WATER OF LIFE

My new book, Discovering the Water of Life, is available on Amazon — just in time for Christmas;)

Here is the book description:

One man steps into a victorious life in Christ and experiences a transformation and renewal through baptism of the Holy Spirit. He describes God’s inner work, Christian dream interpretation, and God’s refining fire.

This book includes his observations on spiritual gifts, and comparisons of Christianity, personality type (Myers-Briggs), and culture types. It also contains inspiring articles on faith and revival in Hawaii and other countries.

“The water of life is the Holy Spirit in our lives. One of the reasons I moved to Hawaii is that the ocean is a spiritual experience or spiritually renewing for me. The water of life is not a physical drink—it’s spiritual—something that fills our spirit; heals our soul and body; and flows out of our heart to those around us.”

But consider the joy of those corrected by God!
Do not despise the discipline of the Almighty when you sin.
For though he wounds, he also bandages.
He strikes, but his hands also heal.
(Job 5:17-18)

We receive (sometimes very painful) correction from God for our sins. God exiled the Israelites to Babylon for seventy years. He wanted them to turn their heart back to Him, to obey His voice, and love Him with all their heart. Afterwards, He changed their circumstances by freeing them to go back to Israel and be blessed again.

Or a man may be chastened on a bed of pain
with constant distress in his bones,
so that his very being finds food repulsive
and his soul loathes the choicest meal.
(Job 33:19-20)

If God doesn’t answer our pleading prayers it’s because He has a greater plan in mind, one that will transform us with the refining fire of the Holy Spirit. For many years I rejected the church, and hardened my heart toward Christians, but still prayed and pleaded to God. God would not answer because there was still farther hardship and destruction that had to take place in my life before I would finally surrender and open my heart to Christ and His church. It wasn’t a plan of punishment or one to give me greater patience and endurance—it was a plan of complete transformation. If by some superhuman feat I had just patiently (or more-like painfully) endured I would never have made the change He was calling me to make. Fortunately, instead I was broken, and in that brokenness He saved and transformed me.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10)

Job is an example that suffering isn’t always a result of sin. God wants to know whether your faith contingent on the well-being of your family, physical health, and financial status. Suffering is God’s way of calling us into a closer relationship with Him through deeper levels of surrender, obedience, faith, and inner healing.

Many fear looking at their inner self because of what they might find, and what God might ask them to change. Inner work is usually more painful than just enduring and developing patience with our current circumstances. God is the one who does the searching and exposing of the areas (both inward than outward) that He wants us to look at, pray about, and release to His Lordship. He wants to set us free from bondage—through faith in His healing grace (i.e. supernatural power). This usually starts with us dying to and/or surrendering parts of ourselves. We must willingly choose to take an inner journey: to look inward at the past rejection and hurt (from society and family), generational sin, inequities, inner vows, inner bondage, lack of balance, and repressed parts of ourselves.

For God speaks again and again,
though people do not recognize it.
He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on people
as they lie in their beds.
He whispers in their ears
and terrifies them with warnings.
He makes them turn from doing wrong;
he keeps them from pride.
He protects them from the grave,
from crossing over the river of death.
(Job 33:14-18)

A lot of inner work is unconscious work. Dreams are the place where God speaks to our waking self about the parts of ourselves we aren’t aware of. Of course, He can still get the message to us through a million other miraculous means, but He does like to use dreams (in the Bible and in my life). Whether you decide to listen to your dreams or not, God wants to do some inner refining work in you. Inner transformation is a much more difficult road but also more spiritually rewarding. Gifts of the Holy Spirit; blessings and joy in our lives; and the fruit of the Holy Spirit are all spiritual rewards of a victorious life in Christ.

D.L. Moody said the best class of Christian has not only accepted and surrendered but has the water of life flowing from them.

