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I wasn't a Christian when my wife with great forethought and trepidation agreed to married me. My wife had been a Christian for a few years. When I was not on the road with a rock band I would attend church with her, and I watched the relationship she had with God and saw the fire of the Holy Spirit burning in her life and she did speak in tongues. I thought while watching her that is the kind of relationship I would like with God but I really had no idea what I was asking for
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A couple of years into our marriage I finally reached a point that I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit heavy upon me and I finally made the first step from my pew to the prayer altar at the front of the church. My whole being felt like it was on fire as I took Jesus for my Savior. Then after I knew I was now a Christian, I stood up there at the altar and words were wanting to come out of my mouth that were NOT my words. I was shocked and thought, "What is happening to me?" and I did not let The Holy Spirit have the utterance. Over the next few weeks I came to understand that The Holy Spirit was wanting to speak through me when I was at the altar. At a later church service, anyone with a need went to the altar for prayer and I went and was prayed for and began speaking in tongues.
So, why am I Pentecostal? The Holy Spirit made sure I was.
When another Christian starts talking cessation of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit it is so far removed from my experience with God that I am dumbfounded by their belief.
I'm Pentecostal not by any decision or training, but because the Living God chose to pour out His Spirit upon me when I still didn't know anything about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit or that there were denominations that taught it and others that taught against it.
I had been part of an AoG campus group, but really didn't know what it was about other than they loved God and loved me. So they were going to a convention in St. Louis, Missouri, and asked if I would like to come with them. I said, "Sure!" cuz it sounded like fun, and it was. That was a fun group of college people. But when I got halfway through the convention the leader asked me and a friend of mine - a Baptist - if we wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I was like, "If that's what God wants me to have, then I'm all in," and told them that almost nonchalantly. My Baptist friend had reservations, but he agreed to give it a try I guess you could say. So we got a separate conference room, and several men of God gathered around us and laid hands on us and began praying to the Lord. They also encouraged us to speak whatever came to us, and to be willing to let go if we felt the Holy Spirit leading us to speak something out of the ordinary.
Well, I FELT the Holy Spirit welling up, like tangibly. It wasn't some touchy feely emotional thing. I could tangibly feel the Spirit of God welling up, so I just began to speak what I was feeling a leading to, which was praises to God that were still in English, but with a Jewish accent. It seemed silly, but it was submission to what He was leading me to do.
The men kept praying, a little more earnestly, and then all of a sudden the damn broke. I had been speaking under my breath up till that point, and then all of a sudden out came this really LOUD oriental language that sounded like Vietnamese. It was sharp and very expressive and the volume took me by surprise, let alone everyone else in the room, and it was a never ending barrage of words that were towering over everything else. Very forceful and powerful.
My friend was opposite me hearing all this, and when he did his breathing got excited and he was trying to speak like the Spirit was leading him. It was almost like crying almost, as he was struggling to let go of his self-will and allow the Spirit to speak through him. But he couldn't. He was a proud man, and a big man - a lineman for the football team when he first enrolled in the college - and he couldn't bring himself to say or do anything that might be too embarrassing, so he never received. Or maybe the better expression is, he received, but he never let go to allow the Spirit of God to speak through him.
He never did, and basically just fell back into his traditional Baptist beliefs after that, which was a little sad, but he still loved God and still did his best for Him. He just never knew the experience of letting God have full control over him, and it had to do with not having enough humility to allow it.
But that's the story of why I am Pentecostal. I have experienced the power and Presence of God on numerous occasions since then. Not long after my baptism, I would be sitting in college meetings hearing the word of God taught and the tangible Presence of the Lord would descend on me.
Too many other supernatural experiences since then to list, cuz that was almost 40 years ago, but when you have a genuine experience with the Holy Spirit, there is no going back from it. It doesn't matter how many abuses might occur in various other groups or if some go on to give Pentecostalism a bad name in later years, you KNOW you experienced the Presence of God and you know the Baptism is real, so you carry it with you for the rest of your life.
On a last note, when I was baptized at that convention, I recall that they told us that a speaker was about to start in the conference hall, but when everyone exited the room I suddenly turned and went straight up to my hotel room. I was so moved by the experience that I wanted to be alone with God, and to gather my thoughts. When I got there, I saw my Bible sitting on a table near the window, and I remember opening it and it fell open to where it was talking about the Holy Spirit in Acts, and I said to myself, "Oh. THAT Holy Spirit..." Up until then it had just been like an impersonal force or something that I only read about, but now I had experienced what they had experienced, and the words "Holy Spirit" suddenly meant something so much more. I stood there looking out over the city of St. Louis, and my life would never be the same again.
