- Available Downloads:
- View PDF
Being Filled with The Spirit and Speaking in Tongues
by Daniel A. Brown, PhD
This is edited from an audio teaching—this article explores the questions many believers have about the nature and evidence about being filled with the Spirit.
God, by His Spirit, wants to capacitate us to do things that we otherwise could not do on our own. The Holy Spirit causes us to be born again, born of the Spirit, so that we are alive unto God, through Jesus Christ. That same Spirit glorifies and brings praise to Jesus, and He performs miracles to confirm the message of the Good News. The Holy Spirit works the metamorphosis and the transformation in our lives so that we end up being very different than we would have been on our own.
I received a phone call the other evening from a pioneer pastor who wanted advice about a family situation he was dealing with. He said to me, “I don’t even know where to start helping these people.” I just gently asked him what he felt that the Holy Spirit was saying to him. What did he sense Jesus, by the Spirit, was whispering to his heart? He acknowledged that he hadn’t really asked the Lord for any revelation about the family. He hadn’t really even thought about doing that; he was just hoping to get some quick, “Here’s-what-to-do counsel” that would work for the situation he was in.
It wasn’t like he was trying to cheat, or anything like that. My pastor friend found himself in a situation for which he had no answers, so he turned to someone with more experience for those answers. He was so concerned about helping people that he got stuck on the surface level, looking for the kind of advice/counsel to solve the kind of family mess he was dealing with in his church. My response was to tell him to go deeper, and ask the Spirit of God what He is saying. “What we see dimly through a glass” (1 Corinthians 13:12) will always be more to the point than what we see on the natural surface of things.
The sad reality is that so many believers in Jesus Christ—who have been given the wonderful privilege of the Holy Spirit resident within them—don’t always make use of their Spirit-given power to see into the realm of the invisible; to know things, and to say and do things that result in great life happening in other people. The assignment we have as believers in the Lord is to partner with the Holy Spirit in seeing more of the kingdom of God happen in the lives of other people around us.
I’m not bringing up this story as a criticism of that pastor. It could just as easily been a story about myself—getting so involved in doing one thing after another, that rather than asking the Lord, “What are You saying?” I jump in too quickly to start doing what I know to do. This is what ends up frustrating so many of us as believers. In the flesh, (even sincere, well-meaning flesh) we try to do things that ultimately won’t accomplish meaningful change because they are not initiated or activated by the power of the Holy Spirit. We fail to make use of the fullness of the Spirit in our lives, and we end up ministering out of the limited resources of our natural beings.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT?
How does that fullness offer us powerful and practical help in doing the very work and living the very lives that Jesus wants for us?
To begin with, it is very important to understand that everyone who has received Jesus Christ as their Savior has received the Spirit of God. As we are told in Ephesians:
“In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” Ephesians 1:13-14
One of the tragic mistakes made by “classical Pentecostals” was a belief that unless you had been filled with the Spirit, and unless you spoke in tongues, you have not received the Holy Spirit. That simply is not biblically true. When we receive Jesus as our Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to reside in our spirit. As you’re talking to your friends and your neighbors, you may encounter people who have been horribly wounded by well-meaning, but mistaken people who have said to them that unless they speak in tongues, they have not received the Spirit of God.
The Apostle Paul further encourages us with the reality of God’s Spirit dwelling in us as believers: “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba Father’” (Galatians 4:6). We are related to God; we have received Jesus Christ as our Savior, and He has placed His Spirit into our hearts. The most profound thing that the Holy Spirit will ever cause us to say is the simple expression, “Jesus is Lord.” And, as surely as there’s not necessarily any emotional attachments or bizarre behavioral accoutrements that go along with that simple statement, “Jesus is Lord”, in exactly the same way, there doesn’t necessarily need to be some kind of emotional or physically goings-on when a person is saying other things that they are prompted to say by the power of the Spirit.
