My Baptism in the Holy Spirit Story

During my senior year at Bates College, I attended a Bates Christian Fellowship meeting that started me on a long spiritual journey. A local, charismatic Episcopal priest led the large group gathering one evening. After his talk, Father Joe suggested that the group all ask the Holy Spirit to be present as he prayed. He began praying with everyone in agreement and soon transitioned into giving words of knowledge about various physical ailments of people in the room. He was right on target with my brother, Tim, my friend, Penny, and a friend of Cindy’s from Colby College. You could hear a pin drop as we were all so amazed. We laid hands on these people to pray for them and prayed for other people and issues. As the prayer time progressed, I felt something in the room getting stronger and stronger. I began to feel a little scared. Nothing like this had ever happened to me during prayer before. I chastised myself when I realized the growing “energy” was the Holy Spirit and after all, we had issued a special invitation for Him to come. I actually felt the Holy Spirit moving like a physical vibration not just an intuitive sense as is normal for me. The vibration after-effects in my body lasted for several days until they slowed faded away.

After the meeting, Father Joe prayed for Cindy’s friend in tongues very quietly. I had heard of speaking in tongues before but never actually heard anyone do it. The whole issue made me uncomfortable, and I had been able to avoid it for the most part growing up Baptist. Speaking in tongues was too weird for me. Later, I found out that Cindy’s friend was healed that night. The whole experience that evening was very strange, but I had a senior thesis to write so I shelved my questions.

After I finished my thesis, I got a hold of a book about spiritual gifts that discussed healing, prophecy, tongues, and miracles as well as the other more conventional spiritual gifts. The book caused me to think, but it did not address my questions. I just could not wrap my mind around the whole issue, so one evening I resolved to ask God about it. I could no longer unquestioningly accept the explanation of spiritual gifts disappearing from the Church offered by my Baptist upbringing. I did not believe that all the spiritual gifts listed in the Bible were active in the modern day, but something was clearly not right. I could knock down arguments for and against the “power” gifts existing today, and that fact troubled me. Why did commentators try to argue that the Bible says that certain gifts disappeared when in fact the Bible does not state this? On the other hand, I did not see the full range of gifts operating in any churches that I knew about, and I did not know anyone who claimed to have an unusual spiritual gift like knowledge, healing, or speaking in tongues except for Father Joe. By now, I was very curious and somewhat suspicious about the whole matter.

So, I sat at my desk in my dorm room and informed God that I was not going to get up from my desk until I got an answer from Him one way or the other about this matter. I had all night to wait if need be. I did not see any other way to find out for sure what was going on since I was interested in the truth and not in people’s opinions. I told God I did not want to get to heaven to find out that I missed out on a whole other part of Christianity. That would make me very upset. On the other hand, I did not want to waste my time seeking after something that was not likely to be true. At some point, I told God honestly that I would not believe in this stuff unless I experienced it myself.

I prayed for several minutes but heard nothing. I flipped around in my Bible to read passages about the spiritual gifts. I prayed some more. Then, I picked up the spiritual gifts book, and my attention was drawn to one very short section. The book suggested that someone seeking the Holy Spirit should pray to God expecting something to happen and say the first thing that came out of his or her mouth without thinking about it. After praying awhile longer with no answer, I decided to give the foolish suggestion a try. What did I have to lose? I prayed expectantly and spoke two nonsense phrases. Nothing happened for about two seconds, and then my mystical experience began. I felt something inside me swell up. It was like some sort of strong, steady, and joyful “energy.”

Then, I realized that this “energy” was communicating. I had another “voice” in my head besides my own thoughts. But I instantly knew who was doing all this; it was the Holy Spirit. Was He talking to me? No, that was not quite right. I suddenly realized that I was hearing my spirit/hearing with my spirit. This “hearing” had been there all along usually just below conscious awareness, but now I was fully aware. It was like the radio dial had been on 1 all my life and was suddenly turned up to 8. I vacillated between overwhelming joy/awe and utter shock. What was going on?! This was not supposed to happen! I said to myself, “No one is ever going to believe this. I hardly believe it myself, and I’m experiencing it.” Then, I stopped rationalizing and focused on the experience. I felt great joy and peace. I decided to listen to the new voice in my head (or was it in my heart?) and see if I could make any sense out of it.

As I listened, I discovered that the new voice was not really one voice at all. It sounded like continuous multi-layered communication, none of it in English. In fact, the vast majority of it was more music than speech, but music that I do not think could ever be reproduced on Earth. And oh, the joy it produced in me. I did pick up on some speech sounds inside the communication, but I could not make heads or tails of them. But I repeated some of them aloud anyway. I listened for a long time. It was like listening to a channel with lots of different parallel conversations going on simultaneously, yet together all the conversations formed a singular whole. I could focus on the whole or pick out a particular thread. It was like a beautiful golden rope with many interwoven strands. I concluded that I was hearing into heaven somehow, and it surprised me at first that heaven was a bustling place with such a high activity level. After awhile, I got tired and went to bed. I kept listening to the new sounds as I fell asleep.

