If I Were Going to Pray 5

If I were going to pray, I would want to get my thoughts controlled and focused. Prayer is not thinking about something indifferently. Idly, maybe; indifferently, no.

I remember the session I had with God in 1975, when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. I was not directly asking for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but for the gift of tongues. I was in the fellowship room of Grace Bible Church in Honolulu. I asked Jesus for the gift, and nothing happened.

I remained in that room consciously until I became desperate because I was rejected by Jesus. Inwardly seeking to find out why I was rejected and how to get accepted, I lost all consciousness of that room. I knew when I started that there were two ministers next to me with their hands on me. When I entered prayer, I had no idea they existed. I was thinking from where I was in my mind, which moved from scene to scene as dreams do. My mind's eye was my reality--that is what I mean by "controlled and focused." My thoughts were of whatever I was seeing and dealing with immediately in my imagination. I was a freshly created man dealing with all the needs I found pressing upon me in my situation. Yes, I was physically kneeling in front of a folding chair, but I didn't know that.

After I was baptized in the Spirit, I slowly came down from the euphoria--with tongues--and realized my physical situation. Back to thinking here about there.