Understanding the Baptism in the Holy Spirit

D L Henderson
9 min readJan 14, 2025

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December 2024, January 14, 2024 final edit

I’ve tried to convey my understanding to my wife, and she has some trouble understanding my attempt to explain this Gospel phenomenon. I am trying to convey the activity of the Holy Spirit in Believers’ lives.

Now, I have no intent to disrupt anyone else’s view, especially, their personal experiences which are in line with the writings of the Apostles and the record of explanations by Jesus Himself.

Let me start with the base of my own personal experience with God, Jesus, and the Bible… I have to note this certainly has the potential to be a highly subjective viewpoint, and the Bible should be understood to be multifaceted and difficult for our earthly minds to completely understand. Here is Apostle Paul;s understanding of the complexity:
“Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” — 1 Corinthians 13:9–12, New Living Translation (NLT).

In my youth, my parents had me attend Sunday School while they were participating in the Sunday Service upstairs.

In those classes, I was exposed to the major Bible stories from Creation to the Cross. It may be of import to know the violent and bloody details were excluded, of course, as this was a class for young children who they didn’t want to scare offHowever,

Notwithstanding, I am now writing for adults…

During adolescence, I quickly left behind any considerations of God, Jesus, and the Bible, and I totally excluded such considerations from my everyday life.

Church membership “didn’t do it for me.”

During that adolescence, I also became pathetically depressed and at my lowest point, I tried to commit suicide.

Also during adolescence, my friends were aware of my abject sadness, but had no clue why it was so and no idea how to help me — whether School Counselors, Coaches, Teachers, even my Parents — nobody had a clue, worried though they might have been… They could only resort to disciplinary actions at school and wringing their hands at home.

Those were the “good old days” when mental illness was not understood and was a guilt trip to anyone who cared, and socially, it was a heavy source of embarrassment…

Still during my adolescence, a friend trying to shake me out of “the blues” turned me on to pot.

For a time I got off on it, laughed at nothing and everything, but as I continued using it (and hallucinogenic drugs), the more I used, the less I enjoyed those “cheap thrills.”

Next in my life, I tangentially got into the Anti-war Movement and the entrails of the Peace and Love Movement. The Hippies had already buried their cultural movement and left behind its entrails, but I was unaware they had left.

While getting stoned in Berkeley, the thrill gradually went elsewhere, and I also left — out on the road again.

Just before leaving, I was still dropping Acid until one weekend night, I was catapulted into a very “Bad Trip” where I was suddenly falling into a bottomless black hole with an overwhelming sense of fear and doom. A friend who seemed to consistently appear at particularly critical times stopped in, and he rather tersely, but in his usual way, casually mentioned, “You’re tripping, aren’t you?”

The odd thing was that when he asked that simple question, what I heard was, “You’re tripping badly and falling hard aren’t you?”

What mysteriously compelled my next move, even looking back I can only surmise, I went up on the roof and called out to God, the One of Bible fame who I had learned about in Sunday School, and miraculously, the Acid Trip disappeared instantly and completely — as if I had never even dropped that evening.

I felt a happiness I had never known before — even on my best days!

Being a very slow learner, the next two weekends, I repeated the same adventure, dropping some Acid and falling into the same bad trip, I went up again on the roof, called on God, and got rescued… again… Finally, I realized that I was banging my head against the wall, because it felt so good to stop!

That was the end of the Berkeley Chapter in my life.

I hitchhiked some more around the West Coast, met some very nice folks who were a lot like myself but had a finer grasp on life and living.

Until…

Getting a ride with a young couple, they asked if I needed a place to crash, and they took me to a youth hostel, a small ranch up by Morro Bay, CA…

Turns out it was something more. A Pentecostal Missionary who had come down from the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State had adopted a group that had something to do with Jesus… They had a gathering before supper holding hands to pray together. this all seemed natural to me.

I assume that it was so normal to me, because I had already called out to God and had been rescued.

Then they had a get together afterwards where prayer and singing and sharing personal testimonies happened. This was when they shared where they had traveled in searching for the answers to life’s questions.

This part was all new to me.

They had joined various other groups and, being disappointed and disillusioned with them, traveled on until they arrived at this place and had “found Jesus to be their personal Savior.”

