What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?
There are many misconceptions about the Holy Spirit in the 21st century church, particularly surrounding the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Some have fallen into the misunderstanding that the baptism of fire is the same as the moment of salvation. It is not the same moment; it is one of the gifts of the Spirit. For this reason, though, I want to discuss the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and its role in the life of believers.
Many people fail to realize that the Holy Spirit is a distinct and separate member of the Holy Trinity of God. He works in association and complete harmony with the Father and the Son, yet He should not be confused with either of His divine associates. His separate role is clearly stated in 1 John 5:7: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.” And, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
Among some, there is a belief that receiving salvation and being born again is the same as being baptized with the Holy Spirit. I’ve been asked by many people, “Well, I’m saved. So, do I have the Holy Spirit?” After you have received salvation, you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but you may not have the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues. An individual may be regenerated by the Holy Spirit—through a conversion experience—and still not be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, at the moment of conversion, means there is an impartation of life. When an individual submits their life to God, confessing that He is Lord, the impartation of life from the Holy Spirit enables eternal salvation.
In the baptism of the Holy Spirit, though, there is an impartation of fire, power, and authority. The one being baptized is being equipped for the calling and service of God. This is a gift of the Holy Spirit. His baptism manifests God’s desire to endow you with the power and authority necessary to your calling. John the Baptist makes this clear when he is recorded in Matthew 3:11: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
We find in Scripture that, although the disciples were saved because they believed in God’s Son, Jesus, they were not yet baptized in the Holy Spirit. In Luke 10:20 Jesus says, “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Jesus told them to rejoice because their souls were saved, their names were written in Heaven. But this was long before they were baptized in the Holy Spirit after waiting in the upper room. Jesus says in Luke 24:49, “Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” God was sending the Holy Spirit to operate in their lives, to flow on them and with them—and then for the very first time to inhabit them.
In the Old Testament, there are many examples of people operating with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This was not just power reserved for the prophets. Some of the great examples include David, Esther, Ezra, Micah, and Abraham. The Holy Spirit would come on them and be with them to empower them during a specific time to fulfill the will of God. It wasn’t until the day of Pentecost, though, that the Holy Spirit came upon people and imbued them with power from God. And now it is accessible to all believers.
God wants you to experience this phenomenon—to encounter the Holy Spirit and His gifts. Supernatural anointing is waiting for you as you step off the shoreline of unbelief and into the deep things of God. There is no need to be intimidated or succumb to the spirit of fear. Fear means false evidence appearing real. God wants you to have bold faith, having the audacity to believe and say, “I’m going after everything that God has promised me—and the Holy Spirit is a promise.”
God has given you a specific assignment to fulfill on the earth, and He wants you to have the authority to release His Word onto the earth. His baptism is distinct from the moment of salvation, but it is God’s will that every person receives both salvation and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we would serve the world. His desire is that, when you speak, it would be as if He was speaking. His longing is that when He walks, it would be as if you were walking in His footsteps. God invites you to walk in the shadow of His greatness, fulfilling His dream for the earth. To do this, you need the Holy Spirit.
Wait for the Power
Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem in the upper room to receive power from on high, which would fulfill His great commission. He had already been to Calvary, shed His blood, and now He was about to go back to heaven and sit at the right hand of God the Father. Before He left, though, He told them He would send the Holy Spirit. “Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven (Luke 24:49-51).
So, the disciples went to the upper room and they waited for God to send the Holy Spirit in a totally new way. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come on people without permanently dwelling in them. For example, the Bible says of Samson, “And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion apart as one would have torn apart a young goat, though he had nothing in his hand…” (Judges 14:6). Samson was able to overcome even this ferocious opposition with the incredible strength and power given to him by the Holy Spirit.
Throughout the entire book of Judges, when the anointing of the Holy Spirit came on Samson, he had the power to carry pillars, slay a thousand men, and shift a whole region. In one incident, he caught 300 foxes and tied their tails together. That takes a supernatural anointing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit turns ordinary people into extraordinary ones.
Likewise, when the anointing came over Mary, an ordinary woman became extraordinary. She housed the very presence of God. And that same opportunity is waiting for you today—to live with the power from on high. It was this same strength and power through the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised us when He instructed the disciples to wait after His death and resurrection. The power He spoke of is the word dunamis, which means “dynamite explosion.” God wants you to explode. He wants you to have dynamite power, the glory of the Holy Spirit operating in your life and flowing through you for His glory.
This is the empowerment that the disciples were waiting for in that upper room. Jesus told them to wait together for the Promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit. John said of Jesus, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew3:11). This was the promise of the Father that, when Jesus ascended to the right hand of the heavenly Father, He would send the comfort of the Holy Spirit to operate in their lives. And because they followed His direction and waited, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4).
