WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE BAPTIZED IN THE HOLY SPIRIT?
The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a spiritual experience following salvation, where a follower of Jesus is immersed or filled with the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, this was a natural experience for those who desired all that God had for them. At salvation, God puts His Holy Spirit in each believer.
Romans 8:9 (NIV) “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”
1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV) “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.”
But this experience of the Holy Spirit coming upon you—baptizing you—was so critical to the Early Church, that when they knew a Christian who had been saved, but not yet filled, they sent spiritual leadership to pray for that person.
Acts 8:14–17 (NIV) “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.”
The baptism in the Holy Spirit experience is evidenced by a sign called speaking in tongues. When people are baptized in the Holy Spirit, they begin to worship the Lord in a heavenly language. Praying in the Spirit is a privilege. It’s not something I “have” to do; it is a privilege. In fact, baptism in the Holy Spirit is something we should be seeking every day.
Why is “speaking in tongues” the evidence? While we don’t know for sure, one thought is that the tongue is the most unruly member of the body (James 3:5–8). So, when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, even the most unruly member of our body will show evidence of submission to Christ.
We even find that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a command given by Jesus and not a suggestion…
Acts 1:4 (NIV) “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.’ ”
This “gift” is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew that for us to effectively accomplish the Great Commission (the discipleship of all nations and peoples), we would need supernatural assistance, so He gave us the Holy Spirit.
HOW CAN I EXPERIENCE THE BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT?
We need to begin by creating an atmosphere of expectation by praising and expressing love to Jesus audibly. Those who were first baptized in the Holy Spirit spent time praising God while waiting for the Spirit to be poured out on them.
Luke 24:52–53 (NIV) “Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.”
When the first-century believers spoke in tongues, other people heard them.
Acts 2:6 (NIV) “When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.”
We need to also expect to experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.
Luke 11:13 (NIV) “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Be willing to stop speaking in English or your native language. You cannot speak two languages at the same time, so you will find yourself speaking just your primary language if you are unwilling to make the leap into the unknown.
Receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit just as you receive any other gift. Don’t beg for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Reach out and take the baptism in the Holy Spirit as the free gift that God has given to you. Thank Jesus for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and what He will do in your life.
You may not hear the words in your mind, but when you speak they will be in your mouth. If you do hear words in your mind begin to speak them, even if it is only a few syllables. Those words are very likely words of praise to God, so go ahead and speak them. Fluency will come as you continue to pray in the Spirit. Your vocabulary will grow in this new language.
Speak, even if it doesn’t sound like a language to you. Many languages and dialects don’t sound like languages to us. Remember that we can speak in languages “of men or of angels.” Being filled with the Spirit is not based on your ability to understand the language.
Once you are filled, continue to pray in the Spirit every day. We are built up in our faith when we pray in the Spirit!
1 Corinthians 14:4 (NIV) “Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but the one who prophesies edifies the church.”
Jude 1:20 (NLT) “But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a gift from God for you. When you surrendered your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit came to live inside you and serves as Christ’s mark of ownership on you. If you’re saved, you’ve experienced part of what the Holy Spirit does when He convicts us of sin and turns our attention toward Jesus. But there’s more to the Holy Spirit’s activity than just that.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT?
When we use the word fill in English we normally think of filling up a glass to the very top. When we think of the Holy Spirit, we may even use the illustration of the glass overflowing. But this example does not hit the meaning of to fill or be filled as does the Greek pleroo, a form of which is used in Ephesians 5:17-20.
17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pleroo has three different meanings that are helpful in understanding what it means to be Spirit-filled.
The first carries the idea of pressure. It is used to describe wind billowing the sails on a ship, providing the impetus to move the vessel across the water. In the spiritual realm, this concept depicts the Holy Spirit providing the thrust to move the believer down the pathway of obedience.
Secondly, Pleroo can also convey the idea of permeation. The well-known pain reliever Alka Seltzer illustrates this principle quite effectively. When you drop one or two tablets into a glass of water, they instantly begin to fizzle and dissolve. Soon the tablets are transformed into clear bubbles throughout the glass, and the water is permeated with the distinct flavor of the Alka Seltzer. In a similar sense, God wants the Holy Spirit to permeate and flavor our lives so when we're around others they will know for certain we possess the pervasive savor of the Spirit.
Finally, the third meaning of pleroo, actually the primary one in the New Testament, conveys the sense of domination or total control. It is used by the Gospel writers to indicate that people were dominated by a certain emotion. In Luke 5:26, after Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and healed the paralytic, the people were astonished and "filled with fear." In Luke 6:11, when Jesus restored a man's hand on the Sabbath, the scribes and Pharisees "were filled with rage." When our Lord told the disciples that He would soon be leaving them, He told of their reaction: "sorrow has filled your heart" (John 16:6). Each of those uses reveals an emotion so overwhelming within the people that it dominated their thoughts and excluded every other emotion.
We will either be controlled or filled with our emotion or the Spirit, but it cannot be both. What we allow in one area of our life, will bleed into the next. Want proof?
Here is what preceded the therefore in Ephesians 5:17-20
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,
The Titanic collided with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. Most people believed it was because the ship had an approximately 300 ft wide tear in the ship from the iceberg. (The ship was approximately 900 ft long.)
This was the accepted story even after the ship was found due to the damage being hit by mud. In 1997 a team used sound waves to peer through the mud and found the damage to be astonishingly small -- a series of six thin openings across the Titanic's starboard hull. The total area of the damage appears to be about 12 to 13 square feet or less than the area of two sidewalk squares.
The holes created in the ship's hull allowed six compartments to begin flooding, causing the allegedly “unsinkable" ship to not only sink but to do so quickly. But what made it happen even faster was the fact that The Titanic did not have watertight compartments it had watertight doors. The compartments were separated by bulkheads with doors in them, When one compartment flooded the water simply went over the top of the bulkhead into the next compartment.
What we thought was a massive incision on the side of the boat was two sidewalk squares worth of damage that happened at the wrong time at the wrong place.
Why do I bring this up? Because we can be controlled or filled by The Spirit or we can be controlled or filled by anger, wrath, foul language, sexual immorality. If we allow things to say exist in our life that is not of God, it will eventually overflow into the other compartments. At the same time with Holy Spirit, if we give Him control, he will eventually overflow into the other areas of my life.
If we want to be filled and controlled by God, then we have to lay down our old ways. We wonder why we don’t feel free. We don’t feel free because we aren’t living in freedom. We are excusing bad behaviors in our lives.
As you seek God and ask for a fresh filling, Begin praising God audibly, and be willing to speak freely if and when God begins giving you a prayer language.