I remember years ago as a boy growing up in the church down south seeing people caught up in ecstatic worship and learning that this is what was referred to as having the Holy Ghost.  Now, ironically, it wasn't the same for the people up the road a bit who spoke in that funny language, tongues (glossolalia), no matter how ecstatic they were.  Way back then they called themselves "sanctified".  We were taught in my particular Baptist church, like all the Baptist churches in my area that certain Holy Spirit manifestations had "gone away with the disciples" and if this were so, then the only other option was that it was of the devil, according to them.  That was just a way of explaining away something they did not understand.  They just forgot to tell God that because during the summer of '84 while I was staying with my aunt in Columbus, OH, when her very Baptist pastor laid hands on my Baptist head with his Baptist hands in a Baptist church like mine "down home," I was filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. The ironic thing is that he laid hands on all the children in the church that day for our safe return to school. I however was the only one to pass out speaking in this glossolalia the elders at my church said had expired nearly two millenia ago.

Unfortunately, when we pick and choose what the Holy Spirit of Truth can do when we assemble ourselves we never receive the truth we seek. I liken it to driving a Porsche with a governor on the accelerator or swimming while wearing a raincoat.  The interesting thing about the so-called controversy is that most people are caught up on the glossolalia when it is only one manifestation promised after the Holy Spirit is present in a person. As I read through Acts, I notice that after people were baptized with the fire Jesus promised, they always spoke with glossolalia.  If Jesus thought enough of us to send the Comforter to us, just like He promised in the preceding chapters, who are we to say to him that we only want what we want from him.  Since Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would not speak on his own authority, but rather what he hears from above, what are we so afraid of?

I thanked God just the other night during my prayers for the Holy Spirit because were it not for him I don't know where I'd be right now.  The omnipotent Ancient of Days saw fit to give me something way back when I was a 12 y.o. lad that he knew I'd need as a 37 year old man and every age in between and for those to follow.  What love! I can say like writer, 'through many dangers toils and snares I have already come,' but I wasn't alone.  I never could have made it without you Holy Spirit. Thank you Jesus!

If you want what God has for you in this life, accept what he has prepared for you. Ask him for his precious Holy Spirit in fullness.  One thing my spiritual mother always taught about the Holy Spirit, to those of us who came from such teachings as I had, was that he is always a gentleman.  While the teaching never changed, the young people at my church who had heard of my experience kept praying and were filled themselves, some by the laying on of hands and others just sitting on their bed praying and reading the Word.  In short, we have not because we ask not.