Dan's Words during Worship

2009 Holy Spirit Experience

It was the 5th April 2008 on the Freedom in Christ away day that I first experienced the Holy Spirit in action. During that time you ask God to show you areas of your life that aren’t “of God” and then commit them to him knowing that Jesus has already set you free from their strongholds by his death on the cross. While we were praying and meditating I experienced a wide range of emotions and things that I thought I had long since forgotten were shown to me and were prayed through. I returned from that day changed and closer to God but still not clear about having received the fruits of the spirit as listed in Galatians, I still wasn’t praying in tongues much and prophecies and words from God were few and far between.

2009 started with a prompting for me to go to the Holy Sprit prayer session during the week of prayer. While I again did not notice an outpouring of the spirit I did feel that 2009 was going to be a significant year in my Christian walk and that something was going to happen.

Some months later I met with someone who told me I needed to “Tune in” to what God’s saying. Not something I knew how to do but he gave me some passages to read (basically every reference to the Holy Spirit in Luke!) and a short but excellent book “Prison to Praise” by Merlin Carothers. It’s the story of a man’s journey from the wilderness to a spirit filled life including an account of how many times he was prayed for expecting the Holy Spirit to baptise him, how often that didn’t happen and what happened when it eventually did.

Coincidentally (a lot of coincidences happen when God’s involved!), the Word Plus bible study course I was on did a whole day on the Holy Spirit that week also which gave me lots more to investigate some of which I did but a lot of which got prioritised behind everyday activities, work etc and has not been followed up.

Either way I still got the feeling of something big going to happen this year but I didn’t know what. There had been many times when at the end of a Sunday morning the preacher had asked who wants a fresh outpouring of the spirit but I’d always been reluctant or I felt I didn’t fit the particular category being requested. I didn’t need healing or a relationship to be repaired or strength in Evangelism so I stayed in my seat. Another possible reason for me not going forward is that I felt wary of the responsibility of being baptised in the Spirit. Would I be anointed to preach, heal people or suddenly get a heart for evangelism and spend every weekend on outreaches when I already feel busy enough in the week?

But on 24th May, Nigel was preaching on the difficult content in Colossians 3 about families and “wives submit to your husbands” etc and at the end Peter asked for responses including specifically that people needed to be brave and step forward to receive the Holy Spirit. I hesitated (as I have done before) but I also felt excited about going up. Partly nervous, but also excited about doing this so I made the choice to go and be prayed for.

Peter was praying along the line and I sneaked a look to see where he was – 2 people away. I closed my eyes, hands open and waited. Suddenly I could hear someone praying for me in front of me but I knew there was someone in the line before me so I thought that Peter had maybe missed someone out. Then surprisingly I heard Peter start praying for me. I think I felt his hand touch my chest and then I opened my eyes to see the underside of a front row chair!

I’m not sure how long I was on the floor for – I just knew I had experienced so many different emotions while I was there – elation, sadness, despair, hope. I knew I had been crying and that something was different. I felt that God had re-emphasized Nigels message in that the place I needed to concentrate right now was on my family and at home rather than anywhere else. I also knew that I had been given a clear instruction from God which was that I needed to call my parents (not a particularly close relationship), tell them I love them and apologise for the things I’d done when I was living at home and also some of the not so respectful things I do and say now. They were slightly confused when I said this on the phone (not the sort of conversation we normally have) but part of me feels at peace that I did this and I can see why I needed to do it.

The following week, I was at the front again asking for the Holy Spirit to flood my life again and I started whispering in tongues. Not quite proper praying but I ran out of words and the Holy Spirit seemed to fill the gap. That’s happened a number of times since then and it seems that I’m getting more confident each time it happens.

The big difference is that I now feel “tuned in” to God. I know that if I get a prompting to do something, no matter how random or irrelevant it is, if it’s the Holy Spirit doing the prompting then there’s a good reason to do it. Of course, my own weaknesses sometimes get in the way of that (like waiting for the right time to share a word or picture and then realising that the prayer meeting is over!) but at least I’m more aware of what it feels like when the Holy Spirit is at work. For me personally, I’ve changed from believing that God is there and involved in our lives to knowing that He’s there and that he loves us all.

Dan R_
(posted with Dan's permission)