How long before the Holy Spirit filled you?

Romans 8 said:

I should already have the spirit in me because I've converted. I cannot tell you that I *Know* the Spirit is in me. Nor have I experienced the pouring of the Spirit. I want both experiences.

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Baptism in the Holy Spirit is different than being converted.

Romans 8 said:

I agree Natsumi Lam. I used to think we received the holy spirit when we believed, and then received the baptism of the holy spirit after as a separate experience. But I think there's just one baptism of the holy spirit.
It's all kind of confusing, but the main point is I'm seeking the holy spirit which is evidenced by speaking in tongues.

did you get it yet?

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Yes

Romans 8 said:

Hello! I'm a new Christian and I have been praying, and have been prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit but nothing so far. I understand that I'm on God's time and that I need to fully submit to Him but I'm curious if anyone has diligently sought the Baptism for months and nothing?

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If you have received Jesus as your Saviour, then you were born again of the Holy Spirit.

What happened was that you were baptised of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. What happened was that the Holy Spirit was the baptiser, you were the candidate, and the medium was the body of Christ.

The moment you were born again, the Holy Spirit came into your spirit. You did not receive part of the Holy Spirit, because He is a person, and therefore He came into you in His fullness. The Scripture says that the Holy Spirit came into you and is a well springing up into eternal life. This changed your nature. Therefore the fullness of the Holy Spirit is right inside you!

Now, the next step is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. While the baptism of the Spirit gives you a new nature, baptism in the Holy Spirit gives you ability to go out and disciple others for Christ. Now, Jesus is the baptiser, you are the candidate, and the medium is the Holy Spirit. It is not that the Holy Spirit falls on you from above, because He is already in you. It is the Holy Spirit flowing out of you in praise, worship and the gifts of the Spirit.

So, when you were born again, you asked Jesus to become your Saviour. Immediately you were born again. When you are baptised in water, you will go to your pastor (if you haven't already) and ask him to baptise you, and he will.

So, when you need the baptism in the Spirit, you need to ask God for it, and He will give it to you. You don't need to worry about getting a counterfeit, because if you ask God for something, He will give you exactly what you ask for. If someone asks you for bread, would you give them a stone, or if they ask for fish would you give them a snake? No! So, in the same way God, who is so much better than any of us, He will give you exactly what you ask for.

Once you have asked for the baptism in the Spirit, then you need to receive it. You can ask, but if you sit down and expect something to happen to you, nothing will. You need to receive the baptism and then allow Him to flow out through you.

Now, tongues is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not tongues, so you wouldn't be able to speak in tongues until you were baptised in the Spirit first. But praying in tongues is a great way of allowing the Holy Spirit to flow out of you like a river of living water, in praise and worship.

What might happen when you receive the baptism in the Spirit, which you will, because it will happen right away, you might sense something welling up in you. As it gets up to your mouth, just open your mouth and start praising God in a language you have never learned. What happens to some when that welling up happens, when it gets to their mouth, they just swallow it down, mainly because they have received lying teaching about tongues and it has spooked them about it.

Tongues as the ability that comes through the baptism in the Spirit is something you can do when you are alone with God. But the gift of tongues which works in conjunction with interpretation, along with all the other gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 won't happen while you are sitting in your room at home. They work for the building up of the body of Christ, so you need to be fellowshipping with other believers for the gifts to flow.

I hope that this is helpful to you.

Then, if you were water baptised, the pastor was the baptiser, you were the candidate, and the medium was water.

1stcenturylady said:

You've got mail. I wasn't even asking to be filled, I was just repenting. That is the key to receiving. Acts 2:38

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You got filled with the Spirit anyway, because it was a part of your born again experience, The Holy Spirit came into you and became a well springing up into eternal life. You were baptised of the Spirit. You subsequent experience was being baptised in the Spirit where the Holy Spirit started flowing out of you.

