Three things happen to the person who receives the baptism with the Holy Spirit. They receive boldness to witness, an increase in understanding of the word of God, and they receive a new way to pray!
Acts 1:8 reads: But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. The Greek word for power here is dunamis and from this word we get our English words dynamic, dynamite, and dynamo. There is inherent power produced within the believer when baptized with the Holy Spirit.
The day after I was Spirit baptized, I noticed a boldness that rose up within me that I had never experienced before. As a 17 year old, I was working in a grocery store the day after I received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and a girl asked for a cigarette. Well, I had thrown mine away the day before, and simply had no desire for them. I started to tell her that I quit, but before I could speak the Holy Spirit from deep within me prodded me to tell her that Jesus set me free from smoking. When I told her that, she was so surprised that I thought she would fall in the floor! And then a joy rose up in me that I had never experienced before. Ever since then that boldness has risen up in me.
The second thing that you will notice after having received the baptism with the Holy Spirit is that a greater hunger for and understanding of the Word will come.
1 Corinthians 2:14 reads: But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. The Holy Spirit authored the Bible. He inspired men to write as they were moved by Him. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life in fullness, He will take the Word and unfold its deeper meanings to your spirit. It is one thing to intellectually understand the Word, but it’s an awesome experience to suddenly gain the spiritual application of it when you read.
I experienced this the day after I was Spirit baptized in 1976. As I read passages that I had known since childhood, suddenly the revelation of their spiritual application to me poured from the pages I read! It’s totally amazing.
The third thing that you receive with the Holy Spirit baptism is a new way to connect with God. Praying is in a whole new realm. It’s one thing to try to connect with the Father with mind to Spirit communication; that is, your mind seeking to make contact with Him who is the sum total of all knowledge! But it’s awesome to be able to contact the Father directly spirit to Spirit. When you pray in tongues after being Spirit baptized, you gain an ability to speak in tongues, which is your human spirit making direct contact with the Father of spirits! 1 Corinthians 14:14 (Amplified) declares: For if I pray in an unknown]tongue, my spirit, by the Holy Spirit within me prays, but my mind is unproductive: it bears no fruit and helps nobody.
Things that were pent up in me for years were released as I prayed in the spirit or in other tongues. This is the perfect way to pray, because when you’re praying in tongues, you’re praying the perfect will of God for whatever you’re praying about!
Don’t neglect the precious gift of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Allow it to be a door that opens you to a new realm of spiritual experience and understanding as you receive boldness, insight into the Word of God, and a new prayer language that connects you to God, your spirit directly to His Spirit!
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