Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Let me just give you a brief little recapitulation up until now and then we'll have our text and begin.
[00:00:32] Talked about the Holy Spirit at some length. The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament about how he is mentioned immediately the Old Testament begins. That the Spirit of God brooded, moved, hovered over the face of the abyss and so that the Spirit of God appears immediately. We talked about the Holy Spirit in symbolism throughout the Old Testament.
[00:00:57] Wind, fire, oil, water and a dove. That they show us various aspects of the Holy Spirit. Things that he does in people's lives.
[00:01:08] Wind or breath or spirit from which we get the word Holy Spirit or and in the more classical KJV translation, Holy Ghost. The Ghost is a spirit.
[00:01:19] And we said that that word is ruach.
[00:01:23] And the word for holy is Kadesh. Ruach, Kadesh. The Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. The breath of God. Wind, wind or breath or a spirit. Then we talked about oil.
[00:01:35] That the oil of anointing and the oil of healing. One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is healing. Another is anointing for power and for anointing in ministry. If you will.
[00:01:49] Fire the ministry of sanctification.
[00:01:54] Water cleansing and refreshment.
[00:01:58] There is a strange thing about just taking a shower. Isn't.
[00:02:03] Doesn't make any sense that getting clean makes you feel better, but you're refreshed. So water is refreshment and then the dove. An almost universal symbol across cultural lands for peace. That the Holy Spirit is the gift of peace and that God does not want his children to live all tied up in knots and living in anxiety that the Holy Spirit comes and rests on us as he rested on Jesus at his baptism. Because Jesus is the prince of peace and that his gift to us. He said, my gift to you is peace. Not the peace of the world. Not simply the absence of war, but peace. And we deal with that now.
[00:02:48] Then we began to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. I'd like to read a passage of scripture and then just to refresh your mind a wee bit, I'm going to begin right there. If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn to the Book of Acts, the 19th chapter of the Book of Acts.
[00:03:07] And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, the Paul, having passed through the upper borders, came to Ephesus, and finding certain disciples, he said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
[00:03:27] And he said unto them, unto what then were you baptized? And they said unto John's baptism.
[00:03:33] Then said Paul, John verily baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him, and that is on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized. Water baptism. They were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them. Spirit baptism.
[00:03:57] And they spoke with tongues and prophesied, and all the men were about 12.
[00:04:04] Verse 7 means almost nothing to a group of 21st century Gentiles. But it was extremely important in the time in which it was written and to the market for which it was written.
[00:04:20] It requires 10 men, a minion, as a synagogue for legitimate spiritual business to take place. For there really to be a synagogue you have to have 10 adult males, that is men who have above the edge of bar mitzvah. And so when this outpouring of the Holy Spirit came, Luke wanted to make sure for Jewish readers that they knew it was okay, because there was a minion present.
[00:04:50] There were. The number of men present were about 12, he said, so there was at least 10, there at least 10 adult males.
[00:04:58] Now there may be several women here tonight who are not sure that their such a thing as an adult male. But we're only speaking chronologically now. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we receive you tonight, honoring you and welcoming you into our midst and presence. And pray that now in this teaching tonight that your spirit will invade us, brush aside all of our objections, all of our hindrances within us, and speak to us by your might, deep within, in the inner person of every listener, in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:40] I want to get down to some brass tacks tonight and talking about this thing which we call baptism of the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:51] There are multiple ways to refer to it because there are multiple verbs used in the New Testament throughout the Book of Acts and in the Epistles.
[00:06:03] So there is the word baptism.
[00:06:08] It means an immersion baptizo, to be plunged beneath.
[00:06:14] So there is this sense of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is an immersion in the Holy Spirit.
[00:06:21] Now if you take A sponge and plunge it into a bucket of water. And is the sponge in the water or is the water in the sponge?
[00:06:31] Yes, it is.
[00:06:33] And so, therefore, as we are immersed into the Holy Spirit, it is not an immersion simply to wash over us and be gone. It is an immersion that becomes an infilling.
[00:06:44] In other places that actual language is used. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts Chapter two and Acts Chapter four. So there is a sense in which there is this coming within, this fullness.
[00:07:00] Let's just talk about fullness for a moment.
[00:07:03] Fullness is not simply the opposite of emptiness.
