For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (Romans 8:14)
I was a pretty good kid in high school, serious, studious, and socially hesitant. I joined the church to please my mother and went with her on Sundays. I was not welcome in the Sunday school. I asked too many questions. One of the students I tutored kept telling me that I needed Jesus because I was a terrible sinner. I did not feel that way at all, so I largely ignored him. In my freshman year at college, I thought it would be a lark to have a Navigators Bible study in my dorm room. It was not like Sunday school. This group encouraged my questions.
I began to realize that sin separated me from God. It was not so much that I was doing a lot of things that were wrong. It was that my very nature isolated me from God and the only way to bridge the gap was through what Jesus had accomplished. His cross was the bridge between a life separated from God and a life with God. I had heard the teaching about putting God at the center of my life rather than myself in church, but this was the first time I understood how sin nature separated me from God and that Christ came to restore man’s original relationship with a loving God. God was calling me to come to him, through Jesus who made the way possible. I did not want to be separated from God.
It now made sense. I understood what it meant to proclaim, “Jesus is Lord.” I prayed the prayer of faith, renewing the vows I made in church as a young teen, now with an understanding that brought great peace to me. I was born again. I was ready to take in all God had for me. I joined a charismatic prayer group at the local Catholic church. The only scriptures they had for sale was a New English Bible. I bought it and began to read, starting at the beginning. For the first time, my eyes were opened to its message because I was reading it in the context of a loving God reaching down to restore his people to fellowship with him.
In the prayer group, I experienced a love for Jesus and each other that was new to me. The Navigators seemed to be a rigid and harsh bunch in comparison, who fearfully avoided interactions between men and women. In the prayer group, we all loved each other. We were comfortable in accepting and welcoming each other, no matter what our differences might be. Gradually, I discovered that what made this group different was that most of them had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. This was a teaching I knew nothing about. I don’t recall hearing about it in my Presbyterian church or in my interactions with the Navigators.
My friends led me to a priest on campus who was also a professor of English. He made the doctrine simple to me. God welcomes all who are born again into His kingdom, but there is more. God’s very Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is given in an abundant filling of our inner being, to those who ask. He pointed out the scriptural teaching on the Holy Spirit and, after a few weeks, laid hands on me to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. A few nights before, God had come to me and filled me with His Spirit, giving me a special prayer language that I could use to talk with Him. This was like those spiritual groanings Paul described in his letter to the Romans, which became my favorite book of the Bible.
Some time later, I asked my childhood pastor about it and he confirmed the teaching. I was tempted to ask him why he did not preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit from the pulpit. But I knew why and was too respectful to confront him about his fear of the response of the congregation. His charismatic experience was shared only with a few confidants and with me. Even so, he pointed me to The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee so I might more fully understand the experience and how to walk with God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus began my journey.
