My baptism

For some reason, the Lord is leading me to reflect on the pivotal influences in my life, and to remember to continue to give thanks for those men whom He used majorly in me.

Before the blogosphere, there was the BBS. When I was 19 and hungry for God, a man named Danny O- met me through a local bulletin board system in Dallas Fort Worth, and met with me for an afternoon to "talk God," and specifically about the topic baptists are forbidden to discuss but really want to know about, The Holy Spirit.

The result of Danny's ministry to me was powerful hunger to know God and have closer intimacy and knowledge with Him. I did something no living person I knew had ever talked about doing much less done (only characters in Bible stories did), I fasted and prayed to seek His face. My prayer was TO KNOW HIM and to be conformed to Him and to encounter Him in a way which would change me FOREVER. My prayer was heard...

After 24 hours of fasting and prayer, when I was laying on my back alone on the trampoline, I opened my mouth to adore and glorify and praise God sincerely (another 1st), and it felt like the light of all the stars poured into me, only I knew that I was getting filled (baptized? whatever!) with the Holy Spirit. It felt really good.

After my senses awakened beyond awareness that I had never felt so good ever, I became acutely aware of union with Jesus Christ. I knew He was in me. And I knew for the first time that He and the Father, and the Spirit, were ONE (understand: the doctrine of the trinity had seemed unreasonable to me before, but now in my tasting and seeing, I knew that He was Three in One; I just knew).

Perceiving that this was (perhaps) the baptism of the Holy Spirit the elders of the church had earlier prayed for me to receive, I remembered that I should prophesy and speak in other tongues: and so I did, each. Later I found out that my prophecy was actually in the Bible in John 17 and Romans 5 and Galatians (go figure, the Lord was speaking to me about baptism through scriptures I had neither read nor understood previously). I also asked for a physical sign so I would know later I was not hallucinating; I got it within 24 hours, which confirmed the experience was a real and not imagined encounter with the Living God.

Two decades later I remain convinced that that day was an important pivot point of my life, where God came into my life in a real way and my relationship with Him got going (I already had Him as a savior and lord in a distant, baptist, intellectual assent kind of way; but now it was real), and I give thanks for the man God sent, Danny O-. Where ever you are, Danny, God bless you.