[00:07:08] It is a sense of full purpose, of power, of destiny. That there is something beyond that something has come within me that I am different within. A fullness of joy, of peace, of power, of presence.
[00:07:25] Where there was a lack, there is now that sense that I am completed in Him. Something has happened within me.
[00:07:34] I'm coming back to all these, but I want to just deal with them. Then there is simply the phrase that's used elsewhere in the Book of Acts, coming upon. And the Holy Spirit came upon them.
[00:07:46] That has the feeling of almost of a.
[00:07:49] Of a cloud. As the cloud of the presence comes upon them, the presence of God washes over them. I remember being on the.
[00:08:01] We were on Chapenque Mountain in Monterremesco one time doing a worship service with a group of seminaristas on the side of the mountain. There are picnic tables and playing the guitar. And a cloud hit the mountain coming along, bumped onto the mountain below us. We were so high up, we could see the cloud hit the side of the mountain, but it didn't dissipate.
[00:08:25] It rolled up the mountain toward us. And we watched it. Actually, we stopped singing and just watched the cloud as it kind of rolled up the side of that mountain and engulfed us. And it was just a cloud. It wasn't the Shekinah presence, but. But there was something wonderful about it. And everybody began to pray. And just worship is really a wonderful sense of that. The Holy Spirit coming upon baptism, fullness coming upon.
[00:08:56] Then there is this other word poured out. The Holy Spirit was poured on them. That shows up, by the way, in the book of Exodus, if you'll remember, Moses chooses these 70 elders, and the Holy Spirit comes upon them, is poured out on them for the anointing as eldership and prophecy. But there are these two blokes that are just standing too close. Do you remember this story? There's these two guys that are just standing over there watching. And the image is that like God tips over a big picture. And the Holy Spirit pours out and it hits with such suddenness, it just splashes on them.
[00:09:44] So the, the lesson from that is don't, don't hang around Pentecostal churches unless you want some. Because it can, it can pour, it can pour on you and just, you know, say, hey, I'm just visiting, but suddenly it splashes on you.
[00:10:03] But there is, I'm making a little bit of a joke, but there is this sense of the pouring, the refreshment, this sense of a sudden coming upon.
[00:10:13] So there are all these verbs that mean that reveal to us different aspects of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
[00:10:24] I want to share with you tonight as a part of this teaching.
[00:10:29] I'm not going to try to give you my life testimony or anything, but I want to share with you the moment in which my wife and I received what we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or if you're more comfortable, the fullness or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit or a second work of grace as it is often known in the Methodist circles.
[00:10:52] I was raised in the Methodist church.
[00:10:56] I was.
[00:10:57] My family were pretty secular until I was in high school. My parents got more involved in the church.
[00:11:04] We didn't have family devotions or Bibles, things like that. We were several times a year nominal Methodists.
[00:11:10] But in high school my family got. My parents got more involved in the church.
[00:11:16] And at that time I had a bad summer behavior wise and difficulty as a teenage boy, quarterback on the football team and that kind of thing. And during that summer our church hired a summer youth pastor. We couldn't afford one full time, so they'd always hire a college boy to come and spend the summer with us. And during that summer I got saved and I felt a distinct call to preach.
[00:11:46] My family didn't talk like that. I didn't know how to express it. I didn't have the vocabulary for it.
[00:11:53] I just told the man who prayed with me to receive Christ.
[00:11:57] It was at a meeting. I was in the very back row. Another man had preached. I came to the altar, first altar call I'd ever seen. I'd never heard an altar call, didn't know what it was, but he gave the invitation for salvation. And I came forward and my youth pastor came and knelt with me and prayed with me to receive Christ.
[00:12:14] And I said to him at that time, he said, is there anything else I should pray with you about? And I said, I'm supposed to do what that guy did.
[00:12:24] And he said, are you telling me you're called to preach.
[00:12:28] I never heard the phrase. I said, okay, if that's what you call it. I just know when I left the back row to come here, I knew I was supposed to be a preacher before I knew that I was saved.
[00:12:41] And I said, it's never. That has never departed from me. I knew that.
[00:12:46] So he went on back to his college.
[00:12:50] And I struggled on then with salvation and that call to preach, as people often do. But when Allison and I got married and then we went through the University of Maryland, we got married as teenagers. She was 17 and I was 19.
