the spirit of joy aka holy laughter when its occuring is always subject to the person who is joyous. recenlty in a similar manner that happened to me but i was always in control.
God doesnt force himself upon men.
and free is right, i have seen some out there stuff and my then pastor stopped it. one doesnt need a 4 or 5 time tounge/interpretation to get the idea that during worship to keep doing the same thing sing to the lord.
I don't quite agree that "holy laughter" is the same thing as the spirit of joy...joy is a gift of the spirit, not a spirit in of itself. Semantics? Maybe, but there is so much spiritual confusion out there now, perhaps we need to be really clear on some points.
I go back to what I said before...if a "spiritual manifestation" has a clear biblical basis...and I mean clear, something that we see associated with the Spirit in the Bible, like tongues and prophesy, then it is most likely from the Spirit.
But, some of these trendy "spiritual manifestations" are not biblical, or have a couple of "proof texts" tied to them, or, if they show up in the bible have more in common with the descriptions of the demonically possessed than they do with those baptized by the Holy Spirit.
All I am saying is that we should hold "spiritual manifestations" to the same Biblical scrutiny that we do any other doctrinal matter. I don't give it a pass, just because it's supposed to be "of the Spirit". As a matter of fact, since I believe wholeheartedly in demonic spirits, and the bible tells us to beware of false prophets and teachers, I tend to subject these kinds of things to even greater scrutiny.
I guess part of my whole attitude about this is my experience with an Assembly of God revival (happened on the night I became a Christian) in which I saw supposedly godly women, older, modest women, rolling around on the floor, exposing their panties and people shrieking, screaming, stomping around and other such things. Show me, from the Scriptures, where the Holy Spirit has God's daughters, Jesus' brides, uncontrollably rolling around showing their tighty-whities to a bunch of men. It looked and sounded far more like people possessed of demons rather than people under the influence of the Holy Spirit. I became a Christian later that night (actually early the following morning) but in spite of that exhibition, not because of it.
And, now that I'm older and a little more educated in the Scriptures, I don't believe that those AofG folks were possessed by demons either...I do think that the revivalist had them so emotionally worked up, and that they had been taught that this was what they were supposed to do "under the Spirit" that they just gave into it. But, that doesn't make it Biblical or pleasing to God.
