Empowerment of the Holy Spirit

Recently I had the honor to minister with two friends, Rev. Catalina and Cisco. Rev. Catalina and Cisco are the sozo prayer team for their church. Rev. Catalina and I have both been coming across some strange darker torments in Christians during our individual deliverance ministries. I rode shotgun with Rev. Catalina and Cisco on this ministry call. We met at the house of the individual experiencing the torment, whom we'll call Tom.

When the three of us arrived, Tom explained to us the situation he was experiencing. Spirits would constantly appear to him and tell him they would harm him. When our prayer team was on the scene, the spirits were threatening to hurt Tom if he tells us anything. What the spirits feared in Rev. Catalina, Cisco, and myself was our empowerment in the Holy Spirit. The spirits wanted Tom to get rid of us.

Frequently, during the prayer session, the spirits would interfere and be disruptive. One spirit kept trying to freeze the room and make it cold. It was a strange sensation like someone with ice hold hands trying to freeze parts of your body. This tactic wasn't working well for the spirits. When I would feel a cold pocket I would put my hand in it and quietly pray in tongues and it would move away from my hand.

In the middle of the prayer session, Rev. Catalina prayed and called down heaven. The disruptive spirits didn't like the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the room, so they temporarily departed. At this time we had break through with Tom and he was able, for the first time in months, to hear the voice of his Father in heaven speak to him.

This testimony paints an example of a prayer team that, one, knows their individual identities in Christ, two, stands in their authority in Christ, and three, walks in their empowerment of the Holy Spirit. In the latter, I am not just referring to me praying in tongues, I am also talking about the prayer team standing in agreement that the power of heaven was coming into Tom's living room. The Father in heaven was coming to speak to His son, Tom. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit is moving and praying in the supernatural and expecting results.

Recently, while giving a talk on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, I was re-acquainted to an age old argument in the church. If I am saved by Jesus, don't I have the Holy Spirit? If I am saved by Jesus can't I heal and prophecy without the baptism of the Holy Spirit? These questions in church can be equally as hot a topic as abortion. Just ask the pastors who brought it up in their own church. Some churches the Holy Spirit flows freely and in some churches, the amount of Spirit released comes in dosages. Churches have literally split over this weighted question.

On the flip side, church members have used the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to look down on other churches that don't move in the Spirit. It's hard for one end of the church moving in the Spirit to understand that at the other end of the church spectrum there are fears of moving in the Spirit. How do I know it really is the Spirit and not an evil spirit tricking me with healings. Aren't the so called Spirit filled churches like Bethel Redding succumbing to sin because they're only chasing miracles? Aren't the people operating in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit just using it as a vice to prove they're more holy-er than thou? The church is wildly and inexplicably at both sides of the fence on this.

Then there are church body members, like myself, and my prayer warrior patriots, who are living radically in the middle. Prior to 2007 I didn't believe in healing miracles at all or the power of the Holy Spirit. I was about 38 years old in my life and had been attending church all my life. The Holy Spirit was always this nebulous thing or it. There was the Father in heaven, the Son Jesus, who I always believed was in heaven, like some Greek god looking down on us from Olympus. And then there was this Holy Spirit, thing, it, or whatever it was that was just the third piece of the trinity. In my belief the Holy Spirit never broke through to our physical universe but was also something else I would better understand when I went on to my glory in heaven. I accepted Jesus and I knew the Holy Spirit was a part of me from the package deal in Romans 8.

My pace at understanding the mysteries of the Bible was slower than God's timeline for me to come up to speed. So during this time he put his boot in my seat and punted me into coming up to speed. It was in the last months of 2007 that God drafted me into the spiritual war. I no longer had the luxury of spending decades of getting around to diving into the Bible. I was put on the spiritual autobahn crash course to come up to speed fast. God even put me on my first spiritual warfare assignment to train me as I go. Little did I know it was this Holy Spirit, nebulous, it, thing I didn't understand, that had lifted me to my feet and had become my gunny sergeant to train me in this really weird war with an invisible enemy that could manipulate objects in our physical realm.

During my first month of training, God had sent some friends my way to be my first mentors. Both of them spoke to me about this baptism of the Holy Spirit thing. Which I wasn't really interested in because I was already water baptized. During this time of my life I was, and still am, an avid weight lifter, I was getting up at 4:30 AM to prepare for a fitness competition. I would spend the early AM on the spin cycle praying. One particular morning I was on the spin cycle praying to God about what is this baptism of the Holy Spirit? I petitioned question after question about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Then in a moment, I remember feeling loosing control of my body and slowly falling to the floor of my garage. And shaking or something going on and I was weeping uncontrollably. It wasn't sadness, it was something enveloping me. It was the Holy Spirit. This thing I didn't believe crossed over from heaven yet now was all over me and covering me. I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. And it wasn't an it! The Holy Spirit was this powerful, loving presence. This wasn't a psychosomatic slash wishful thinking experience. Something was going on and it was definitely the Holy Spirit.

After the experience subsided, I figured, wow! That was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Why not try out the gift of tongues that accompanies this? So I tried it. But no gift of tongues. Instead, these clicking noises came out like I was one of the bush men in the movie, “The God's Must be Crazy”. Oh, come on! Where was the supernatural tongues that was supposed to manifest? I soon found out my clicking noises were my baby tongues and over time, a couple of months it came in full as I used it. Later, I started to walk in prophecy and healing.

As my wife, friends, and I minister, we can feel the empowerment of the Holy Spirit with us on the dark streets and back alley ways. With the baptism you learn to feel the presence of the one Jesus told us to wait for and seek. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit in us, when we ask Jesus into our lives, and yes we can heal and cast out spirits. Jesus wanted each of us to go deeper in him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is an invitation to seek God deeper. It's a personal choice that God leaves up to each one of us to make. The Holy Spirit is like that He is gentle and wants to be invited. If you choose to move into the gifts of the Holy Spirit seek the baptism and receive the empowerment!

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Acts 1:8