Another lovely story about someone who was baptized in the Holy Spirit and
spoke in other tongues.
Hi. Welcome to today's Little Lesson and thank you
so very much for joining me. This is a special edition of Little Lessons because I'm out of my
bedroom office where I usually am and I've navigated here down to the first floor of
my house. This is the room we call the sun porch because it's got windows on three sides,
which you can see two of those sides. Lovely room, you kind of feel like you're outside here.
But anyways, if you're a regular viewer, you know we've been talking about speaking in other tongues
and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I'm starting to get some communications from some of our
viewers who say, "I received. I've prayed and I've been baptized in the Holy Spirit and
I'm speaking in tongues." I think I'll read one of those ones to you tomorrow that was
kind of inspiring or not tomorrow, but our next Little Lesson. It was inspiring to me.
But we've been working our way through the Book of Acts and looking now at we're in Acts chapter
10. We're not going to actually go there today, but I'm kind of making reference to that story
of when the Gentiles. Brand new, brand new baby Christians. They've just believed and God pours
out his Holy Spirit upon them and within seconds of being born again, they're baptized in the
Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. The point of that is so as far as we're concerned today,
is that it proves that you don't have to reach a state of super duper spirituality before you can
receive what I've been trying to get all of my viewers to receive. These folks were Gentiles.
This is acts chapter 10 in Caesarea. Peter comes down from Joppa, preaches the gospel
and they believe and within seconds of them believing in Jesus, God causes the Holy Spirit
to fall upon them and they are baptized in the Holy Spirit and they're speaking in other tongues.
When the devil tells you, "Well, this can't be for you because you're just not
holy enough." Well, the way you get holy
is by being cleansed and forgiven of your sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Now I recognize that as Christians, we need to strive to obey the Lord, but when you blow it,
you can get forgiveness just as easily as you got it initially, confess your sin and he forgives you
and cleanses you from all unrighteousness. Don't let the devil talk you out of it for that reason.
And anyways, I told you a story in our last lesson about a friend of mine,
who this was almost 40 years ago, who was baptized in the Holy Spirit
within minutes of being born again at a church service where I was preaching in Ohio
and today he's a pastor and he's been in the ministry for decades.
I'm going to tell you another story that happened
even before that. This was 40 years ago and this happened actually about 10 feet from where I'm
sitting right now, because this house where I currently live, my mom and dad purchased this
house when I was five years old. I'm 62 now. 57 years ago, my mom and dad bought this house
and then my wife and I bought it from them about 20 or so years ago. And they lived with us until
they went to Heaven. But I was teaching a Bible study one summer for high school
and college students here in the living room, which is just 10 feet from me,
right over here. I think there were 15 or 20 young people there and I was a young person myself.
I was just in my early twenties and I taught a lesson on the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Just teaching some of the things that I've been sharing with you over the last, I don't know,
14 or 15 or so Little Lessons here, but I just did it in one message. I might've spent 45 minutes to
an hour showing them all the scriptures, trying to build their faith, to convince them that this
is something that they could receive. And when I was done, I asked them to all bow their heads
and I prayed to the Lord and then I said, "I want to give all of you an invitation. I'd love
to pray for you tonight if you'd like to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence
of speaking in tongues. The only requirement is that you be a Christian already and that you
believe. That's it." And so I said, "If you'd like me to pray for you tonight, just raise your hand."
Well, only one person of that 15 or 20 young people raised their hand.
And so after I was done, I said, "Okay, well thank you so much." We all opened our eyes. And I said,
"Only one person has lifted their hand, this young man named Don."
And I said, "I'm going to take him down in the basement of the house here and I'll pray for him
there." I had a reason for doing that. Because see, they didn't believe they were all full of
doubt. And sometimes Jesus, before he got ready to minister to people like healing them or something,
he flushed everybody else out because he wanted to get the unbelief out of the room because that
unbelief just dampens the atmosphere. It hinders you. Without faith, it's impossible to please God.
If you doubt the word of God, you're not getting points, I'm just telling you.
You're not getting points, but God's merciful. But when the disciples doubted,
you read the stories where they were doubting, Jesus wasn't happy, was he? He was a little
bit ticked off when people didn't trust him. It's insulting to God when we don't trust him.
But anyways, but God is still merciful. I took Don down in the basement and I give him a little
instruction, just like I always would have done. And I said, "Now I'm going to pray for you. We're
going to receive the Holy Spirit. Believe we receive. Let me pray. The moment I touch my hand
on your forehead, that's the moment I want you to release your faith and receive the baptism of the
Holy Spirit and just open your mouth and begin to speak in tongues." He said, "Sure. Okay." And
we were just sitting in chairs across from each other. I prayed a prayer. And I said, "Now Don,
in the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit." And I laid my hand on top of his head just as a
point of contact because I don't have anything. There's no electricity going on in my hand.
And I never forget. He was kind of
tightening up his face and tightening up his mouth and his eyes and he just kind of,
he must've done that for about 20 seconds and he goes, "I don't, I just, I don't have anything."
