Being Filled With The Holy Spirit, Ot Style (Exodus 31:1-8) Series

In the days that followed that, one of the main things I thought about was faith. Brother Ferrin had faith, in a way that I certainly didn't. I knew how to pray sounding like I had faith. But I didn't have faith. So that was something I started to work on. One of the pressing questions in my life, became this: How do you grow in faith?

At some point after that, I also realized that he had something else I didn't. He had power. And so I found myself asking, "How do you grow in power? How do you gain access to a supernatural lifestyle?" I didn't want this for myself-- I wanted it for my family, and for the people around me. How could I be as useful, and used, as Brother Ferrin? How did his life, look so much like the lives of the disciples in the early church?

The Bible is a big book. You could try to answer these questions in lots of ways, in lots of places. But I found myself, more and more, reading Luke-Acts. I was familiar with Acts, in particular. I took a graduate-level class on it at a Baptist seminary. But now, instead of reading it as a historical record of the growth of the first century church, I read it as an instruction manual. I read it, basically, like a Pentecostal (Rober Menzies talks along these lines).

Even after studying all of this pretty hard for months, and now years, there were lots of questions I couldn't answer. Lots of things I didn't understand. I was learning a lot, but any time you read the Bible, it's like the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

But my quest, I guess you could call it, wasn't just theoretical. It's not just about book learning. There were lots of things I learned through experimentation. What will happen, when your lastborn breaks out in hives, and you put your hand on her skin in Jesus' name, commanding the hives in Jesus' name to go? There are people who can sit and talk about those questions, and debate them, for hours. But I kid you not-- the only way to know, is to try.

Or what happens when you have a tough day at work, and your own back is tight, and sore. Can you lay hands on your own back in Jesus' name, and get healed? Very early on, I'd seen God heal two people (Dan and Pat) of crippling sciatic nerve pain. I knew God healed backs. But would He heal mine, like that? Does the laying on hands work like that? There's no Bible verse that answers that. You don't know, until you try.

At first, I started experimenting-- working-- from a place of faith. I'd seen faith modeled. I began to understand what faith looked like. And I grew along those lines, asking God for faith, learning how to truly live "by faith." And what I found is that there is a place of power for Christians, simply through the name of Jesus. Or, you could say, through faith in the name of Jesus. What I realized, eventually, is that faith grows in part by doing.

But at some point, I realized there was something else I was missing. I was pretty sure I wasn't filled with the Holy Spirit. And, as A.W. Tozer says (in How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit), if you aren't sure if you're filled, you're not filled. You can tell. You know. And I was pretty sure I wasn't.