It is all quite simple and straight forward really. Religious folk complicate all this so much that ordinary people get tied up and confused and fail to see the wood for the trees. It's like the little child who was whether he saw the forest on his journey, and he answer, "No I didn't. There were too many trees!"

Oscarr said:

You got filled with the Spirit anyway, because it was a part of your born again experience, The Holy Spirit came into you and became a well springing up into eternal life. You were baptised of the Spirit. You subsequent experience was being baptised in the Spirit where the Holy Spirit started flowing out of you.

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See my post to you a moment ago in
Has the modern church lost its balance on grace?

1stcenturylady said:

See my post to you a moment ago in
Has the modern church lost its balance on grace?

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I saw that, and replied to it.

Being filled with the Spirit at conversion makes sense to me because it changes our nature and enables us to live and walk in the Spirit. This is how the fruit of the Spirit can be the foundation of our new nature.

But the flowing out of the Holy Spirit through the baptism in the Spirit, is the already indwelling Holy Spirit flowing out and giving us the ability to minister in the Spirit.

The baptism in the Spirit is not really for us in the sense of having happy happy clap clap goose bumps up our spines, shaking, jerking, and falling down. It is the power house that gives us the ability to share the gospel to the unsaved in power, and to build up the body of Christ through the gifts.

Romans 8 said:

Hello! I'm a new Christian and I have been praying, and have been prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit but nothing so far. I understand that I'm on God's time and that I need to fully submit to Him but I'm curious if anyone has diligently sought the Baptism for months and nothing?

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I was 10 when I prayed to receive Jesus Christ in my heart and God immediately filled me with the Holy Spirit. The sign was that I ran down the street to share the Gospel. It was my "First Love". It wasn't until I was about 30 that I received speaking in tongues with interpreation. It poured out from Heaven the same way the Holy Spirit did when I was Born Again. It's not a seperate Baptism. There is only ONE Baptism. But it's just another manifestation of the same Baptism. Not everyone speaks in Tongues. It is a gift that God gives at certain times to certain people, as with ALL the Gifts. But everyone who is Born of God has the Gift of the Holy Spirit.... receiving the Holy Spirit IS being Born of God. If you ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, you can be sure He has or will give it. Wait on the Lord. There are 3 manifestations or "types" of Tongues:
1) Pentecost, miracle of one spoken language being heard by everyone in their own native tongue/language
2) Messages in and Unknown/Heavenly Tongue with Interpretation (For use in the Assembly)
3) Praying in Tongues aka Praying in the Spirit (not for the Assembly but for private, personal edification only)

First you must know how to discern the spirits. Thoughts inside you come from 1 of 3 sources:
1)Satanic "arrows" or thoughts that come from external satanic spirits but lodge in the mind like blackbirds in on a treebranch
2) Your flesh
3) The spirit of God

If you have a thought, test it by saying "spirit telling me XYZ, has Christ come in the flesh?) The spirit will respond in one of these ways
1) NO! This is a satanic spirit/thought
2) *silence* This is usually your flesh's thought, sometime's Satan also
3) Yes! Amen! or "I AM". This is from God

Once you can discern the spirits, you can learn to express the groanings of the Holy Spirit from your mouth. Or you can meditate on them in your mind. This is "praying in the spirit or praying in tongues"

Praying in Tongues is praying with your spirit. It does not REQUIRE using an earthly language of your mind. It' like a baby who cries to it's Father because it's in pain or hungry, etc. It's often comes out as "Abba" or "Daddy!" Any spirit in your that cries out to God as "Daddy" is the Holy Spirit.

@Romans 8

Hi. As you may have discovered, there is so much disagreement over the suject of Baptism of the Spirit, which you would expect, when this 'second blessing' is so important to our spiritual growth.

In the past, Baptism of the HOLY Spirit meant just that - an impartation of the nature of Christ, that is His holiness, which brought about the fruit of the Spirit. We can clearly see this after Pentecost when the disciples changed fundamentally from the weak and sinning disciples to great men who were able to display the power of almighty God in what they did, no more were in bondage to the enemy.