[00:13:07] Everybody in town assumed that we had to get married. Of course, the high school quarterback, and she was the captain of the cheerleaders. Everybody, Whoo. You know, eight years later, our first baby was born. And everybody said, ha. See there?
[00:13:24] Longest gestation period in the history of humanity.
[00:13:27] But the reason was because everybody knew who I was.
[00:13:31] But they underestimated who Allison was, and she was just as pure as driven snow. When we got married, we went on. I went, finished the University of Maryland, came here to Atlanta. That's why we moved here to take my master's degree at Emory University, because I needed. If I was going to be a Methodist preacher, I needed to be at a Methodist seminary.
[00:13:54] Seven years later, seven years in the Methodist ministry, I encountered my own emotional and spiritual and relational bankruptcy at a devastating level.
[00:14:08] I was struggling.
[00:14:10] I felt miserable in the ministry.
[00:14:13] I felt like a failure. I mean, there was outward success. I was pastoring. I pastored a growing church. I had been moved by the bishop from a growing church to become the senior associate at a large Methodist church in Atlanta.
[00:14:27] I was probably the highest paid member of my graduating class from Emory University, president of my class. It was all this outward success, but after seven years of ministry, I felt that I had nothing to show for it.
[00:14:43] I mean, except a really good men's softball team.
[00:14:48] Every year we beat the Baptist like a 2 year old at a Walmart. We just. And we loved that, of course, but there's got. I just knew there had to be something else.
[00:14:59] There had to be something else.
[00:15:01] I was miserable at the thought of staying in the ministry and miserable at the thought of leaving. I didn't know what else I would even do.
[00:15:10] Our marriage became more and more fragile, and I became more and more angry and depressed, struggling.
[00:15:21] The marriage then began to collapse. In 1975.
[00:15:27] We were both just young married kids waiting for the other one to say divorce.
[00:15:33] I was in the ministry and I knew divorce would be a hindrance. She was A Christian, and she didn't believe in divorce. But we were both miserable, like Jerry Clower. We were just waiting for somebody to shoot in amongst us. One of us had to have some relief.
[00:15:47] And the shot never came.
[00:15:51] Then I got moved by the bishop from the church that I was pastoring, which was really growing and doing well, to become the senior associate at a large church in Atlanta.
[00:16:02] And I got there and found that the senior pastor was a charismatic.
[00:16:08] And we were struggling all through the Methodist church with charismatics. We didn't know what to do with them. They were in our churches like termites. And so there's nothing more.
[00:16:21] There's nothing more intimidating than a layman who's had an experience that you haven't had.
[00:16:26] And they were overly enthusiastic, happy all the time and everything, and just.
[00:16:36] They were really a pain in the neck to deal with. And so we didn't know what to do but run them off. And I ran a lot of them off.
[00:16:44] I ran a lot of them off.
[00:16:46] Later on, when I came into Pentecost, they all said, oh, Dr. Rutland, you're here.
[00:16:51] They were waiting for me. But it was a really stressful time, a terrible time, and I was really struggling with serious, serious depression.
[00:17:02] They had a conference called the Conference on Power for Ministry. Today, this group of charismatic Methodist preachers, including my senior pastor, formulated this conference at a hotel ballroom down in Atlanta and invited ministers to come. And they were going to have some speakers to talk about what this charismatic movement meant.
[00:17:24] And so I certainly refused to go.
[00:17:27] And the lead pastor, he said, well, you work for me and you are going to go.
[00:17:34] And the church paved my way, got a hotel room, everything.
[00:17:38] I was so angry at being made to be at that.
[00:17:42] And, you know, when you go to someplace angry, you usually go late.
[00:17:46] And I went late. I didn't want to be there.
[00:17:50] It was only for Methodist preachers. There were no laymen.
[00:17:54] And this conference made the front of the religion section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
[00:18:02] What happened?
[00:18:04] So I came that There were about 150 preachers and they had set up one chair for every person who registered, which seemed like a crazy thing. So getting late.
[00:18:15] The only empty chair in the room was on the front row.
[00:18:20] So I came in and sat on the front row. And there was a little man sitting there, had wire rimmed glasses and had his Bible on his lap. And he said, we're going to have a great conference.
[00:18:34] We sang some songs and that kind of thing. And then they said, our first speaker is the pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky, the campus church for Asbury College, Dr. David Seamans. And we're going to ask him to come now to the microphone and speak. And so the little man beside me patted my arm and he said, now you pray for me. And he came up and you.