When I awoke the next day, the communication was still there. It lasted for a couple of days gradually getting softer until I could not hear it anymore. It was never loud and did not interfere with my day-to-day activities. I had to focus on it to hear it clearly. As I thought about and listened to the new sounds, it dawned on me that the original nonsense sounds I spoke that triggered this event might be speaking in tongues. I figured that if I had spoken in tongues, I might be able to do it again. So I prayed and just spoke whatever came out. The first few times I did more praying than speaking as it was difficult to speak. I kept trying to think of something to say in tongues. Finally, I figured out that thinking only gets in the way of the phenomenon. The key was to just say something and have faith that God would start the flow of syllables. After a few minutes of trial and error, I discovered a whole stream of “language” that I could access 24/7. I also found myself singing in the “language” at one point. As I was praying and attempting to speak in tongues, my practical and rational nature would not let these unusual experiences go unchallenged. Was I making this up? Were my experiences simply strange psychological phenomena? Was I losing touch with reality? I felt as sane as usual, and being a psychology major, strange psychological phenomena interested me and did not particularly worry me. Also, I figured that since I was praying when all this occurred, it must be true somehow even though I could not accept it intellectually. After all, I had asked God for the truth about the spiritual gifts, and he very definitely had answered my prayer although what the truth was still escaped me.

Several weeks after my Holy Spirit experience, the novelty began to wear off. I did not know what to think about my mystical experience or what to do with speaking in tongues. I could not deny them, but I was unable to integrate them into my spiritual life or biblical understanding. Yet, I noticed that even after that original communication faded, I was not the same. I had much more joy in the Lord, and I felt more spiritually sensitive than before. I was grateful for these lasting after-effects as I needed all the help I could get in my spiritual life. But since I was so busy graduating and moving on, I just let the whole matter drop. I did not think it would be a good idea to tell anybody. I figured nobody would believe it since I could hardly believe it myself. I spoke in tongues very occasionally to make sure I still could, but I was not particularly interested in pursuing the matter further. I still had no clue what was going on, and I was very intimidated by the whole thing. Plus, I had a pretty good idea that my encounter and speaking in tongues would not be welcomed in my family or church circle. Even though I had taken Paul’s admonition to “test everything to see if it is good” seriously since junior high school (a process that I discovered did not particularly endear myself to certain Christian people), I really did not want to deal with Experience X and speaking in tongues.

I did not begin to embrace my spiritual experiences until moving to Greenville, South Carolina years later. God had begun to challenge me spiritually, and during my first year in Greenville, I decided that I needed to try to come to terms with Experience X and speaking in tongues if only in a minimal way. I bought a few books about spiritual gifts, and one about speaking in tongues. The tongues book asserted that tongues function primarily as a prayer language, and I followed the book’s advice that I should regularly pray in tongues. After a few months of doing so, unresolved emotional issues were surfacing so strongly during prayer that I decided enough was enough. I found a Christian therapist, and we began to work on my issues. In the course of therapy, I finally told someone about my “mystical” experience. As it turned out, my therapist had a Pentecostal and charismatic background, so she understood exactly what I was talking about and suggested a couple of books for me to read. After I finished the titles she suggested, I began reading everything I could about any topic surrounding Experience X. I discovered that there were other Christians out there with experiences very similar to mine. My experiences were not unique as I feared; I was not alone. My therapist and I dealt with my emotional and spiritual issues at the same time as both she and I believed they were deeply connected. I worked through my feelings, forgave people, and took responsibility for my part in my own problems. Finally, I felt compelled to tell my family, friends, and people in churches past and present about my unusual spiritual experiences. When I wrote out my story and mailed it to everyone, a great weight lifted. I did not need therapy anymore as there was nothing pressing to talk about with my counselor in subsequent sessions.

When my therapy ended, my determination to figure out exactly what Experience X meant continued. It drove me to continue reading and researching for several years until I came to a tentative biblical understanding of the phenomenon that satisfied me. I came to understand my mystical experience as a baptism in the Holy Spirit, Pentecostal-style, although I did not embrace all aspects of Pentecostal/charismatic theology. After letting the matter rest for awhile, there came a point when I felt in my heart I needed to formally study the Pentecostal/charismatic movement to try to get a full picture of what God is doing with baptism in the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts today. The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS) was the only college or university in the United States that offered such a program. I prayed about it, and through a series of very strange events, it became crystal clear that God wanted me to go to AGTS as well.

This website about baptism in the Holy Spirit summarizes the truths I have come to believe and questions I still have about Spirit baptism after all my years of reading, research, and seminary study. I offer my story to others because reading about the Spirit experiences of other Christians helped me greatly in coming to terms with my own Holy Spirit encounter.