The Holiness Movement of America contains many writings about this subject, and how to get the 'blessing'. Aslo early Methodism and early Quakerism. However, during the time of the HM at the end of the 1800's error began to creep in from the newly formed Pentecostal Movement, where the emphasis was taken away from holiness and became about giftings.

War on the Saints by Jesse Pen-Lewis was written at his time, the early 1900's to counteract the error and I would advise you to read it but to get hold of a copy that has not been adulterated to exclude some of the notes at the end. One of which was from a German pastor who wrote:

"Let me quote an extract from a book by Pastor Ernst Lohmann published in Germany and printed in the OVERCOMER of 1910.



"They (heathen systems such as theosophy, new Buddhism, and spiritism) also produce revelations and prophesies, speaking and singing with tongues, healing and miracles..It is of importance that we should study this subject to find an answer to to the question as to how these phenomena are brought about.



The numerous and exact investigations which are being made in our day into the subject are giving increasing insight into this dark realm. Powers and possibilities have been discovered in man which until now have been totally unsuspected.



They are designated "subliminal powers" and we speak of "subconsciousness". What physical occurances accompany these phenomena? The lower-nerve centres (the ganglionic system or the vegetative nerves as they are called) which have their chief seat in the region around the pit of the stomach, are excited to increase activity.At the same time , the central region of the higher nervous system (the cerebral system) which in the normal state of affairs is the medium of the conscious perception and action becomes paralysed.



There is a reversal of the order of nature. The lower nerves take over the duty of the higher ones (a sort of compensation). This state of things comes to pass negatively by the higher organ, loosing its natural supremacy under pressure of illness or artificially by hypnotism, auto suggestion etc and possitively by the lower nerves being in some way excited ARTIFICIALLY to increase activity, whereby they get the upper hand.



These nerves then display abilities which our ordinary organs do not possess, they receive impressions from the realm usually closed to us, such as clairvoyance prophesy and speaking in tongues.



When in this state of somnambulism, the inner sense heightened by its activity perceives outward things as clearly and more so than when awake, and this takes place according to the unanimous declaration of all somnambulists through the pit of the stomach ie through the nerves which have their seat in this region....And it is from this part that the nerves are set in action which move the organs of speech (in the speaking of tongues)



Those in whom the sub-consciousness becomes active in this manner described above feel as it were an ELECTRIC STREAM passing through the body which is an exciting of the nerves which have their central seat at the pit of the stomach. It is from thence that the jaws are moved in the speaking in tongues.



One of the leaders of the Pentecostal Movement in describing the so called Baptism of the Spirit in his body made use of the singular comparison that it seemed to him as though there were in his body an inverted bottle. This simile was incomprehensible to me until I heard an almost identical one from a Mohammedan sooth sayer, Tewekkul Beg, describing how he would get into AN ECSTATIC STATE.



He says "After my eyes were bound, I saw something in my inner being resembling a fallen tumbler......When this object was placed upright, a feeling of unlimitless bliss filled my being."



By exciting the lower nervous system, a feeling of intense rapture is regularly produced.



It is evident that in these phenomena we have the exact opposite of what the Scriptures understand by the communion of the Spirit. When the Spirit of God takes possession of the spirit of man HE IS BROUGHT BACK TO A NORMAL CONDITION. The spirit acquires the full authority given to it by the Creator over the powers of the soul and through the soul, the body. The conscious persona; life is once more completely under authority of the spirit" cont'

cont'

There is indeed a counterfeit baptism which you would expect from Satan with this subject being so important. The previous quote from WotS shows how to discerne it. It was written in 1910.

So it is a baptism of hoiness which brings the person to the state for which we are commanded 'Be ye holy as I am holy'. Nothing less. The fruit of the Spirit extrudes from this and the gifts come and go as God pleases.