This also was new.

They witnessed about the answers they had been searching for now being found in their new relationship with Jesus. They also talked about the actual positive changes God had made in their lives.

This was very, very new., and yet, still not seeming strange to me.

After some time, in one of their get-togethers, actually a Prayer Meeting, I found myself on my knees and tearfully pleading with God to forgive me of all the wrong I had done and to come into my life…

Well, praise God! He did both.

I felt a cleansing from deep inside, and what followed was a great dark weight lifting — a feeling like a lifting off my shoulders.

I was told to start reading the Bible on my own ,and a few new understandings began opening my mind. Still, like I admitted earlier, I was hard headed and slow on the uptake. There were a lot of residual constructs in my mindset that needed lots of improvements — so much so that I was given a choice: Mental Hospital or a Sheriff’s escort out of town. They made the right decision, you see, because my actions were too often far and away too contrary to the lifestyle which I was yet to learn…

I still had a lot of hurt and rage ingrained in my brain from my adolescent depression.

That’s a reason, not an excuse.

It’s important to note that there were initial experiences before my contrary behaviors got so out of control and disruptive…

Hindsight is always twenty/twenty. Right?

Shoulda, coulda, woulda…

Right.

So, that was that…

Fortunately, God was not through with me yet, even though I deserved to be excluded.

Anyways, I left a couple extra steps out that are very important to this essay: First, I was baptized in Morro Bay, the Pacific Ocean, a very scenic place on a very sunshiny day. Second, I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. One of the group asked the Pastor if I had actually received that baptism, because it was usually manifested by the Biblical gift of speaking in tongues, which I didn’t manifest until years later.

So, where am I now? First, please allow me to review:

  • I learned the Children’s Bible Stories in my parent’s church.
  • I was depressed and suicidal as a teenager.
  • I got into the drug culture.
  • LSD got me in way over my head
  • I called on God to rescue me and He did.
  • I ended up in my travels at a Jesus oriented hostel.
  • I got saved, baptized, and received the Holy Spirit.
  • My behaviors demonstrated no redeemable qualities.

Eventually, while making plans for my assignment of teaching teenagers in Sunday School at a little Pentecostal Church, I read a workbook titled Preparing for Adolescence by Dr. James Dobson, and finally I realized that I was supposed to have learned these concepts during High School — well before my age at that time of 28…

Hoo boy…

Slow, remember?

The next book I came across, a few years later, filled in the empty space where I was supposed to learn the part of the walk down the path with Jesus of Discipleship — which some call Sanctification… That book is appropriately named Discipleship. I forget the author’s name, but the book must be around the house, here somewhere… It’s a small dark blue book… It must be hiding in all our boxes of books…

What I am trying to get around to, I felt needed a little bit of background. Still and all, I’m not an “Influencer,”a movie star, a popular singer or any other kind of famous person whose bio people might find interesting. I know that. My ordinaryness is, I feel, is an asset to my purposes in writing…

All the same, the point is that I have had many real life experiences, and becoming a Born Again Bible Believing Christian Has been a part of those experiences.

Yes, it’s the most important and the most significant one, but still I want any reader to know, warts and all, that God is real, Jesus is real, and my personal relationship with Him is real.

Besides, God’s faithfulness being experienced in real time and in a real life is essential for others to hear.

I started out writing intending to explain what Baptism in the Holy Spirit specifically entails. However, I guess there’s a time and a place for everything.

Solomon put it this way:

“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…” — Ecclesiastes 3:1, Berean Standard Bible.

Suffice it to say what Jesus said, “…those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.” -John 6:37, New Living Translation (NLT)

Every step of the way, in my life, I began to be led by the Holy Spirit as soon as I began to call on God .

As soon as I began to call on Jesus, my life was dramatically changed, my mind began to clear up and to heal… In fact, I received a whole new nature — my inner man became a better man

He will do the same for you if you simply begin to reach out to HIm and begin to learn about God, Jesus, and the Bible.

“Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” — Hebrews 11:6, NLT.

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D L Henderson
D L Henderson

Written by D L Henderson

Born 1950; HS 1968; Born again 1972; Cornell ILR; Steward, Local President/Business Agent; Husband, father, grandfather; winner/loser/everything in between

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