A Lost Sheep Found
How I Received The Holy Ghost:
A Testimony By Lary R. Hale
As a child I grew up in a nice home, with a great
family, and with parents that I always gave thanks to God for. One of my
earliest memories is of the night that my mother took me in my room to put me to
bed, and told me how to pray the "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer. I was
probably two years old, but I do remember it distinctly somehow. I also remember
when I was maybe four or five, talking to Jesus and telling Him that I really
wanted to live for Him, but that I didn't really know how. I told Him,
"Someday I'll give you everything, I just don't know how yet." I also remember
telling Him the same thing when I was a teenager. My family was part of a
nominal Christian affiliation, and I always went to Sunday School, and really
enjoyed reading and learning about Bible stories; especially the Old Testament.
It was taught in this affiliation, as it widely is, that when you are ready to
get serious about turning your life over to Jesus, and living for Him, then you
should come forth at the invitation at the end of the Sunday morning worship
service, and be baptized, confessing your faith in Jesus being the Son of God,
and that God raised Him from the dead. This, as was taught, was how you "joined
the Church."
My Spiritual Effort and Disappointment
By the time I was twelve years old, I had just gone to a new and really big
school, where I met some guys that started influencing me in morally bad
practices that I hadn't been involved with before. So in order to be "cool" I
went with the flow, and adopted some new and wrong habits. I was in the seventh
grade, and by Easter Sunday I had been doing some serious thinking about the
state of my life, and had made up my mind that I was going to do what it took to
get really right with God. It was a very serious thing to me, the consideration
of coming forth at the worship service invitation and confessing my faith in
Jesus, being baptized by the Pastor, and thus becoming a member of the Church.
So, as I said, by Easter Sunday I had pondered this matter thoroughly, and
decided to do it then. Now you have to understand that in my mind, I was under
the impression that I was going to have a new kind of mind, a new nature, and no
longer have the craving on the inside of me to continue in the morally corrupt
things that I had been partaking of. And that mindset certainly was not given to me by the
"church" that I was part of, or by anyone else; it's just the way I thought
things should be if I truly received Jesus into my life.
So anyway I went forward Easter Sunday and with a serious mind fulfilled the
requirements, and I really felt great about it - for about five or six hours. I
felt great about it for as long as the thought of having made this move was
carrying me, but before the day was out I realized that I was still the same
person with the same corrupt nature on the inside. I knew I was still just a
sinner like I was before that day, and that I still had the same desires,
motivations, and mental frame. I was so disappointed; not with Jesus, or the
minister, or anybody else - just with myself. I really felt I had failed God,
and that I must just be different, and not able to make the grade. So I gave it
up, and from that point on I just decided to make the best of things as a
sinner.
My Road To Emptiness and Depression
As a teenager and young man in my early twenties, I was really a pretty good
guy, and just got into the things that a lot of young people get into. In fact,
by the time I was approaching my mid twenties, I really had been able to "enjoy
the pleasures of sin for a season." I never totally
forgot about God, but I did try to keep those things at a good distance. I
almost always prayed at night and gave thanks for my life, my parents, and my
family, in my mind when I went to bed, for maybe a minute or so. I always cared
about people in need, and even animals, even though I was living in the fast
lane, and being what I figured was cool. But actually, I never really felt that
I fit in anywhere, even though the outward appearance of things may have seemed
otherwise.
Anyway when I was twenty four, I remember getting high at night and talking to
God. I told Him "You've let me do anything I could want to do, and to have
things just the way I wanted them, but I know if I died tonight I would go to
Hell." I also said to Him "Things are going about as good for me as they can
go, but I feel like you're getting ready to pull the rug out from under my
feet." I was right. Within a couple of weeks some of the worldly things that I
was living for, and depending on, began to crumble. When this began, I had no
foundation on which to stand, and I began going into a depression. I went into a
depression that worsened with each passing week until it became very severe.
This went on for several months until it hit it's lowest point in early January of 1980.
