Spirit Forward (eBook)

Chapter 1
Power

I come by this Holy Spirit obsession quite honestly. My grandfather, Jack Hyles, was an influential pastor who traveled throughout the United States preaching the Gospel of Jesus. He rubbed shoulders with Billy Graham, impacted Tommy Barnett,3 and helped organize the fledgling Sunday school program of a young pastor named Jerry Falwell. In the 1970s, the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, was routinely recognized as one of the largest churches in America. While he was known for many things, his emphasis on the Holy Spirit set him apart. Two of his most famous messages were entitled “Fresh Oil” and “This Kind.” In them he shared personal testimonies that emphasized the miracle-working power of God. These stories formulated my faith as a young boy. Nearly every night of my childhood, I fell asleep listening to a cassette tape playing one of his sermons.

I heard incredible stories in those messages. He shared the story of praying for nearly two days on the fresh grave of his unsaved father, asking God for power so that no one who heard his preaching would ever leave without Christ. Thousands and thousands of people were saved under his preaching. It was not unusual for me to look down from my favorite balcony seat in that vast auditorium and see the entire front of the church packed with people who had come forward at the conclusion of a sermon to make a public confession of putting their faith in Christ.

There were miracle stories, too. A man who was completely blind for several years was healed in the middle of a Sunday morning service and walked onto the platform praising God. A woman diagnosed with a severe brain tumor had her surgery canceled after my grandfather anointed her with oil and prayed for healing.

My favorite miracle story, and one I vaguely remember as a six-year-old boy, was when, during one service, my grandfather stopped the typical service order because a family from our church had been in a terrible car wreck. One of the girls in the family had a broken neck, and her outlook was bleak. The church, filled with thousands of people, all bowed their heads while my grandfather prayed for her healing. New X-rays were taken an hour later. Her broken neck had been miraculously healed. That little girl was named Candace, and she’s now my wife.

Based on the hundreds of sermons I heard as a child, there was little question in my mind that God’s power still operated today. What wasn’t as clear was who was allowed to operate in this power. The first and most obvious one was the man behind the pulpit. My Grandpa Hyles was “the man of God.” His life story was gripping, and he told portions of it nearly every week.4 He was raised in poverty in a single-parent home in east Texas, abandoned by an alcoholic father, and drafted into the army at the end of World War II, where he was trained as a paratrooper. His mother was portrayed as a tirelessly working heroic prayer warrior.

To hear him tell it, her prayers kept him from alcohol, her prayers kept him from seeing action as the war wound down, and her prayers opened his heart to the call of full-time ministry. He started in the pastorate as a 20-year-old man taking a church with 19 members. Three churches later, he was leading the fastest-growing church in America in Garland, Texas. Then God moved him. A church in Indiana with 700 members called him, and he labored over the decision. His stories about the move made it clear to me that God spoke to him. He saw signs that confirmed the move and had conversations in prayer with God where he argued about making the move. Upon making the move and taking the pastorate, the church exploded in growth. The attendance grew from 700 in 1960 to 12,000 by 1975. The church started a college to be a ministry training center. Multiple private schools were started. He was a man filled with charisma and passion for God. I did not doubt that God could do mighty things through him.

But what about me? How exactly did God’s power work? Was it just for the pastor or an exceptional man of God?

For all of my Grandpa’s stories, there wasn’t very much systematized teaching on the doctrine of God’s power. The church was encouraged to pray for it, but I still wasn’t sure if there was anything else I should be doing. The gifts of the Spirit were rarely mentioned, and instructions on operating in partnership with the Holy Spirit were no longer taught.

By the time I moved my family to Ohio and started a church, my grandfather had been dead for over 12 years. In that time, I’d learned the other side. His successor had inherited a church after his death, facing over 30 lawsuits. Scandals that had been mostly covered up started coming out through social media. The perversion, the broken people, and the cover-ups I learned about left me reeling. It seemed that the first half of his ministry seemed marked with Holy Spirit power and explosive growth, and the second half with scandals and survival. The church went on after his death, but more scandals and accusations surfaced until a new scandal threatened its very survival. The successor to my grandfather had initially helped the church rebound to new growth, but an economic downturn deeply impacted the finances, and layoffs began. Shortly after, it was discovered that the pastor had been engaged in an affair with a teenager in the church. It was not only a grievous sin but a federal crime. The community went into an uproar, and the media went into a frenzy.

To make matters worse, this successor guilty of this crime was someone I admired even more than my grandfather. He was my spiritual hero. He was my Dad.5

Sixteen years after my Grandfather’s passing and five years after my father’s imprisonment, I held my wife, weeping the tears of a man set free. God was doing something new in my life. I was hungry for His power again. The Holy Spirit had touched me. I’d had an experience, the first of many. But what exactly had happened, and was there Scripture to support it?

The Presence and Power of
the Holy Spirit on Jesus

The Holy Spirit is all over the Gospel of Luke.

• John the Baptist, the Forerunner for Jesus, is filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother, Elizabeth’s womb. (Luke 1:15)
• Elizabeth herself, a woman past childbearing years, conceives a child with her husband and is also filled with the Holy Spirit. (Luke 1:14)
• Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, is filled with the Spirit. and prophesies at the birth of John. (Luke 1:67)
• Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit in her virginity, conceiving and then carrying our Lord. (Luke 1:35) While pregnant, her prayer is definitive evidence of ongoing Spirit fullness. (Luke1:46-55)
• If John the Baptist is Spirit-filled before birth, it’s safe to say that Jesus was also.
• Old Man Simeon was filled with the Spirit as He waited for the arrival of the Messiah. (Luke 2:25-26)
• John the Baptist declares the coming Messiah will baptize His followers in the Holy Spirit. (Luke 3:16)
• The Spirit descends in the bodily form of a dove upon Jesus at His baptism. (Luke 3:22)
• Jesus is filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit into the wilderness for The Temptation. (Luke 4:1)
• For the first time, we see the Power of the Spirit as Jesus returns from the temptation. (Luke 4:14)
• Jesus declares that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah 61’s powerful declaration, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” (Luke 4:18-21)

From there, the authority and power of Jesus are on full display.

• He teaches with unprecedented authority. (Luke 4:32)
• He heals multitudes and casts out demons. (Luke 4:36-41)
• He calls the disciples in prophetic power and authority. (Luke 5:1-11)
• He heals lepers and paralytics and forgives sins! (Luke 5:12-26)

In summary, after being conceived of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is filled with the Spirit from birth, baptized in the Spirit, and led of the Spirit into a wilderness temptation from which He returns in the power (and authority) of the Spirit.

The Baptism of the Spirit for Jesus
and for Believers

I believe this is clearly the template for our relationship and interactions with the Holy Spirit:

We are born again as a work of the Holy Spirit (John 3:5-6) and filled with the Holy Spirit from that new birth. (Ephesians 1:13) We are then able to go to Jesus, drawn by His Spirit, to be baptized by the Spirit.

After this baptism, we are able to resist temptation like never before and to walk in greater power and authority than ever before.

Go back and read the previous sentence one more time. Now, read it again. Okay, I’ll write it out again for you here: “After this baptism, we are able to resist temptation like never before and to walk in greater power and authority than ever before.”

Is it any wonder that “the baptism of the Spirit is a theological controversy?” According to the pattern set by Jesus, it is evident that without the...