Like the disciples, when you have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, receiving His baptism and being filled with his explosive, dunamis power, something about your life lights up like a firework. Suddenly, you will be able to be a light in the midst of a dark world, because God’s light is within you. It doesn’t matter who you are, you have a mandate. You have a purpose on this earth. You have a calling that God wants you to enter into. But you need the help of the third person of the Trinity to fulfill that great calling.
As an individual created by God, no matter your status in life, you can operate in the gifts of the Spirit. You can see God forever change your life through great transformation. You can go from glory to glory, from faith to faith, and fulfill what you feel that conviction is that God has assigned you to fulfill. No one can be fully effective in ministry or in any other endeavor for God’s glory, without the baptism of the Holy Spirit. His gift is not predicated upon having a particular anointing, though. The baptism is for everyone.
Thank God for His greatest gift: salvation! But, once you’ve received that precious gift, seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Only then can you receive power from on high to advance God’s Kingdom until all the earth is as it is in Heaven. Jesus told His disciples—and us—that the Holy Spirit would come to them and operate in their lives. Acts 1:8 also speaks of the Promise to be given: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” We see here that the disciples were saved before they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They were saved, but they have not yet experienced the impartation of the Holy Spirit baptism. But Jesus promised that, when they did receive the baptism of fire, they would be powerful witnesses of Christ throughout the world.
All 120 Jewish believers who were waiting for the Promise were baptized in the upper room, so that Jesus could fulfill the great commission through them. As God, Jesus is omnipresent, omnipotent, omnificent. As a man, Jesus was limited by His humanness in some ways. But you need to understand that He’s no longer limited as a human person. He is omnipresent, He is omnipotent, and He is omniscient—moving through individuals worldwide. He’s moving through you and I to fulfill His purpose on earth. When He was walking His earthly ministry, He had to depend on the same Holy Spirit, the same gifts of the Spirit; He was limited in His human form. Now, you and I carry the Holy Spirit among millions of other believers. His gospel can be shared with people even in the most remote areas of the world. People are carrying the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, ushering in a move of God.
Spiritual Awakening
I believe we are living in the greatest hour of spiritual awakening. The glory of God is going to be fulfilled in this hour in greater measures than we have seen before. The Holy Spirit is getting ready to move in a greater way than He did in any of the previous revivals. It’s mindboggling to think that God is going to move greater than in the days of George Whitefield, the English Evangelist. God’s presence will be known near and far. The disciples understood the power and authority of having the Holy Spirit indwelling in them. These are the days in which the Apostle Paul wished he was living. These are days in which Simon Peter wished he was alive.
You become unstoppable when you have the baptism of the Holy Spirit in your life. Once the disciples experienced the baptism, the Holy Spirit wasn’t just occasionally on them or with them. After the day of Pentecost in the upper room, the Holy Spirit was within them. The New Living Translation of the Bible describes it this way: “Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability” (Acts 2:3-4).
The disciples and others who were in the upper room were experiencing Jesus’ prophecy: “Wait until the other side of Me comes, wait until you get this power from on high, your ministry will be entirely different from My ministry. Where I was limited, you will not be limited—you will have the power of the Holy Spirit and He will give you the authority not just over devils, sin, sickness, and diseases, but the Holy Spirit will be your comfort. He will console you in the dark seasons of your life as well.”
And this happened because they obeyed Jesus, and they waited. So often we don’t want to wait. We don’t want to be patient. We are always in a hurry. The hardest thing in the world is to wait. But let me tell you, faith is like a muscle—if you don’t use it, you lose it. When you can listen to God’s instructions, though, and obey Him with your actions, every step you take will become easier as you follow His leading. When you’re waiting on God, He is inviting you into an opportunity to experience the fulfillment of His promise in your life.
Psalm 23 speaks of the assignment David is given when God laid him down in the quiet, green pasture beside gently moving water:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:1-6)
You cannot hear God in the rushing streams of life. You have to be still to hear God’s voice speaking to you. By quieting yourself, by slowing down and waiting on Him, you can seek Him directly and precisely. In this way, you can focus on God’s intention, not your opinions, not your desires—but on His good and perfect will for you.
And when you learn to wait well on God, His promise from Isaiah is that strength and supernatural advantage will be your portion. “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). This God-given strength infuses you with the endurance to stand against any attack from the enemy. Don’t be surprised if, once you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and you understand the new power in your life, you begin to experience some resistance. But don’t be discouraged. The Holy Spirit always has the upper hand. The powers of darkness cannot overcome the power of the Holy Spirit and His gifts in our lives.