By this time I was just getting up and eating something, then I would ride
around in my car listening to the stereo and getting high all day long. After
doing this for a few days, I came to what was certainly the lowest moment of my
life. One day, while I was riding around like this, I was contemplating suicide,
and thinking the exact words, "I know that there's no hope left for my life to
ever amount to anything again." My only thoughts of continuance in life were
skid-row related, as all my confidence about living normally was gone. In this
very moment a very distant voice, that I realized was apart from my own mind,
spoke to me and said, "Your life will amount to greater things than you've ever
imagined possible." I also saw a faint flicker of some kind of light that
appeared in the air in the car just to my right, at head level, while the voice
spoke. For the moment or two that it took for that to be spoken, my heart was
totally lifted up in hope, but as soon as the voice was gone, so was my hope. I
just sunk right on back in, and the whole "voice" thing was forgotten.
Well, my dear mother finally talked me into getting some medication shortly
after this, which I had been too macho to do before this point. Eventually the
medication helped a little bit, to where I could go ahead and get the externals
in my life back in order, but I was never the same as before the depression. I
was now in kind of a dazed, or stunned state: able to function normally
outwardly, but underneath it all I was truly damaged goods, and I knew it.
Things like drinking and smoking pot were escalated to heavy addictions by this
point, and these things were leading to other destructive vices as well. By October of 1980, while living normally and appearing to have a pretty
good life together, I was getting high every night, and waking up in the middle
of the night to the "snow show" on TV. I remember waking up one night with a
melted ice cream carton in my lap, and thinking, "Maybe one day I'll just wake
up and all of this will be different." That was truly a thought of desperate
hope, but I still didn't know what that hope was. I was about to find out.
The Beginning of Reality and Fulfillment
In November, a girl that I knew and was quite fond of, told me that she had been
going to some "different" kind of prayer/worship services, and asked me if I would like to go. She said the people "had the
holy
Ghost" and that they were really excited and joyful about the Lord. I was really
intrigued by the fact that she was going and really enjoying it, so I went on
and went. Of course I was interested in her, but in my heart I still hoped that
someday I could somehow find what I failed to find when I was twelve years old.
I still believed that it was out there somewhere, and that somebody had it. And
it would be too good to be true to somehow find the real thing with the Lord,
and good things work out for me with this girl as well. Anyway when
I went, the people there were very zealous and joyful about whatever this was
that they had, and they had some really amazing testimonies about miraculous
deliverances from all kinds of sinful bondages that people just don't quit doing
on their own. By this time, as I stated previously, the things that I had
started doing for fun in my mid to late teens, like drinking, and later on
smoking pot; had escalated to addictions and to other vices besides. I knew I
could not quit drinking, smoking pot, doing other drugs, or cursing and having a
frequently raging temperament.
So I went to several meetings and took things in as a spectator, and I really
wondered what moved these people to cry, or jump up and down praising God, or
dance on their own in a way I'd never seen anybody do; or to worship and pray in
these strange utterances that they called "speaking in tongues." But when the
Pastor preached on this experience of power from Heaven, through faith in Jesus,
whereby the sinful nature inside a person is washed away and replaced with the
nature that dwells in both the Father and the Son; and how God could and would
deliver anyone from any kind of bondage or oppression, I was really drawn
powerfully to that. He called it "the baptism of the holy Ghost with the
evidence of speaking with other tongues." Much of this was sounding very much
like what I had envisioned happening to me when I had tried to make a start for
the Lord at twelve. It now had been fourteen long years since that time.
Anyway, after I had gone to the meetings and taken these things into
consideration for about a month, one night I went home and got down on my hands
and knees and said these words to the Lord: "Lord, I've prayed to you all my
life, but tonight I mean business. If what this minister is preaching is your
way, and you want me to serve you, then show me a sign. You know I can't stop
drinking and smoking pot, and keep from getting really angry often, or cursing.
If you will take these things out of my life here and now, I'll know that this
is the way, and that you are with me, and that you want me to serve you." And I
really meant it! So I went to bed and went to sleep, having experienced nothing
that I knew of.
