized in the Holy Spirit.
2.3.1.2.4. Today,
the mainstream church is for the most part preparing ministers by sending them
off to seminary to gain knowledge by study, however there is usually no concern
that the person be ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’. It is no wonder that there is so little fruit from many pastor’s
ministries.
2.3.1.3.Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes of the stories of men who were
greatly used of God in times of revival through the incredible power of the
Holy Spirit in their lives, “And in the accounts of
revivals I have often heart it from people whom I have known well and
intimately, who experienced something of the Revival in Wales in 1904/5. It was frequently said, too, about Mr Evan
Roberts who was so signally used in that revival—people were amazed when they
just saw his face and this ‘shining’ quality.
Then we are told about the saintly Robert Murray McCheyne in his church
in Dundee in the late 1830s and early 1840s.
It has been authenticated so many, many times, that Robert Murray McCheyne
had simply to enter the pulpit and before he had opened his mouth people used
to begin to weep and were convicted of sin.
He had not uttered a word. Why? Well, the explanation was that this man had
come from the presence of God and the Spirit was poured forth.”
2.3.1.4.R.A. Torrey writes of this same thing, “Biographies abound in instances of men who have worked along as
best they could, until one day they were led to see that there was such an
experience as the baptism with the Holy Spirit and to seek it and obtain it
and, from that hour, there came into their service a new power that utterly
transformed its character. In this
matter, one thinks first of such men as Finney, and Moody, and Brainerd, but
cases of this character are not confined to the few exceptional men. They are common…to do effective personal
work, we must be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
2.4.
Experiential Knowledge of
God:
2.4.1. In
the book ‘Joy Unspeakable’, Martyn Lloyd-Jones
has remarked, “Look at the second
chapter of Acts—fancy saying that that is non-experimental! But that is what some have taught. Because they have been afraid of the
excesses of Pentecostalism they have driven themselves to that impossible, indeed
ludicrous position of saying that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is non-experimental. As we have seen, it was not only
experimental, it was so experimental that the whole of Jerusalem knew that it
had happened to the people; they knew
it themselves and everybody else knew it.
Indeed it is characterized essentially by this tremendous experimental
or experiential happening. It is great
and most amazing. It is the most
wonderful and glorious experience a man can ever have in this life. The only thing beyond the experience of the
baptism with the Spirit is heaven itself.
In that experience, then, a man feels that he can never sin again—how
can he sin against such love? So it is
not at all surprising that people have tended to identify it with
sanctification.”
2.4.1.1.In
1 Peter 1:8, Peter wrote about the
experiential knowledge that believers in Christ have and described it as ‘joy
unspeakable and full of glory’, “8Whom having not seen,
ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
2.4.2. Men
whose works I’ve read which spoke of their experience of being baptized in the
Holy Spirit spoke of that moment as being a point in time when suddenly they knew more about God at that moment than the combined
total of all of their previous experiences.
2.4.3. Men
whose works I’ve read have spoken about having an experience in which they felt the presence and glory of God in such a way that they had not
words to describe it:
2.4.3.1.D.L. Moody, the great American preacher of the previous
century, wrote of his own experience as quoted from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “I began to cry as never before, for a greater blessing from
God. The hunger increased; I really felt that I did not want to live
any longer. [He had been a Christian,
and not only a Christian but a minister, and in charge of a Mission for some
time; he was getting conversions, but
still he wanted more.] “I kept on
crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day in the City of New York—oh!
what a day, I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to
name. Paul had an experience of which
he never spoke for fourteen years. I
can only say, God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His
love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”
2.4.4. In
Romans 8:16, Paul wrote about how
that Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, in
other words He gives us ‘assurance’ of our salvation, “16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are
children of God.”
2.4.4.1.Christians
are transformed into mighty witnesses for Christ largely because of the
tremendous ‘assurance’ of God’s love for them and their subsequent confidence
in their own salvation through Christ that comes as a result of the experience
of the ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
2.4.5. In
Romans 5:5, Paul wrote about the
fact that Christians have had the ‘love of God shed abroad in their hearts by
the Holy Spirit’, and in the NASB it is translated, ‘poured out’, instead of
‘shed abroad’, “5And hope maketh not
ashamed; because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is
given unto us.”
2.4.5.1.Those
who have been ‘Baptized in the Holy Spirit’ have often expressed their having
had the love of Christ come so powerfully upon their hearts that in many case
they have even asked the Lord to take it away for fear that their hearts might
break.
2.4.5.1.1. This
was precisely John Wesley’s description of his ‘Aldersgate Experience’ which so
transformed his life, and after which he began to be used mightily by God.
2.4.6. The
fruit of the Spirit is evident whenever the Holy Spirit works in a person’s
life, however with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit the fruit that is produced is
not like the mature fruit and character that comes from walking with the Lord
for a good number of years.
2.4.6.1.The
prime example of this in the New Testament is the church in Corinth. Paul writes of them that they lacked no
spiritual gift, and perhaps they received more of the gifts of the Holy Spirit
than any other of the churches at that time, and yet in spite of how the Holy
Spirit had worked in their lives we see from his corrective first epistle to
them that there was much carnality in that church.