[00:19:01] I don't know if you've ever been anywhere where you can sort of feel God is moving in on you, you know, And I realized I was sitting way too close to the splash.
[00:19:13] It was actually a very frightening moment.
[00:19:18] And so Siemens came to the pulpit and he said, I know you've brought me here to speak on the charismatic movement and the Holy Spirit. But he said, I just don't feel led to teach on that tonight.
[00:19:30] Great.
[00:19:31] There is a God in Israel.
[00:19:34] And he said, instead, I feel led to speak on sin in the ministry.
[00:19:43] You ever hear people say you've heard it? I'm sure Pastor Yeboah, you really stepped on my toes. You ever hear that? That little man whooped me with a bicycle chain.
[00:19:55] Every time I'd go to hide in a closet, he'd be in there waiting on.
[00:20:00] It was awful.
[00:20:02] It was absolutely one of the worst nights of my life.
[00:20:06] And when it was over, I hit the door at a dead run, and I didn't even go to the hotel room my church had paid for. I drove all the way home and I told my wife, you know how you do when you're under conviction of things. Well, maybe you don't know what one does. But I said, oh, it was crazy. It was just crazy up there tonight. You know, they call themselves Methodists. They're not that bunch of Jack Leg Pentecostals. I said, it was awful. We had sung about three songs. Somebody had given a testimony and a man preached on holiness. That's all that. That's actually everything that happened.
[00:20:43] And I just ranted and raved. It was crazy. Crazy stuff you can't believe. I mean, I'm sure my wife thought they were handling snakes. And that was all that had happened.
[00:20:54] She said, well, you're going back in the morning. I said, no, I can't go back in the morning.
[00:20:59] I couldn't go even if I wanted to. I have to mow the lawn.
[00:21:04] So it was the 5th of December.
[00:21:12] I got up the next morning, put a jacket. I had my gloves on, went out and started the lawnmower. I could see my breath. There had been a frost where the blades of grass were covered in frost.
[00:21:24] I'm walking up and down the front yard. At that time, I had a Catholic Neighbor on one side and a Baptist on the other. Don't you know they hit the windows? Come here, Margaret. He's gone over the edge.
[00:21:35] And I walked up and I realized there was no grass thrown out.
[00:21:42] And ego will take you some places.
[00:21:46] I said, wait a minute. I have a 4 credit A at the postgraduate level in pneumatology.
[00:21:53] I think I know about the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to let anybody intimidate me about the Holy Spirit.
[00:22:02] So I got dressed, got my Bible, started out of the house. And see, this is what I never understand about women. Okay? Why won't they just leave it alone?
[00:22:13] So Allison leans out of the kitchen and she said, decide to go back.
[00:22:22] So I drove all the way across Atlanta. I screeched up in the parking lot of that hotel, put my Bible under my arm and started in there. And I said, I just.
[00:22:30] I hope somebody says holy Spirit.
[00:22:34] And I got there just as the morning session ended. I'd missed the morning session.
[00:22:39] When I opened the door. I opened the door to go in the ballroom just as it ended.
[00:22:45] And it stunned me.
[00:22:49] There were people on the floor, Methodist preachers. Now, there was nobody in there that wasn't an ordained Methodist preacher in the North Georgia Conference.
[00:22:59] Men were. Some were in the floor, some were weeping. Some were in small groups praying with each other.
[00:23:05] And I thought, what in the world?
[00:23:08] So I looked for somebody that I felt was dependable.
[00:23:13] And I saw a guy that I knew. His name also, by the way, happened to be Mark. He went by Marcus. But I saw him in very safe, modest, straight Methodist preacher. And I said, marcus, what in the world has happened here? And this safe, traditional Methodist preacher grabbed me by my lapels and screamed in my face.
[00:23:36] And he said, jesus has healed me and fill me with the Holy Spirit.
[00:23:42] And so I felt it was time for my seminary voice.
[00:23:48] I said, now, Marcus, when you say Jesus has healed you, I mean, what are you trying to communicate? What are you trying to say when you say, Jesus has healed me? How do I plug into that?
[00:24:04] You laugh, but there are people that listen to that every Sunday.
[00:24:09] So he stared at me like I was speaking Russian.
