Living in the Abundance of God (17 page)

Now we knew that God’s supernatural power was available in our day.
God’s power is for today!

Another thing that helped me receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the power in worship and praise that I witnessed among Spirit-filled believers. Although I felt out of place going to a Spirit-filled prayer meeting, I was desperately hungry for God’s power. I remember the most remarkable thing happened there. The believers got down on their knees, lifted their hands to God, worshiped God, and prayed all at the same time. Next to me, there was a woman kneeling and worshiping the Lord. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she praised Him. There was an indefinable, indescribable beauty in her countenance that filled me with wonder.

I said to myself, “What is this? What does this woman have? What makes these tears come? What gives her the ability to enter into worship like this? What is this marvelous, wonderful ability to praise God that I don’t have?” This profound experience was a turning point in my long search.

Never underestimate the power of the believer in praise and worship. A watching world needs the power of God. That experience in my life generated the power to go on in my quest for more of God. I never got away from that. That was what was missing in my life!

I wanted the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life, and I did receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit! Now I daily enjoy this heavenly worship and supernatural language. It is so wonderful just to lift my hands and adore and worship the Lord.

Never be ashamed to lift your hands. Never be ashamed to let your praises rise to heaven. It has a powerful effect on others as well as blessing and pleasing our Father God.

I believe there is a coming day when God’s people, filled with the Holy Spirit, will fill the streets of our cities in multitudes. They will lift their hands and praise God and boldly declare the Good News of salvation. They will pray for the sick and cast out demons. They will shake the cities of the nations by the power of the Holy Spirit!

W
hen I finally received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was like Jonah in the belly of the great fish. I was still inside of my denomination, just as Jonah was inside of that fish, and the fish was saying, “I am going to digest and absorb you.” Old Jonah began to kick and fight and said, “You will not digest me with those gastric juices. I am getting out!” Then the fish got a terrible stomachache and got rid of Jonah!

My denomination said, “Whatever you say you have experienced will pass over. We will digest you with our denominational gastric juices and get the baptism of the Holy Spirit out of you.” But when I got through kicking and fighting, they got rid of me!

This is the day when God is getting people to hear one Name, the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. People are arising who put Jesus and their allegiance to Him and the glorious power of the Holy Spirit above everything else in the world.

Acts 2:1 states, “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come…” Let the Day of Pentecost come. Let it come in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). We should have the full power of love. Let it fully come in the power of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

“When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1–4).

This is an account of the release of the spirit of man. It is the flow of spiritual freedom for man’s reborn spirit!

You are a spirit. You have a soul. You live in a body. Your spirit was dead to God. When Adam sinned, his light went out—the light of his spirit vanished. When Eve sinned, the light of her spirit went out. Life left them, and death came to them spiritually.

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” (Ephesians 2:1–3).

When you came into this world, you were dead to God in your spirit. There are only two kinds of people in this world: children of God and children of the devil (1 John 3:10). Either God is your Father or the devil is your father (John 8:42–44). You are motivated either by God or the devil. Every lost person has the devil as his father (Ephesians 2:2).

The person who is a child of the devil has spiritual death residing on the inside of him. The person who is a child of God is a spirit that has eternal life. God is his Father. When you receive Jesus Christ, God imparts His eternal life into your spirit through the Holy Spirit.

However, we can be born again and have God’s life in us and not have that spirit free. The baptism of the Holy Spirit sets you free in your spirit!

Let me illustrate this spiritual principle through the story of Lazarus (John 11). Lazarus was dead, yet Jesus told the people that if they would believe, they would see the glory of God. Jesus wept as He came to the grave, and then He cried out, “Lazarus, come forth!”

Lazarus came forth and received life. He came out, but he was bound with grave clothes around his body and a napkin was about his mouth. He was bound! He was alive, but he was not free!

Multitudes of believers in all denominations have received eternal life, but they are still bound in religious grave clothes. Jesus said, “Loose Lazarus, and let him go!” and He’s saying the same to His church today: “Loose them, and let them go!”

When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was truly saved. I had spiritual life, but I was not free. I needed the freedom to live and act like the Christians in the book of Acts. I needed to be free to praise God. I needed the religious napkin taken off my mouth to be able to worship God in spirit and in truth.

Earlier in the book, I wrote about the little bird that was hatched in a cage and never knew there was anything more than the cage in which it was confined. Then one day the cage door was left open, and it flew out and through the window—set free to fly as it was meant to fly. That little bird represents my story. I was hatched in my religious birdcage, and there I sat on my swing. I ate my religious birdseed and sang my religious songs. Thank God, I finally got out to enjoy all the free blessings and abundance of God.

You do not have to leave your church—just get set free! Be free to live and walk in the Holy Spirit. Love all of God’s people. It is all right to be in your church as long as you are not being restricted from being full of the Holy Spirit.

When you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there is a release in your spirit, and that spirit man begins to be active. The first thing that spirit man begins to do is talk. On the day of Pentecost, the believers began to speak in other languages, which was the release of their spirits.