I'm A Bapti-Costal!

This is dedicated to scared people of any demonination in any church that white knuckles their church services that prevents the free-flowing of the Spirit of God.

I used to be skeptical, afraid, and quite harshly judgemental of charismatic christians and healing, deliverance, etc.
"Now, I ARE one!" -Pastor Wayne Sanders
(I stole your line, Pastor Wayne)

Let me take you back to a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit that scared me silly! I was somewhere between 16-18 yrs of age, living with my parents, dating a girls from a Pentecostal church. I asked my dad about going to a pentecostal church service, and he said something to the effect of "check it out, tell me what you think." So, I went and there was a whole lot of stuff that was very outside of my neat little baptist expectation of what a church service should be. I tolerated it enough, thinking: "wow, these people are kooky!"

That was only the beginning! They cleared the chairs away for the prayer ministry time. I said to myself: "Whoa. What's going on here?" So the girl I was with got "slain" or whatever. Many things were going on, and I was basically shaking in my skater shoes, actively condemning everything around me and wondering when this weird stuff was going to be over! With all the good Pentecostals doing various things, I was left standing alone in the middle. Then, the minister looked at me directly in the eye and said,"Young man, the Lord has His hand on you!"

Well, at that point, my reaction was this: "If His hand is on me, then He can find me outside, because I'm outta here!" I spent the rest of the service outside.

Fast forward 11 years (thank God for His patience). My life had pretty much been a tailspin downward past that previous point. I moved out of my parent's home, got married, and I found out just WHAT was lurking in my soul that I had been suppressing with constant stimuli (media, TV, going everywhere, basically distracting myself from a broken and angry and hurting heart). Man, it was like taking a bunch of sleeping bees and kicking their nest! You can ask my wife and she'll tell you that our first few years together were hardly pleasant. I believe "hell on earth" was a popular phrase people use to describe situations less serious than what we went through. This is where my Christian upbringing with all the Bible that I knew and all the training that people had tried to instill in me came into play. I was basically running like the prophet Jonah and constantly seeing the inside of many, many whale stomachs. I am very thankful for my upbringing; I knew mentally that everything that I was doing was wrong and all the Scripture and prayer created sort of a bedrock in the darkness I was in so that I actually didn't go as deep into trouble as I could have.

I was so messed up that God had to get really creative to get my attention. He's a very creative Creator. A series of prophetic words directed straight at my heart cut through all of that darkness. My desire to be in control of my life had gotten me nowhere fast. The Holy Spirit began moving in me mightily, but only to the degree that I allowed Him to pry open my clenched fists. I gave Him what was killing me so He could give me what I was dying to receive.

Bringing us up to the present, the night I got baptised in the Holy Spirit the same way Acts 2 Christians did, I had an experience almost identical to the one I had run from so many years earlier; but I was at a place of brokenness and need and I KNEW I needed to go deeper than I was. For all the rules and theology and all the wonderful teachings of Christianity, they can't save you. Only the Author can. So, I allowed His hand to rest on me. It was an amazingly powerful experience. In less than a year, I've spoken in new tongues, broken curses, cast out demons, and experienced healings just like Mark 16:17 said should be the experience of every believer (no expiration date was given...it's not a cup of yogurt).

No matter where you're at in your experience with God, or if you're nowhere, just imagine a pool that goes from 3 inches deep to the bottom of the deepest trench in the ocean. Just know that you can always go deeper. Going deeper is sometimes scary, but that is where the "conforming to the image of Christ" really starts to shape you. Up in the "3 inches deep" area is where the crybabies who pee themselves play. The victory in Christ, all of the "meat" Scriptures, the blessings that are chock full in that book are all in the Deep End. I'm going down. Anybody else want to come?