[00:24:13] He said, you know, I'm deaf in my left ear. I knew that he had had some kind of infection they had to take. You don't hear with what's on the outside. You hear with what's on the inside. And that had all been removed in a surgery.
[00:24:24] He said, a man in there just prayed for me.
[00:24:27] And he said, I can hear in my deaf ear. I have no ear And I can hear you. He said, not only that, I've hated my father since I was in elementary school, and God has taken that all away and filled me with love. He said, I've been baptized in the Holy Spirit.
[00:24:41] So it was. It stunned me. I was.
[00:24:45] I'd never heard language like that. I didn't even. I. It was like I'd walked into the wizard of Oz or something.
[00:24:53] So we came back for the afternoon session, and I got there early. I got in the back row, said, burn me once, shame on you, you know, But.
[00:25:07] So then they said, our second speaker. You heard David Siemens last night. They said, our second speaker is Dr. Ralph Wilkerson from Melodyland Christian center in Anaheim, California. This guy freaked me out in the first place. He had on white shoes in December.
[00:25:26] You cannot do that.
[00:25:29] The second thing was, he named his church Melodyland. I mean, Melody Land. What is it?
[00:25:35] First Methodist. That I understand. Buford Church of God. Okay, fine. But Melodyland and Christian Center? What did that even mean?
[00:25:44] So I thought he was nuts.
[00:25:47] He got up and spoke. He became my dear, dear friend. I preached at Melodyland many, many times.
[00:25:53] He's gone to be in heaven now, but he was my dear friend for many, many years after this.
[00:26:01] But when he got up, I thought he was stark, raven mad.
[00:26:06] And he spoke for about 20 minutes, and I analyzed every word. I sat there waiting for him to say something crazy. He did not say one thing about the Holy Spirit I didn't believe.
[00:26:18] He didn't say one thing that didn't line up with United Methodist doctrine of the third person of the Trinity.
[00:26:25] I said, well, this art.
[00:26:27] He flipped his Bible shut and he said, well, that's enough of that.
[00:26:35] That's enough of that. You cannot end a Methodist sermon. That's enough of that. You just can't. You can't do that. I said, well, he can't end that way. He hadn't even read his poem yet.
[00:26:50] So he said.
[00:26:53] He said, I don't like to talk about the Holy Spirit in a vacuum.
[00:26:59] He said, if we're going to have the Holy Spirit, let's have him here.
[00:27:03] And he began to pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit and God is my witness.
[00:27:10] The temperature went up in that room.
[00:27:13] It must have gone up 30 degrees. We were sweating. We were just sweating.
[00:27:17] I thought somebody had turned the heat on, and it was just sweating. It was so close.
[00:27:24] And then he began to call people out and call out their physical afflictions.
[00:27:32] And as God would have it, they were people I knew. I didn't know, every 150 people there.
[00:27:37] I saw healing. That just stunned me.
[00:27:42] I never believed in it.
[00:27:44] And I saw it. I saw it. You understand?
[00:27:47] That's a shocking moment when you're all. Your theology gives way to reality. It's pretty stunning. And I knew exactly what to do. I left.
[00:28:00] That level of challenge was not something I had come for. I went down to my car, I started back. I came back to the car.
[00:28:08] Finally I came back in.
[00:28:10] I went back to the back row. And Wilkerson said, now, he said, the Lord tells me we're going to have a word of prophecy.
[00:28:20] Yeah, Look, I took 1 and 2 Corinthians at the doctoral level, and I had never heard the phrase word of prophecy in a functional sentence.
[00:28:31] I mean, I knew it in script. I wonder what he means.
[00:28:35] Does he think Jeremiah is going to show up? I don't even know what that means.
[00:28:40] And he said, so somebody here has a word of prophecy. The Lord tells me, and I want you to stand up and give it. A guy stood up who was on the front row, and he was probably one of the most liberal men in the room. Everybody knew him. He was a notorious liberal. I don't know if he even believed in the resurrection.
[00:28:57] And he stood up, and his face was as white as your shirt.
[00:29:03] He stood up and he said, well, boys, it's me.
[00:29:08] He said, the only thing is, I don't even know if I believe in this. I mean, it was a classic case of Balaam's ass. It was unbelievable.
[00:29:17] He said, it's me. He said, I was just sitting there, and it had just come in my mind. This man is going to call for a word of prophecy. When he does, stand up and open your mouth and I'll fill it.