To receive this baptism usually one has to have had a long time of dealings with God though it can happen quickly in revival times. These dealings will show a man just how he stands before a holy God and often there comes a crisis of faith and a man is brought to his knees before this holy God. So the reason for asking for the baptism must be scriptural and not the counterfeit one otherwise that is the one we will receive despite the claims that God will give the real one. If we are deceived so far, God will allow the deception to continue. We will get what we ask for.

To receive the genuine baptism, one must want it for the right reasons. We must want Jesus more than anything in life. You can read some of the old writings, and there are some easier to understand like the books of Brengel a Salvationist and William Booth. Those movemtns came straight out of holiness doctrine.

You can find many of them on the web site enterhisrest.com.

If there is any way I can help you further please do not hesitate to ask.

Brenda

@Romans 8

And God bless you too!

The Pentecostal pastor is wrong in putting pressure, but then, he is coming from a different standpoint. But there is a need to be aware of the Holy Spirit drawing one in with the longing inside of something more. Reading from the period I have stated, and testimonies of the true baptism is important so as not to be led astray. And of course studying the scriptures that speak of entire sanctification is good, and Romans 6, 7 & 8 are all about it.

Do make sure you read the unabridged version of WotS. I have just lifted my copy down from my bookshelves and realised that I have not read it for some time so am going through it once again. I did not agree with a number of things from Jessie Penn-Lewis like her premillenialism and dispensationalism, but the book is valuable nonetheless.

1stcenturylady said:

I went to church for 30 years before I was filled. If you like I'll send you my testimony so you can see the hold-up in my case.

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Please send it to me too I just love these testimonies. Did it happen with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues? And how have you been doing since then?

Romans 8 said:

Hello! I'm a new Christian and I have been praying, and have been prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit but nothing so far. I understand that I'm on God's time and that I need to fully submit to Him but I'm curious if anyone has diligently sought the Baptism for months and nothing?

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I heard of someone who tarried for 5 years. And others who received this Gift right at salvation. It truly is God giving it in His time. It is God giving us power from on high to to service, and to be witnesses for Him.

From what I've learned there is a difference between being sealed with the Holy Spirit (which happens for every believer at salvation, if I'm not mistaken), being baptized in the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit (the latter being something we are commanded to do continually).

We have to be careful also not to get so desperate that we'll make potentially dangerous decisions like searching out random people to lay hands on us.
If this person is not of the right Spirit he/she could actually impart demons on you by laying on hands and they can also give you a false tongue (demonic). So we have to be prayerful and just keep seeking the Lord and not get carried away.
We have to focus on seeking Him and on living a holy life, and asking the Holy Spirit to sanctify our hearts.

Romans 8 said:

Hello! I'm a new Christian and I have been praying, and have been prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit but nothing so far. I understand that I'm on God's time and that I need to fully submit to Him but I'm curious if anyone has diligently sought the Baptism for months and nothing?

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I apologise for my delay in replying. I was away from the forum for around a year and I missed your thread.

God showed me a set of faith steps in order to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. He gave us the gift 2000 years ago, and the tarrying was only for the disciples to wait in the time between when Jesus was ascended, until the Holy Spirit arrived on the Day of Pentecost. Now that the Holy Spirit is here, no one has to wait for Him to baptise them and bestow the gift of tongues. Here is the link of the steps I provided for another member who was asking the same question. Read post #1.
Receiving the Baptism With The Spirit

When I got saved, I pleaded and begged God for three weeks to receive the baptism with the Spirit. One afternoon, the Holy Spirit said to me, "Why are you begging for something I have already given you 2000 years ago? Stop the nonsense and just receive it!" So I said, "Lord, I receive it!" He then said, "You got it. Now you can speak in tongues". I started to speak in faith, and before long I was speaking a fluent language that seemed to flow out of me. That was 1966, and the flow hasn't stopped!

I received the Holy Spirit at salvation. Meaning I started feeling the effects of Him changing my life then and there. I was received the baptism of the Holy Spirit by evidence of speaking in tongues some years later when I learned what it actually was and asked God for it.