Notice the other thing recorded in Scripture that the Spirit teaches us to say: “Daddy God; Daddy God.” The Holy Spirit teaches any person to say two things: “Jesus is Lord” and “Daddy God.” When the Spirit speaks to us and through us, He’s crying out, “Daddy God,” and declaring the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is the message of the Spirit and the tone of His communication to the world through us.
The Spirit Secures Our Future
Not only does the Holy Spirit come into our heart and teach us to say, “Daddy God,” and “Jesus is Lord,” but that Spirit acts as a seal to secure us for our God-intended future. In the time when the New Testament was written, a seal would be affixed to a door or an entrance to keep out unwanted intruders. The seal would protect that house against anything that would come against it. So this pledge, this seal, that we have been given, is the power of the Holy Spirit. I love the way it describes that the Spirit is the “pledge of our inheritance with the view to the redemption of God’s own possession (us)” (Ephesians 1:14). We should never forget that one of the works of the Spirit in our life is to keep us looking forward to more of what God has in store for us.
Through the years, I have prayed with hundreds of believers to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I have discovered that there is so much confusion and uncertainty about what it means to be filled with the Spirit, and how that fullness is first received. All sorts of silly things are spoken and done by people who want to share their experience with others. Those who want to be baptized in the Spirit and the people praying for them to receive that fullness can become frustrated if it doesn’t happen. I would like to offer you the kind of instruction or counsel that I would normally give to somebody who said, “Pastor, could you pray for me? I’d like to be filled with the Spirit. I’d like to speak in tongues.” Here is what I would say to them:
- You have already received the Holy Spirit if you know Jesus as your Savior.
- There is a difference between “being filled” with the Holy Spirit and receiving the Holy Spirit and being “baptized.”
There are certain segments of Jesus’ church (we generally call them Evangelicals) who believe that at the same moment when a person receives Jesus as their Savior, they not only receive the Spirit, but they are also filled or baptized in the Spirit. They make no distinction between those two occurrences. What I want to show you from scripture, is that a person who has received Jesus, has received the Holy Spirit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been filled or baptized with the Spirit. On two separate occasions Jesus made direct reference to His disciples being directly and personally impacted by the Spirit. The earliest of these was on the night of His resurrection when He appeared to the disciples who had shut themselves up in a room because they were afraid of what might happen to them at the hands of the leaders who had crucified Jesus. The first thing that Jesus said to them was, “Peace be with you.” Then He showed them His hands and side so they could really believe. The disciples rejoiced when they realized it was truly Jesus in their midst.
“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” John 20:21-22
Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had explained to His disciples that it was to their advantage that He “go away,” because if He didn’t go away, then the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come to them (John 16:7). Since even He could only be at one place at one time, it would be far more advantageous for the disciples to have the ever-present attendance of the Spirit in their lives. Jesus knew that they were going to be scattered out into the world as His witnesses. The Spirit would teach and remind them of the very truths Jesus Himself would normally have taught them.
But that gift of the Holy Spirit would not be given until Jesus was “glorified.” On that first evening after He was glorified, Jesus said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). Jesus marked the end of His earthly life and ministry, and He would soon ascend back to the Father. So, He breathed upon them—remember the word for spirit is breath—and it was at that point when the disciples received the Holy Spirit.
The next occasion when Jesus spoke directly to His disciples about the Spirit doing a particular work in their lives comes at the end of His time on earth. He promised something would be happening to the disciples in the future. Remember, He promised this to His disciples who had already received the Holy Spirit:
“And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:49
His promise was fulfilled in Acts chapters one and two when the apostles and all the brethren were gathered together on several occasions:
“Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.’” Acts 1:4-5
But I will tell you this from my own experience (and I have seen this happen to person after person), when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I received “attentiveness” or “ears to hear” and I began for the first time in my life to have distinct experiences of hearing the Lord. Feeling led by Him, not just in some general kind of well-I-want-to-do-God’s-will-for-my-life, but by very particular promptings—the ease with which I began to be able to communicate with the Lord was something wonderful—comparison to what it was before. It was just easier; it was just better.