To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. (Revelations 21:6-7)

I wrote in a previous blog: “Before I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was moved by sunny days, the beauty of the ocean, and the wonder of my children—all God’s creations. Now that I am walking in the Holy Spirit, those things still move me but pale in comparison to knowing God through the power and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.”

This is only scratches the surface of how much more satisfying the water of life is than anything the world has to offer. From the viewpoint of personality type, as a feeling type, I used emotional release and romantic love, as a way to temporarily relieve or fill up the emptiness that only the water of life (the Holy Spirit) could fill permanently.

I relieved myself through dumping emotions with a therapist, but it was only temporary relief because only God can provide permanent healing and transformation through His indwelling Holy Spirit. Contrary to what psychology teaches us, healing doesn’t come from emotional release it comes from the Holy Spirit.

I also tried to fill the void with feelings or emotions of romantic love. Emotions, like thoughts, are natural and part of our soul—even God experiences anger and other emotions, for example: You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you (Exodus 34:14). Even though emotions are natural they can’t fill the emptiness in our spirit—only He can.

Different personality types try to fill the emptiness in different ways: thinking types might use success and status, and sensing types probably use excitement and material possessions. As a feeling type, I used sex and food for comfort—whereas, for a sensing type, that might be a sensual pleasure, but both are still temporary and increasingly not satisfying.

Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18)

Intuitive types, like myself, escape through intellectual pursuits, fantasy, and imagination. My passion for writing, the search for intellectual understanding and universal truth, becomes progressively less fulfilling if I try to use it to fill the emptiness. These are only a few examples of the way we stop the water of life (the Holy Spirit) from flowing in and through us by trying to fill ourselves with temporary worldly things.

This can also be seen on a culture types level too. The sensing Japanese use food, sex, and consumerism as a way to temporarily fill the emptiness. When something loses its sensing appeal there is always a new product (food, technology, etc.), new fashion trend, or new celebrity being rolled out. A culture, like a person, can go to extremes looking for that original high. The extremes in Japanese pornography is an example of how far this culture has gone seeking to fill the emptiness. The Japanese also idolize consumerism—just look at the tourists in Hawaii with armfuls of shopping bags.

The American culture type, instead of turning to the Holy Spirit for lasting satisfaction, creates the static of ongoing diversions in their life like the Japanese, but in a more thinking way, for example, through increasing work commitments and trying to pay for larger houses and cars. Americans desensitize themselves to the voice of the Holy Spirit through escalating graphic violence (and images of war) in the media (movies, news, etc.).

Americans have an increasing desire for global security (economic and political) but only God gives us permanent security. We are like the Israelites in the Bible who relied on an alliance with Egypt to save them from their enemies instead of turning to and relying on God’s unlimited power. God turned this around on the Israelites, and Egypt eventually became their oppressor. Americans rely on a massive defense department and war technology instead of God, and our national debt (that has come out of our defense spending), among other things, has become our oppressor.

Ask and we shall receive. Ask God for His living water and we will be filled with it and the emptiness and related feelings will go away. The water of life is the answer.

“Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2).

Baptism is threefold (just like the Trinity of God, the triune of man, the triune of a marriage in God, and the three junctures of Christian faith). Pastor Max Sobrekken says, “First, when we are born again, we are baptized into the Body of Christ by the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3:27). Secondly, there is the believer’s baptism in water, by immersion (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:41), and thirdly, there is the ‘Baptism in the Holy Ghost and Fire’ by Jesus Christ Himself (Luke 3:16).” Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as a water baptism. Water baptism can be like a celebration while baptism of the Holy Spirit can be like a wave of release, peace, and tears of joy. Water baptism is a declaration of faith and a cleansing that prepares us for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, but is not necessary for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was water baptized two months after experiencing baptism of the Holy Spirit. One practice of the early church was to lay hands on someone (and pray) after water baptism so that they would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Jonathan Goforth said if you’ve been baptized by the Holy Spirit you would know it. Solbrekken says the only outward sign, according to the Bible, is that you will speak in tongues, prophesy, and magnify (extol and glorify) God. Pastor Ray Brubaker was physically healed after experiencing the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Joyce Meyer heard God’s voice. The biggest sign of all is that the power of sin is broken (victory over sin). During my baptism of the Holy Spirit, I felt a rush over my body, the tears of relief streamed down my face, and subsequently the power of sin was broken (porn addiction, obsession, etc.).