And I said, "Oh no, no. Again, you have to have the faith here. You have to. You're going to have
to use your own mouth. You can't wait for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's a gentleman he's not
going to force you. You might feel some unction, something, but whether you feel anything or not,
you just have to have the faith so let's pray again." Same thing. I prayed. I said, "Now Don,
in Jesus' name receive the Holy Spirit." And I touched his forehead and same thing.
He kind of gritted up his teeth and his eyes and fist, he just, he was a really into it.
And then, but after about 30 seconds, he just went,
just in kind of a desperate exasperation. "I'm just not
getting it." and I said, and I'm thinking of all those people upstairs who were just waiting to see
if this is real. And I'm thinking if I don't get this guy to speak in tongues,
this is the end of my ministry. I just go get a job somewhere and forget about being in the
ministry because I'm a failure. A lot was riding on Don succeeding to be baptized the Holy Spirit.
I tried to hide my desperation that I said, "Look Don, I prayed for plenty of people
and you're no different. God loves you." I said, "But you can't keep your mouth shut.
You're going to have to least have enough faith like Peter. Peter, God, didn't transport him out
of the boat and force him to walk. He had to step out of the boat. There's a human side to all this.
You have to step out of the boat and begin to walk and then God will keep you up on top of the
water. You got to open your mouth and you just do something with your mouth and your vocal cords and
begin to speak and as you have the faith, God will give you the utterance and you
will be speaking in other tongues." And I said, "Now let me pray for you
one more time. And this time I don't want the clenched up face, open your mouth."
You better open your mouth. And so he goes, "Okay, okay." And I could tell that there
was a spark there this time that looks like we're going to make it this time. "In the name of Jesus,
Don receive the Holy Spirit." And I touched him and he opened his mouth and started speaking out
fluently in a new language at the top of his lungs. And I knew everybody upstairs could
hear it through that floor right over there. I was like, all right, yay, God. And then Don,
after about five minutes of yelling in tongues, he starts singing in tongues at the top of his lungs.
And Don has a great singing voice and he just belted it out. I'm just going, "Thank you, Jesus."
Because I knew they could all hear it upstairs. We both prayed in tongues for a while. And then I
said, "Well, let's stop. Now that it's happened to you, you can do this any time you want to."
And so we came upstairs and I tried to hide my pride.
But I felt so good and they were all wanting to ask him about it and they did. And he talked about
it and I could tell we were penetrating now some of that unbelief and all those folks kept coming
back to my Bible study and by the end of the summer, I would take them down in the basement,
maybe by twos, by threes, by ones, by the end of the summer, every single one of them, if my memory
serves me correctly, every single one of them was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.
And I still know Don to this day, he's an old high school friend. And in fact, he's on the
board of the Ministry of Heaven's family. He's a dentist in Oklahoma. Went to dental school and all
and as most dentist hopefully do. And he's a great blessing and the Lord used him in many
lovely ways, been on mission trips and medical mission trips, different parts of Latin America.
Never underestimate, I'm telling you again, the power of one sermon based on the word of God. Now,
you can give these sermons that are these self help sermons that you see sometimes on TV
and yeah, people get a little blessing, but I'm talking about God's word. When you share God's
word and people believe it, miracles can happen. And that night a miracle happened.
Another miracle. And many nights after that, as we had that weekly Bible study,
miracles happened as people, as Christians were baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.
I hope that what you can get from this is that all it takes is faith
and, "Faith without works or faith without corresponding actions," James said, "is dead." You
have to act upon your faith. And so if you believe you receive the Holy Spirit when you pray
and you're expecting that you'll be speaking in tongues, you need to cooperate and speak.
And you'll always be doing the speaking, but the Holy Spirit is the one who gives you
the utterance, but you have to speak. And we'll study this
further when we get to First Corinthians 12 and 14 to show you that it's not the Holy
Spirit forcing anybody to do something. It's us cooperating with the Holy Spirit, which
isn't that kind of how all of life works? Is the Holy Spirit forcing food into you?
Or do you actually have to put a fork into your carrots and put them in your mouth?
Well, it's a miracle, the carrots are a miracle,
your mouth is a miracle, your whole digestive system is a miracle.
It's miraculous how God takes carrots nourishes and makes cells out of those carrots in your body.
But it's not any less miraculous if you spear them with your fork and put them in your mouth,
not any less miraculous. We have our little teeny tiny part to play.
God's the miracle person and he does what we cannot do. And this
is how it is with the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.
But this is lovely. When that happens to you, then it gives you insights into how faith actually
works. It can just open up a whole new vista of a spiritual dynamic when you receive this miracle.
Well way, way over time but I'm just trusting the people that keep watching are interested in this.
If you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues, let us know. We want to hear
about it. If you've never been to the website, our website, heavensfamily.org, please take some time
and navigate over there and see what you can see. Hoping that you'll be touched to help us to do
what Jesus said we're all supposed to be doing and that's caring for the least of thee. That's what
the Ministry of Heaven's family is all about. Till next time, may the Lord bless you richly.