This article is based on a sermon I preached in a recent Homiletics class. My assignment was John 15:25-16:15, which the Church often reads on Pentecost. Due to the sermon’s length, I am sharing the first half this week. The second half will appear online next Sunday for Pentecost.

“And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged” (John 16:8-11; all Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version).

For most of my adult life, I have been part of Pentecostal or charismatic churches, including the Charismatic Episcopal Church for the last 20 years. I’ve seen it all when it comes to the Holy Spirit. I’ve spent a lot of time in churches where people associated Him with dancing, loud singing, music with a really good beat, and all this stuff. Recently, the Christian satire website, “The Babylon Bee,” published an article entitled, “Holy Spirit Unable To Move Through Congregation As Fog Machine Breaks.” It sounds like some churches I’ve visited over the years. There’s a lot of talk about feeling good, but not so much about persecution and hard times. Over the next few minutes, I am going to share how the Holy Spirit comes to give us edification and empowerment for godly living, not ease or entertainment.

First, I’d like to go back about 42 years, to the summer of 1984. My friend and I prayed to receive Christ on the boardwalk in Long Beach, NY, when two women were sharing their faith. Several weeks later, one of them invited us to their church. Boy, did I learn a whole different way of worshiping God! This looked nothing like a Catholic Mass: upbeat music; people waving their hands in the air; some of them speaking what sounded to me like jibberish. Most importantly, though, people seemed to be joyful while praising God.

They talked a lot about the Holy Spirit and said that they worshiped like this because of Him. That “jibberish” was a “prayer language” that many of them had received from the Holy Spirit. Of course, I knew a little bit about the Holy Spirit from Catholic School and church. We prayed, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” There were three persons in the Trinity: I had an idea about what God the Father and God the Son were like, but the Holy Spirit? As far as I knew my whole life, He was just there. I couldn’t figure Him out.

However, these people seemed to know something about the Holy Spirit. Apparently, since I had accepted Jesus, He already lived in me. “Okay,” I thought, “That’s cool. But I don’t think I need this speaking in tongues stuff. But if He wants to turn me into a prophet, that’s cool. After dabbling in the occult since high school, I think I would make a good prophet.”

After attending a few services, I went to a youth meeting one night, for high-school and college-aged members of the church. We were reading and discussing passages about the Holy Spirit. After a while, the group’s leader turned to me and said, “Mike, you haven’t received the baptism in the Holy Spirit yet, have you?”

I responded, “Well, I guess the Holy Spirit came into me when I accepted Christ, is that what you mean?”

He explained a bit more: This was something that happens after you give your heart to the Lord. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just live inside you; He can fill you so that you can overcome sin and have spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues. I didn’t think I needed speaking in tongues.

After a few minutes, the leader placed his hand on my forehead and said, “We’ll pray for you that you receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” Everybody else placed their hands on my back or shoulders and started praying, while I said, “That’s okay, I think I’m good. You don’t have to do this. I don’t think it’s going to work anyway MoladhdoDhiaasasreabhanngachbeannacht!” (That last part is not what I actually said. To write this, I used Google Translate to find out how you write, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” in Irish. Then I removed the spaces between words. Don’t ask me to pronounce it.) The tongues continued for what seemed like a few minutes; someone said that I was praying in Spanish at one point. I don’t speak Spanish, so that’s something.

Over the years, when I have shared that story, some people have said, “Well, that couldn’t be the Holy Spirit, because He’s a gentleman. He won’t force us to do anything against our will.” I hope someone can show me where it says that in the Bible. Yes, He respects our free will. But, He also knows what’s best for each of us. He knew I was uncomfortable with something I did not understand, but that I also wanted everything I needed to grow in my faith. So, He overruled my ignorance. If I was not really interested in following Christ, this would never have happened.

But, why did He baptize me? Why does God baptize any of us in the Holy Spirit? It’s not so we can have a groovy funky time of singing praise songs at church. Nor is it so we can dance, shout, or any of the other stuff that sometimes happens when we want to express our joy to God. It’s not even primarily so we can pray in tongues. It is so that He can edify and empower us to expand the kingdom of God in the face of human and spiritual resistance.

In the early days of the modern Pentecostal movement, people did not think of speaking in tongues as a prayer language. They thought that, if you spoke in tongues, it was a human language; and if you could figure out which language it was, you knew where God was sending you as a missionary. People ended up going to India, Africa, or China, thinking God had given them a language that they could use to preach the Gospel. It may have been an embarrassment at first, but some of them eventually learned the local language the old-fashioned way and had highly successful evangelistic ministries as the Holy Spirit empowered them.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is not only for missionaries, pastors, or super-spiritual people. It is for all believers in Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit to empower us to serve Christ.

This message will conclude next week with some thoughts about how the Holy Spirit works in our lives, especially in the area of evangelism.

Copyright © 2026 Michael E. Lynch. All rights reserved.