The next morning I got up and went to work, and I just happened
to run into a young man who was in a bad depression, and it was over the same
thing that my depression had started about. I talked with him for a couple of
hours, and gave him a pocket-sized new testament and psalms Bible. Before he
left he told me that I was going to be an inspiration to many people, and to
keep going for the Lord. After he left I was walking through a room at work
where I was alone, and something was impressed upon my spirit, that in effect
was saying "Your prayer is answered and you are delivered from those things that
you prayed about." For the first time I raised my hands to Heaven and praised
God. I felt like I was walking on air. The depression that I had for so long
also was completely gone, even though I hadn't mentioned it specifically to the
Lord in my prayer the night before. And truly all of the things that I prayed
about were just flat gone! There was nothing in me that was inclined to any of
it any more at all. No withdraw symptoms, no cravings to fight off, just an
inner peace where those things had been.
Because of extraordinarily rare, but biblically accurate teaching that I had
come into, I realized that this was not the born again experience, but rather I
had been spiritually conceived in the womb of the body of Christ, even as a child is
conceived in the mother's womb before birth . Like a developing fetus, I was
beginning to experience life, but had not yet been born of that life. It's like
Jesus told His disciples in John 14 when He said they would soon receive "the
Spirit of Truth...for He dwelleth WITH you, and SHALL BE IN you." The holy Ghost
was now WITH me, but YET to be IN me. It's the same condition that Jesus told
His disciples that they were in, when he likened them to an expectant mother, as
well as to a conceived child that would soon be born (John 16:20-22). I was in
the same spiritual state that the Samaritans were in, when they had experienced
many powerful things through faith in Jesus, but still had not received the holy
Ghost for the
remission of their sins (Acts 8:5-19: I Cor. 6:11). I knew that
"stammering lips and another tongue" would accompany the new birth, even as
Isaiah prophesied of, and Jesus and Peter spoke of as well (Isa. 28:11,12; Mat.
11:28; Acts 3:19). But I also knew I was on the right track, and was on my way.
And I knew WHO had shown me, and WHO had given me these initial deliverances,
which I know now amounted to clipping the buds off of my sins; but I still
needed the experience that would get the roots.
My New Birth Experience
I went on for a month or two in my new-found joy, and one night I went to bed
somewhat discouraged over some things. I knew that on the inside of me there was
unfinished business concerning sin, and I also was discouraged at reading the
books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and realizing that there was spiritual
meaning to the things that I was reading, and that I was unable to tap into it.
I could feel that really strong. Well, I went to bed and went to sleep, and
about 7:00 a.m., shortly before I was scheduled to get up and get ready for
work, I had a dream. In the dream, I was in a worship service in the
congregation that I was regularly worshiping with,
and I was standing at the same spot that I usually sat in on the end of an
aisle. The Spirit of God began moving many people to come up to the altar and
pray and seek the Lord, and be prayed for. In this dream everyone and everything
appeared as foggy figures. I knew what was what and who was who, but I really
couldn't see them as anything but foggy figures. (Anyway the girl who brought me
had a sister that went to these services, and she always sat a few seats inside the row
where I sat on the end, and she always would get moved by the Spirit at this
time of the meeting, and she would come pushing out of the aisle past me as she
made her way to the front.) In the dream this is exactly what took place, but I
could actually see her clearly, and not as a foggy figure. She was the only
person in the dream that I saw like that. So she went up to the altar, and she
was weeping and shaking her hand and arm rather forcibly. (Now even though I had
raised my arms and praised God a few times, I still had never been moved like
these people were often moved by the Spirit.)
Well, in the dream I did the exact
same thing that I always did in the meeting. I was watching her shake her hand
and weeping, and I said to myself, "I wonder what is really making her do that?"