[00:29:30] So I thought, we're all some. I thought it was corporate psychosis.
[00:29:35] I said, what? What's happening to me?
[00:29:38] And he said, the Lord says I'm going to do a great thing in this room now.
[00:29:48] And when he said that the Holy Spirit came upon us, that phrase, the Holy Spirit came upon us, I began to weep.
[00:30:00] I pitched forward out of my chair onto the floor, weeping, crying, and God bless his heart, Ralph Wilkerson, white shoes and all.
[00:30:12] He left the platform and came out and got in the floor with me, and he lifted me up, put my head on his shoulder, and he said one thing that broke me. If he just said, all right, my friend, we're gonna. We're gonna shake tongues out of you right now, I would have been all right.
[00:30:34] You know what he Said, brother Pastor, I love you.
[00:30:39] Maybe if we would love people and quit trying to shake tongues out of them and they might get the Holy Ghost.
[00:30:46] So he said, I love you. I said, man, if you knew me, you wouldn't love me. I said, my ministry's a wreck. My marriage is finished.
[00:30:53] He said, wouldn't you like to receive the Holy Spirit?
[00:30:56] I opened my mouth to say, no, no, I don't believe in that. I don't want that.
[00:31:03] There's no such thing as a second work of grace. I don't believe in that, and I don't want it. And I heard my own mouth say, yes, please, that's what I want.
[00:31:15] And I realized for once my spirit and not my intellect had answered.
[00:31:22] He said, all right, pray with me. Just led me in a simple little prayer. Lord, I give you my life, my home, my marriage, my ministry. A prayer of surrender.
[00:31:32] He said, now I'm going to lay hands on you. And I did not want that.
[00:31:39] I know this sounds odd to a room full of Pentecostals, but you have to understand how I was raised and educated. He said, I'm going to lay hands on you. I had been taught that Pentecostal evangelists had a hidden buzzer in the palm of their hand.
[00:31:58] No, I'm telling you, I was taught. And that when people came up to the front, they would hit him with that.
[00:32:05] So he said, I'm going to lay hands on you. I said, oh, no, he's going to buzz me. I know he's.
[00:32:11] He's going to buzz me. I know he's going to buzz me. I don't want.
[00:32:14] So I just clinched like that.
[00:32:17] And he just put the fingertips of his hand on my forehead and he said, all right, brother. Receive the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:28] There's never been a more reluctant vessel, never been a more broken person.
[00:32:35] I don't know what happened to anybody else in that room.
[00:32:39] It appeared on the front page of the religion section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. One hundred and fifty Methodist preachers baptized in the Holy Spirit. That's one of the only times in the history of the church that yellow journalism actually worked for us.
[00:32:53] But I suspect that was a vast exaggeration.
[00:32:58] I can't speak for 149 others.
[00:33:01] I can only tell you at 4 o' clock in the afternoon on December 5, 1975, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was changed.
[00:33:12] Everything, Everything that has happened, everything that's happened in my life since then, everything happened because of that moment.
[00:33:24] A sense of power and fulfillment and explanation and Ministry.
[00:33:31] My ministry began there on the floor of the Ramada Hotel.
[00:33:38] Now, I wonder if anybody else has figured out what the problem is. See, I had to, like, go home, okay?
[00:33:47] So I was so wired.
[00:33:51] You ever been in a. In the delivery ward of a hospital where some new father is calling people about the baby and he's screaming into the phone, it's a boy. It's a boy.
[00:34:02] So I charged in the house.
[00:34:05] I said, everything's going to be okay, Allison. Everything's going to be okay.
[00:34:10] She said, you're stoned.
[00:34:14] I said, I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking.
[00:34:17] I said, I've received the Holy Spirit. Everything's going to be fine.
[00:34:21] And she said, mm.
[00:34:24] So she watched me like a hawk for about two weeks.
[00:34:29] And about two weeks later, not dramatically, not with the tears and the explosion that I received, but sweetly, beautifully, and quietly.
[00:34:44] She who had wanted the Holy Spirit, and I who had resisted the Holy Spirit. And we had argued over it deeply.
[00:34:53] We had argued deeply, and I had basically forbade her.