I could hear God more than I had before. I’d been reading the Bible, but as I read after being filled with the Spirit, I began to see things in the Bible that I’d never seen before. I began to get insights into the Wword—not so much reading between the lines—just understanding things. Not in a profound doctrinal way, but little stuff started registering with my heart. It was as though I was being tapped on the shoulder—this quiet little persistent nudging of the Spirit—and my Bible reading was electrified in comparison to what it had been before that.
Am I telling you that people who aren’t filled with the Spirit will get nothing out of the Bible? No. Am I telling you that God likes people who are filled with the Spirit more than he likes those who aren’t? No. What a grievous thing it must be to the heart of Father God, who so very much wants to bless His church with this wonderful, wonderful empowerment—to have some people who have experienced that empowerment, turn it into a prestige thing, or, turn it into “I’m-a-better” kind of thing, to make people who have not perhaps even understood that the privilege was available to them, feel as though they’re somehow less wonderfully adored by God, our Father. I think it’s one of the nastiest tricks of the devil is to keep people from experiencing the fullness of the Spirit, and to trick a bunch of Pentecostal people to get arrogant, and have them think they’re somehow better than everybody else is. Makes me want to puke! But I can’t really say that when I’m preaching, can I?
So, in Acts, Jesus says about the filling of the Holy Spirit:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and all of Judea and Samaria, and even the remotest part of the earth.” Acts 1:8
Our Witness is Strengthened
When we get filled with the Spirit there is an empowerment that happens to us. There is emboldening of our witness and proclamation of who Jesus is. We get to learn a lot of things that we didn’t know before.
Here an episode found in Acts 19. Again, I’m answering the question, “Is there a difference between receiving the Spirit when I received Jesus as my Savior, and another experience, another gateway that we walk through?”—not to make us better than others, but to empower, embolden and enlighten us so that spiritually we’re much more in tune with what God is doing. In answering the question, “Is there a difference between those two?” I want to show you an episode in the Book of Acts that could be taking place in our own culture yesterday or even tomorrow. An episode where people were first saved and received Jesus, baptized for repentance and the forgiveness of their sins, and then received the power and infilling of the Holy Spirit.
Paul is speaking to these people in Acts 19:
“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus. And when the people heard this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.” Acts 19:4-6
There are in the Book of Acts basically four manifestations, or four evidences, that someone has been filled with the Spirit. I am not of the persuasion that these are the only things that can be happening to you, but I do believe that when a person is filled with the Spirit, these four things are a possibility. I will give them to you in a kind of descending order of frequency.
So we’ll start with the least frequent, or the least often mentioned in the Book of Acts. That has to do with when you’re proclaiming the Gospel; you’re not easily intimidated. When stuff comes at you, you just rise up and you go for it; you’re not shaken in your composure at all. We have instances of men and women in the Book of Acts who were filled with the Spirit and had great boldness to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ.
Possibly you’ve had that experience when you thought you were going to be intimidated at work when people started talking about the Lord. You might have thought, “Oh, I don’t know!” and then all of a sudden something happened and you felt almost like something came upon you. You were able to just go for it and when it was all over, it was like, “Whoa, whoa! Who was that who said all of that?” You can’t believe yourself. So emboldened in the Spirit; I think that happens when a person is filled with the Spirit.
The second thing that is mentioned is people see into the realm of the Spirit. The most obvious example of that is some of the people in Acts, like this man Stephen who while he was being stoned, rocks were thrown at him; he was filled with the Spirit and glimpsed into the heavens. He told people about what he saw and that just made them really mad. They finally killed him with stones.
The third evidence that I’m mentioning, which is then the second most frequent instance of when people get filled with the Spirit, has to do with prophesying. Prophesying, which means being able to speak things that come directly to you from God for the sake of other people, or about other people. This evidence, manifestation, or the attending miracle, can happen in a person’s life after they are filled with the Spirit. It is the most recorded in the Bible, as being filled with the Spirit and then enjoying the privilege of being able to speak in a language, never learned by the natural mind.
So then the question is, “How can I be baptized in the Spirit? How can I be filled with the Spirit?”
