You Ask, I Answer, Take 4

That's right folks, it's time for another installment of You Ask, I Answer.  Today's question comes from Johanna again.  She asks:

Do you think it is important to be baptized in the Holy Spirit after you have given your life to Christ?

I'll be honest with you, and say that my answer is "I don't know."

My faith journey looks something like this:

• Raised in a fairly conservative evangelical culture, as a pastor's kid
• experienced a lot of good and a lot of bad that comes with Christianity as a result of being a pastor's kid
• introduced early to attack Christianity, at the age of 10, when the church dad was pastoring went through a brutal split, and he resigned and planted the church that he still pastors today
• struggled a lot with the feelings of pressure that came with being a pastor's kid
• transitioned into public school for jr. high after being homeschooled, and spent some pretty brutal years dealing with vicious girls in the youth group
• attended a Catholic high school, not sure at this point if I even believe in God, but compelled to defend my protestant beliefs in a myriad of intellectual lunchtime discussions, while really wanting nothing more than to escape faith and it's burdens
• got involved with Young Life in 12th grade - met a great friend in the woman who was my leader and felt seen and cared for for who I was and my own walk with God and not who my dad was and his role in the church for the first time in my life;  still totally wrestling with faith
• just before my 18th birthday, I was baptized.  It wasn't so much that I had answers, as it was that in my own logical evaluation, it would be more of a problem to drop everything I'd believed for 18 years, than it would be to simply subscribe to it.
• in the first years of University I got involved with a small church that was growing, mostly composed of students and twenty somethings and was exploring "Holy Spirit"
• I met people there who had something I'd never seen before.  These people really "knew" Jesus.
• I was struggling with severe depression, and also longing for this relationship that my new friends had with Jesus.  The combination led to some pretty rough years.
• While studying in university, I began to be fascinated by liturgical traditions of the church, studying them as part of my specialization in European church history, particularly in the Reformation and post-reformation periods.
• In my last year of university, sitting in a car, I encountered the Holy Spirit in a powerful, supernatural way, and my depression was healed.
• My life entered new kinds of turmoil and upheaval as my journey with God took some more crazy twists and turns, including a variety of experiences with prayer, dreams and visions, and other interesting encounters with the spiritual realm and it has stayed that way ever since that moment of healing almost six years ago.

So, these days I guess you could categorize me as a liturgy loving, evangelical, charismatic with a soft spot for the mystical and anything to do with prayer.

What, you ask, does that have to do with the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Well, it's like this - my experiences and personal journey and experiences have shaped my beliefs.  I don't believe that there is something special - some unique baptism of the Spirit, per say.  I believe that the Spirit is present with all of us.  That said, if what you mean by baptism of the Holy Spirit is a particular moment or encounter when the Spirit goes from being the more traditionally evangelical silent member of the trinity, at most recognized as our conscience, to being a living and active part of our relationship and interaction with God, then yes, I do pray that all those who know Jesus will also experience this baptism of the Spirit that He sent to us as counselor, guide and comforter.  However, I don't believe that this looks the same for everyone, or that it happens at a specific time or moment.  For me, it happened the day I was healed, and it was about being in a place where I was desperate enough to surrender.  For friends of mine, it's looked totally different.  But I do pray that everyone will somehow experience, in the way unique to their own hearts and relationships with the Lord, an active relationship with the Spirit.

Thoughts?  I'm not interested in a big theological debate, but I'd love to hear your thoughts (keep them civil please), or to know if this has stirred more questions for you.  Like I keep saying, this feature will be around for as long as the questions come in, and I'm willing to talk about just about any topic you want to bring up here.