HOW does the Holy Spirit come upon you? In many ways. Some through the laying on of hands (with prayer), as in the Bible. We pray to accept Christ as our Savior and we must pray to receive His Spirit. It is a “definite experience subsequent to conversion”.

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God’s message, they sent Peter and John there. As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17).

All we have to do is ask for it and God will give it to us. Trumbull, author of Victory in Christ, spent years as a defeated Christian, then he read a sermon on ‘For me to live is Christ’, prayed to God and finally experienced victory. Brubaker said he went to a ‘Baptism of the Spirit’ service at church and was prayed for and touched by the minister but nothing happened. Then after four days of prayer and fasting the Spirit came upon him at night. Dr. Solomon prayed for counseling clients in his office and the Spirit immediately was poured into them. I accepted Christ when I was thirteen, but I felt the outpouring of the Holy Spirit when I read Solomon’s book last year. John Wesley continuously sought this living faith “though with some strange indifference, dullness, and coldness”. Then one day, he “was listening to a reading of Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. While he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation. An assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Joyce Meyer “cried out to God…telling Him something was missing in my relationship with Him. I heard the audible voice of God the day I was filled with the Holy Spirit…and I was suddenly filled with faith that He was going to do something wonderful in my life.”

Our Pentecostal church has hosted pastors from our denomination, such as Leslie Keegal (from Sri Lanka) and Lanil Gunasekara (from Australia) for healing services. We had a Holy Spirit night of worship and sermon, then afterwards the pastor called up people who wanted to receive baptism of the Holy Spirit or healing. The minister and sometimes others who possessed the spiritual gift of healing would lay hands on the person, pray and then after a moment the minister would put the palm of his hand on their forehead and push them backwards into the waiting arms of others who would lay them on the floor. Some call this being ’slain in the spirit’. They fall on their back being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit or others just want to trust God and let go. Some people will do this on more than one occasion to receive another filling of the Holy Spirit—at times of renewing faith and coming back into repentance—while others wish to be ’slain’ more than once for an ongoing illness. It’s a matter of how we feel led by the Holy Spirit. This kind of service is also frequently done at church retreats.

WHEN does baptism of the Holy Spirit happen? If you read the book of Acts you will find many are subsequent to conversion. It took Saul/Paul in the Bible three days. Jesus was in his thirties. Some people are converted and spend a long time in the wilderness (in the world) and are baptized with the Holy Spirit later in life, but it can happen any time according to God’s plan. I accepted Christ at thirteen and it was twenty five years before I experienced it (I didn’t know about surrender and baptism of the Holy Spirit before that). Trumbull and Wesley were Christian pastors for several years before experiencing it. For many of Solomon’s counseling clients it was instantaneous after he explained it to them and they prayed together for it. Joyce Meyer spent many years going to church before finally fully submitting her life to Christ and becoming victorious through baptism of the Holy Spirit.

WHY do we need it? To break the power of sin in our lives. To receive our spiritual gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Holy Spirit purifies and cleanses our conscience (inner voice and common sense). Victorious lives reap the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. After Jesus was baptized (in the water) he prayed and the the Holy Spirit descended on Him. “If the Son of God has got to be anointed, do not his disciples need it, and shall we not seek it, and shall we barely rest with conversion?” (D.L Moody). Before I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was moved by sunny days, the beauty of the ocean, and the wonder of my children—all God’s creations. Now that I am walking in the Holy Spirit, those things still move me but pale in comparison to knowing God through the power and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.