I can’t imagine that you are going to go through even the rest of the year without encountering other people who have been not been filled with the Spirit, who would love to be filled with the Spirit. And I hope that they ask you, “Would you pray for me so that I can be filled with the Spirit?” Then you’ll be able to say, “I would love to. Do you mind if I just go over a couple things with you?” And then you
can scramble to the back of your Bible where you might record these following things that might be able to help somebody. Please get accustomed to listening with ears that are not just for you, but ears that are for the sake of someone else.
In the Book of Luke, Jesus is speaking to some people, trying to convince them what God is like and that He really will answer their prayers. He says:
“Now suppose one of your fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of the fish, will he? Or, if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Luke 11:11-13
God Loves to Give His Spirit
If you’ve never received Jesus as your Savior, make this your simple prayer, “Lord, forgive me my sins and have the Holy Spirit come into my life.” And God loves to do that. When you say, “Holy Spirit, come into my life. Jesus forgive me,” God doesn’t say, “Oh, I’m going to trick you and I’ll give you something other than what you asked for.”
I can remember in college years when people where talking to me about being filled with the Holy Spirit. I was so worried for some reason that if I prayed to be baptized in the Spirit, the devil would get in there somehow and instead of me receiving something from God, being baptized with the Spirit, I would be tricked and would end up with a counterfeit-something strange or bizarre. When someone finally shared it with me, the simple scripture is like, “Oh, I can just relax because if I ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, that is what He’s going to give to me.”
The following are simple and practical helps for how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and how to then enjoy the exercise of praying in the Spirit:
Here’s what I’d say to somebody who said, “Pastor, I’d really like to be filled with the Spirit and I’ve never spoken in tongues before and I’d like to be filled with the Spirit. What should I do?” First thing I’d say is to begin by thanking the Lord that you are already saved. Just thank Jesus. Start your prayer like this, “Jesus, thank You that You’re my Lord and my Savior.” I’d remind them that since they’ve received Jesus, they already have the Spirit inside of them. That’s not an issue.
The second thing I’d say is to just ask Jesus to baptize you in the Spirit. Just ask Him to fill you with the Spirit. He’s the One who loves to fill with the Spirit. It’s a very simple prayer. “Jesus, come into my life and forgive me my sins.” This is a leap of faith. It’s something you didn’t necessarily have, not just some emotional experience that is going on, but you understand that the Bible says that Jesus wants to forgive your sins. And as simply and as faith-filled as you said, “Jesus Christ, come into my life and forgive my sins,” you can now just offer the same simple prayer, “Jesus Christ, baptize me or fill me with Your Spirit.”
This is where it gets interesting. The instant you say, “Jesus, fill me with Your Spirit,” you are filled with the Spirit. You don’t have to ask it forty times. And if you’ve prayed before, “Lord, fill me with Your Spirit,” you got filled with the Spirit the moment that you asked the Lord to fill you with the Spirit.
You might say, “Yeah, but I don’t speak in tongues and I’ve never prophesied.” But as soon as you say, “Fill me, baptize me with the Spirit,” it’s a done deal. I personally prayed to be filled with the Spirit about two years before I ended up speaking in tongues because nobody explained to me how to speak in tongues. I know that I asked to be filled with the Spirit a long time before that. It was a step of faith when you prayed to receive Jesus, there was a time when you decided, “I don’t even understand all of this, but I know that I’m a sinner and I want forgiveness, and I believe that although I can’t see You, I believe, Jesus, that You are real. Come in to my life and forgive my sins.” And it is just in the same way, by faith, that you say, “Lord, I don’t know about this, but I ask that You would fill me with Your Spirit.”
A Decision Of Faith
Now, the moment that you do that, your spirit knows a language that you have never learned. Notice I didn’t say your mind knows a language that you never learned. Your mind will start scrambling about saying, “Yeah, well I asked to be filled with the Spirit and I don’t know another language. I can barely speak English.”