2.5.
Phenomena That Accompanies
The Baptism Of The Holy Spirit
2.5.1. We
see most often in the book of Acts in the many instances when the Holy Spirit
fell upon the church that they also were given the gift of tongues and began to
worship God through an unknown language.
2.5.1.1.I
have this idea that when the Holy Spirit fell upon the church in Acts chapter 2
that the people were so overwhelmed by the immediate presence and love of God
that fell upon them that they did not know how to express themselves to God,
and yet it was as they tried to express to God the praise and joy of what they
were feeling they found themselves speaking in unknown languages.
2.5.2. It
was not always the case in the book of Acts that when the Holy Spirit fell upon
the church that they began to speak in tongues. For instance, in Acts 4:31
we read that when the Holy Spirit fell upon the church (indicated by this
sudden experience of them all being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’) they began
to speak the Word of God with boldness, “31 And
when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken,
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of
God with boldness.”
2.5.2.1.In
1 Corinthians 12:4-7,
we read that the Holy Spirit works in diverse ways and it appears that in each
situation in which the ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ occurs is unique for God is
doing a unique work just as He wills for that situation, “4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And
there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. 6 And there are varieties
of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. 7 But to each
one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
2.5.2.2.In
1 Cor. 12:29-30, Paul goes on and
writes further about the diversities of callings, ministries, and gifts, and he
even says that of that church of Corinth which had perhaps more than any other
church every spiritual gift, that not all of them spoke in tongues, “29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they?
All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? 30
All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do
they? All do not interpret, do they?”
2.5.3. The
Holy Spirit dispenses gifts to the body of Christ, and He works uniquely in
each situation, with each believer, and with each fellowship of believers. He is sovereign, as we have seen, and each
of us needs to ask the Lord to baptize us and give us the gifts that He wants
to give to us.
3.
My Testimony of the Baptism
of the Holy Spirit
During
my first five years as a Christian my primary church contact was with a Baptist
denomination that taught that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were not for
today. I even graduated from one of
their Bible colleges. In 1978, after
graduating from the Bible college I moved into apartments next the college and
had three other Christian roommates.
During that time I was discipling one of my roommates, a Mexican fellow
named Charlie. Charlie was from a small
town in southern Arizona, and he had come to Christ during his college
years. I was working with him and
helping him to grow in his relationship with the Lord. However, I kept noticing that Charlie seemed
to have a ‘small town’ type of mentality about himself and his own usefulness
by the Lord. I wanted Charlie to
realize that the Lord could really use him, however he seemed to not really get
it. I prayed day after day for what to
do to help Charlie step out in faith and trust Christ to use him in a great
way. One day I felt that the Lord
clearly told me what to do. Next door
to our apartment a woman had moved in after separating from her abusive
husband, and her life was a total emotional mess. I felt that the Lord told me very specifically that I was to tell
Charlie that we were going to pray in faith that Jesus would use us to share
the gospel with this woman, and then we were going to go over to her apartment,
share the gospel with her, and that she ‘was’ going to accept Christ as her
Lord and Savior. Well, I told all this
to Charlie, and then I asked him if he understood what I said, and he kind of
shook his head up in down and with a glassy look in his eyes said, ‘Yah, sure
Jim.’ Well, we prayed and trusted in
faith that Christ was going to use us to go to the woman’s house and share
Christ with her, and then we trusted in faith also that she was going to accept
Christ into her heart and be saved.
Well, we then went over to her apartment and everything happened just as
we had prayed. It was totally glorious,
and there was no doubt that this woman had come to know Christ personally as
Lord and Savior. After sharing with her
so more about assurance of her salvation and praying once more with her, we
left and went back to our apartment.
Then, Charlie and I just began to rejoice in what the Lord had done
through us in winning this woman to Christ.
We were filled with so much joy that it was hard to contain. Next, I suddenly began to feel that I was on
a roller coaster ride. The presence of
the Holy Spirit seemed to be falling upon me in waves like the ocean, and I was
laying there on my bed making all of the noises that a person makes when they
are on a roller coaster, however there wasn’t a roller coaster. I felt the love of Christ so close to my own
heart that I felt like my heart was going to burst, it couldn’t contain
it. Like D.L. Moody I too after a while
began to ask Christ to back off a little bit with His love. During this whole time Charlie was telling
me, ‘Hey, Jim Jesus loves you man!’
This experience lasted up to an hour and a half or so… I didn’t really know what to make of the
experience after that time, and my theology certainly didn’t know how to deal
with it. It was such a personal
experience with the Lord that I didn’t tell a single person about it for at
least 10 years. After that day though I
had a boldness and assurance of my salvation that I had never had before, and
my walk in Christ really began to stabilize and mature, and God began to use me
more and more in ministry and evangelism.
From that day on Charlie became an incredible evangelist to the illegal
aliens in Arizona. He pastored churches
for these people and tirelessly went from field to field sharing the love of
God with them. God has used him in a
mighty way in this ministry. I haven’t
been able to track him down for six or seven years.