Well I can tell you that I found out this time, and GOOD! As soon as I said
those words to myself, a deep, deep, undreamed of (no pun intended) feeling of
joy began to come up out of my deepest being, and it just came up through my
inner being like a gentle but powerful eruption of pure joy that I could never
have imagined even existed. (This and what follows all took place in just a few
short seconds, and it began in the dream and finished as I was awaking, and
after I awoke.) As this powerful joy literally sprang up through me I was
totally engulfed in a great white flash of light that was such a thick and pure
white, that I've never seen a white that compared to it. It was exactly like I
was in the center of a great flashcube as it flashes, except that this flash
wasn't like any other: this one was REALLY REALLY WHITE! I felt and even heard
this great flash of white light, as it actually was the same thing that I
felt coming out of my innermost being. I felt all of this and saw all of this
both in the dream, and as I awoke. And as I awoke, my head was involuntarily
lifted off of the pillow, as the same joy that sprang up through me came all the
way out of my mouth, speaking THROUGH me in
tongues that were not my own. Now as
I was awake, I just laid in my bed as still as a stone, feeling this total inner
cleanness and pureness that I could never have imagined, with gentle tears of
joy streaming down my face. I just said "Thank You Jesus" in a subdued tone over
and over for about twenty minutes.
I went on to work and told no one about this
experience. Actually there was no one to tell, and I didn't call anybody to tell
them. After work I went to a health club and indoor pool where I worked out
daily, and also where the girl who asked me to the meeting worked as a
lifeguard. I went through the doors that led to the indoor pool, and she was
about seventy feet from me at the end of the pool, hosing down the deck. As soon
as I came through the door she looked over at me, and immediately she cried out
loudly and with amazement, and said "YOU GOT IT!" I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "You got the holy Ghost; there's a light all over your face, coming
out of you!" Wow! Nobody else had seen this all day long, or at least they
didn't say anything about if they did. But no doubt the Lord allowed her to see
this light because she too was seeking this experience, and was getting very
close to receiving it. Anyway, she was right; I DID get it! And I have to tell
you, that it was like nothing that I could ever have imagined, nor could anyone
imagine, until actually
experiencing it.
Still Glorious After All These Years
Well, that was over twenty six years ago, and I'll tell you that the
experience I had that morning of truly being baptized into Christ by His Spirit
was and is the exact thing that I was looking for when I was twelve years old,
and didn't know how to find. I now realized that you can't join God's Congregation;
you have to be
born (Spirit baptized) into it. I really found out what Jesus was
talking about when He said, "If any man THIRST, let him come unto me and drink;
for he that BELIEVETH on me, as the SCRIPTURE hath said, OUT OF HIS BELLY shall
FLOW rivers of living water." And I understood what He meant when He said, "The
water that I shall give you, shall be IN you, a well of water SPRINGING UP into
ETERNAL LIFE." And I now realized by personal and powerful EXPERIENCE exactly
what Isaiah meant when he said that rest and refreshing for the weary would
come with "stammering lips and another tongue." And I have to say, that the
experience I had that morning was only the tip of the iceberg. Being born again is a
wonderful thing, but growing and learning
how to live in holiness is an even more wonderful experience.
I'm just so thankful that I somehow was, and have been able to undeservedly
experience the miraculous love, peace, joy, and overcoming power of God
in my life for all these years. I was very fortunate to be able to learn very
early how to depend completely on God by means of this experience, for all
things. And I don't mean that I'm depending on the fact that I experienced these
things twenty six years ago. What I'm saying is that I've learned how to
continue in the divine substance that was infused into my heart and soul that
day, and how to keep that experience alive and growing; and how to depend
completely upon, and wait upon the Spirit of God for all guidance,
understanding, etc.
Since that day I've had the power from Heaven which alone
gives a person the ability to overcome the deep places of the sinful nature,
which is what this calling of holiness is all about. It does take laboring in
prayer, and using good spiritual sense however, to stay free from sin and all
of its deceitful ways. Everything that anyone can experience with God branches
out from this biblical experience of the holy Ghost Baptism. It's by this
experience that the body of Christ was born, and it's only by learning how to abide in
this experience that God's people can truly grow in the
love, unity and power of
God. Anything apart from it or short of it will not give anyone the power to
live free from sin on the inside; and that is what the calling and the hope of
the Gospel is all about - holiness. Friend, this experience and successful
continuance in it is altogether what God wants and has for you. If we can be of
any service to you in achieving these things, we would love to hear from you.
And if you have a testimony of the grace and transforming power of God, we would
love to hear it if you feel like passing it along. May God bless you richly, and
may He give you a testimony a thousand times more full of grace and power than
mine! Amen.
Bro.Lary@gmail.com
Daniel~
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