[00:34:58] She went to an assembly of God Church in Maryland when she was visiting her family, and she told me about these people speaking in tongues. And she said, mark, when they were speaking in tongues, I felt this warm feeling just engulf me. And I said, don't you see what it means? God was protecting you. That warm.
[00:35:18] That warm feeling. I said, that was. That was the. The Holy Spirit was guarding you from that crazy stuff. That's why you felt that? She said, I'm not sure, Mark. I'm not sure. I said, well, that's the way it is. We had fought. She wanted it. I didn't want it.
[00:35:33] So she kind of felt a little bit that I had jumped the cue because she wanted it. Now all of a sudden, I'm so. I know you're sitting there thinking, this is. I came for a lecture, and this is not what I was expecting.
[00:35:48] Trying to bring you to a point here.
[00:35:52] Allison is the most spirit filled, powerful, anointed, prayerful, spiritual Christian I've ever known.
[00:36:02] But her experience of the filling of the Holy Spirit was a dove.
[00:36:09] Mine was.
[00:36:12] I say fire, whatever. Really more like an artillery barrage.
[00:36:18] I don't think that's in the Old Testament, but.
[00:36:22] But here's what I know.
[00:36:24] See, what that taught me is God knows what you need.
[00:36:30] Dr. Tommy Tyson used to say, why can't we let the Holy Ghost be as wonderfully creative in everybody else as he is in us?
[00:36:39] So the Holy Ghost is not stamping out little tiny Pentecostals with a. With a With a rubber stamp.
[00:36:48] He is wanting to bring his fullness to bear inside your life and explore the parameters of who you are in his power, in his grace.
[00:37:02] So what we have to do is allow him to vary the level of the experience, the initial experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As we move forward in the Holy Spirit, he does different things in us different ways.
[00:37:18] Why couldn't he also get us started different ways now?
[00:37:26] But then we have this, and that is, I was raised and taught and preached for seven fruitless, powerless years, urging people to go on being filled with the Holy spirit. Ephesians chapter 5.
[00:37:44] Here, be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess. You know, Ephesians 5 and 18. Be ye not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:37:54] Okay, so I kept teaching Methodist people to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:38:04] We talked about it. I mean, I believed in the Holy Spirit.
[00:38:08] I'm a Trinitarian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[00:38:11] The problem was I was asking people, inviting people, teaching people to dwell richly in an empowerment which they had never received to start with.
[00:38:23] And it just frustrated people. It frustrated me.
[00:38:27] So what if tonight I just said, okay, you, my friend, because you're on the front row, you win a new house, here's the title deed, everything, it's all yours. And.
[00:38:39] And he said, man, I'm going home and get my furniture and I'm moving in. I said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't. Moving in is an emotional experience that could cause, you know, all kinds of confusion in the neighborhood. And we don't want a moving van parked out front and all that kind of stuff. So just live in it.
[00:39:04] You see how frustrating that would be to him. How do I live in this house? I've never entered to start with.
[00:39:11] So if you're sitting there and you say to yourself, what's the outcome of this? What is this?
[00:39:21] I would ask you, have you received A, an initial work of the Holy Spirit? Certainly, we live in the Holy Spirit. B, being filled with the Holy Spirit. But have you received that initial work of the Holy Spirit? The baptism of the Holy Spirit, an infilling, an empowerment.
[00:39:42] Don't measure your experience against anybody else's, but have you?
[00:39:49] I was preaching at a church in Alabama, a Methodist church in Alabama, one time, and an elderly man stood up right in the middle of my sermon, and he said, thank God.
[00:39:59] He said, thank God.
[00:40:02] He said, this happened to me in my father's barn 60 years ago, and I didn't know what to call it.
[00:40:10] He said, I've got the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so I'd rather you have it right and call it wrong.
[00:40:21] But my question is, do you have it?
[00:40:25] So when Paul the Apostle arrived at Ephesus in Acts, chapter 19, with which we began tonight, his first question to them, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?
[00:40:38] They said, we don't know about that.
[00:40:43] We don't even know what you mean by that.
[00:40:46] What does that mean?
[00:40:49] So he led them through salvation in the name of Jesus, water baptism in the name of Jesus, but eventually came back to the question with which he began.
[00:41:01] Now he said, now you're saved. Now you're water baptized. Now. Now he said this question, and it says, and then Paul laid his hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.