Your mind is racing around saying, “I wonder where that language is, I wonder what drawer or behind what door it’s in? And, oh no, they’re going to ask people who don’t have a language to begin to speak in this language. I don’t want to be one of those people. Quick, where’s my language?”
We look around in our mind for it and our mind is clueless. That’s when the panic sets in and that’s where the resistance sets in. But what I’m telling you is that in your spirit, you now have a language that you are fluent in. You don’t even know that you know how to speak in this language—you’re mind begins to draw back a little bit.
The next thing that I would say to somebody is after they’re finished praying to the Lord to fill them with His Spirit, then I always pause to say, “Now, great. Do you know that you have a language that you can speak and if you will just begin speaking in that language, that’s what speaking in tongues is! ”And of course, a lot of times they just give me this saucer-eyed look saying, “I don’t know how to speak in that language.”
Let me ask you a question. When you’re going to say a sentence in English, do you think of the sentence in your mind first, and then speak it? We wish we would say more, but generally speaking, you just talk. And you’re not at all worried when you turn to the person next to you to give them a greeting. You’re not secretly wondering, “Oh man, I hope English comes out when I give them a greeting.” You don’t even think about it. You just speak. And it’s just the same way. Instead of speaking from your mind, you just begin to speak, but it’s not in a language that you know.
There will be times when I say, “Now, here, I’ll just lay my hands on you and pray for you. I thank You, Lord, that they’re filled with the Spirit.” Then I start praying in tongues a little bit, and the majority of people just start praying in the Spirit. It’s wonderful. But there’s about forty percent that don’t.
So I will say to them, “God will sometimes take this language, or nonsense syllables that you think are nothing at all about, you’ve never even seen or heard before, and some people might almost get a picture of those words going across their mind, and not even know how to pronounce them because it looks so funny. You might even begin to very faintly hear the sound of words or syllables that don’t make any sense to you at all.” And I’ll say, “Now, it’s very kind of God to give you that. So, these words or syllables that you kind of see or have an urge or desire to say—just go ahead and start speaking them.”
When my wife and I were leading a Bible study at UCLA, we prayed for hundreds of people to be filled with the Spirit. Hundreds. And it was amazing. For a two-year period of time, they just came streaming through, one after the one after another. There’s this other chunk—about twenty percent, that I would explain everything, “And, so you may get words and just go ahead and speak.” So, I’d pray for a little bit and say, “So do you have anything?”
“No.”
“Really, well, okay, let’s just pray a little bit more. No nonsense syllables or just a desire to say something that sounds a little bit funny or strange?”
“No.”
“Not even one or two syllables?”
“No.”
“You don’t see any words…?”
“No.”
Finally, when they get tired enough, I’ll say, “Now, you’re sure there was nothing at all?” And here’s what they’ll say forty minutes later.
“Well, you know, there was this dumb sounding little phrase. I just didn’t want to say anything because it sounded so stupid to me.”
It’s a faith thing and you and I have to decide it’s real. This is when your mind really cranks it up into high gear. Your mind becomes aware of these nonsensical syllables. It wants to start telling you right away that it’s the most ridiculous sounding thing you’ve ever heard of in the world. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. And of course, you’re mind tends to agree with itself—for the most part. Your mind wants to dictate what you can do and your Spirit is crying out, “Daddy God, Abba Father.”
So, if you’ve prayed to be filled with the Spirit and don’t yet speak in tongues, I’ll bet you it’s because you’re waiting for something a little bit more profound to come along.
Learning to partner with the Spirit is still an act of faith. Let’s not fall into the trap of deciding that foolish things don’t count in the Kingdom. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to basically outdo the things that the world says is really important (1 Corinthians 1:27).
The word for “foolish” here is a Greek word that means it is “hidden.” It’s behind something fairly thick and you can’t easily see it. God’s chosen such things to ultimately accomplish His work and His purpose.
How much are we really going to enter into the things of the kingdom of Heaven? How much do we want to be led by the Spirit of God? How willing do we want to be partners to work with Him to see great life happen? Yes, what an opportunity to be filled with the Spirit!
View PDF