[00:41:13] So if you said, yeah, but what would happen to me tonight if I said, lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit, what would I experience?
[00:41:23] Okay. See, I don't know.
[00:41:28] I don't know.
[00:41:30] Some people. I've seen people weep.
[00:41:33] I wept like Niobe following after her children. I.
[00:41:38] I couldn't stop. I wept.
[00:41:41] My wife is sweet. So sweet. She said, oh, at last.
[00:41:48] At last, we both have experienced a gift of tongues. I don't.
[00:41:56] Don't make that a deal. Don't make that a deal breaker. Don't make it a demand. Don't make it a barrier.
[00:42:04] People get all cranked up over that.
[00:42:07] I'm asking, has this powerful experience of the Holy Spirit come?
[00:42:12] I've seen people laugh. I'll never forget the first time I ever prayed with anybody and they laughed.
[00:42:18] First United Methodist Church in Douglasville, Georgia. I preached on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And the elderly lady came right here.
[00:42:25] She had her hands clenched. Just came and knelt down.
[00:42:29] I came over and laid hands on her, and she put her little gray head back, and she began to laugh. She laughed to tears. I was so offended.
[00:42:39] Oh.
[00:42:40] Oh. I just. I went back up on the platform.
[00:42:43] I said, God, look at that silly old woman.
[00:42:50] I wept. She. Oh, laughing like that.
[00:42:55] And God spoke to me and said, what's the matter with you?
[00:42:58] She has lived 60 years of her life like a clenched fist, and I've bestowed the joy of the Lord. What's the matter with you? And I looked over there at her, and it looked like Jesus was kneeling beside her, and it looked like he was laughing, and it looked like he was laughing at me. It looked like.
[00:43:25] I remember, like it was yesterday. The first time I ever saw anybody fall down.
[00:43:31] I don't know why we make that a big Deal.
[00:43:34] But I'll never forget that I was a Methodist preacher. I went to a little tiny Pentecostal church in Mexico in the middle of the mountains, and they asked me. I gave my testimony. And people came forward. And I was going down, laying hands on people. And there was a big, big lady. I mean, la Gorda mucha, this lady was.
[00:43:54] And I reached up and laid my hand on her forehead, and she fell backward from her heels like a domino on a concrete floor. Her head bounced like a basketball.
[00:44:04] And I had never seen it or heard of it.
[00:44:07] And I thought she had come up like Ananias and Sapphira.
[00:44:13] Hypocritically. And I thought God had killed her.
[00:44:18] You laugh. I'm telling you, I. I was so shaken, I just went up. I know. I went up and sat on the. On the steps.
[00:44:27] Oh my.
[00:44:29] The little Pentecostal evangelist came over to comfort the Methodist preacher. And he said, now, he said, you've never seen that before. I said, oh, my, no.
[00:44:36] And he said, don't. Don't worry. He said, she's just been slain in the spirit. And I said, I thought so. I thought so.
[00:44:47] I mean, slain in the spirit. That's a very aggressive term.
[00:44:52] I didn't even know he was armed.
[00:44:57] So what does it all mean?
[00:45:00] It means this, that none of those things are the thing.
[00:45:07] None of those things are the thing.
[00:45:10] Not even tongues are the thing.
[00:45:14] The thing is not a thing.
[00:45:16] The thing is him.
[00:45:18] The thing is the Holy Spirit, Himself.
[00:45:22] Himself, infilling, coming upon wind, fire, oil, water, a dove. All those variations.
[00:45:34] And he knows what you need.
[00:45:38] He knows what you need.
[00:45:44] So I know this is a little bit different from the more lecture that we've had, but I want to ask you a simple question.
[00:45:54] Luke 11:13 says, if Jesus is speaking now.
[00:45:58] Jesus, not Paul the Apostle, not some theologian. This is Jesus.
[00:46:03] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more would your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
[00:46:14] To them that ask him, not to them that deserve it, not to them that act anyway, to them that ask.
[00:46:24] Think of that.
[00:46:25] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
[00:46:35] I can't imagine a more open invitation.
[00:46:40] That being the case, then here's my question.
[00:46:45] Have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed?
[00:46:52] You've been listening to the Leader's Notebook with the Dr. Mark Rutland. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review today's podcast. You can follow Dr. Rutland on Twitter @Dr. Mark Rutland or visit his website, drmarkrutland. Com. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
