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I want to tell you something I don’t think gets said oftenenough in church. And I want to tell it to you straight, the way I wrote it in
the book, because it cost me years of confusion and shame before I finally
figured it out.
There are three things that happened to me involving the Holy Spirit. And if
you’ve felt any version of what I felt, you need to hear this.
Part One: Saved at Nine. Alone for Ten Years
I gave my life to Christ when I was nine years old in arural Oklahoma church. I meant it. It was real. And the Holy Spirit sealed me
that very moment — Ephesians 1:13 says so, and I believe it.
But here’s what nobody told me: He was there. Right there. Available to walk
with me, pray with me, speak to me, and guide me through every decision and
every battle I was about to face. The Helper Jesus promised in John 14 had
literally moved in.
And I had no idea.
Not because I wasn’t serious about my faith. Because nobody taught me. Nobody
explained who Holy Spirit was, how He worked, what it meant to walk in the
Spirit, to pray in the Spirit, to seek His voice when you’re at a crossroads. I
got Bible stories. I got church attendance. I got the history. What I didn’t
get was discipleship. What I didn’t get was the relationship I didn’t know I
was promised.
So I spent the next ten years saved and sealed — with all that power available
to me — and lived like I was doing the whole thing alone.
That’s not God’s failure. That’s a discipleship failure. Part of it is looking
at a nine-year-old telling you he was called to preach and not fostering that
calling. And it’s one I refuse to stay quiet about.
Part Two: Fort Carson, Colorado. The Morning Everything Changed
I was nineteen years old, in the Army, stationed at FortCarson. Sunday morning. Wall locker inspection the next day. Television on.
Then this thought hits me out of nowhere: “You need to go to church.”
I didn’t know where any churches were. Then a commercial comes on TV for a
church in Colorado Springs. The next thing I know, I’m driving around this
town, talking to myself, thinking I’ve lost my mind, making turn after turn,
trying to find the place. I finally hit a stoplight and told God flat out — I’m
done. I’m going back to the barracks.
I turned the wheel. And the church was right in front of me.
I walked in. An elderly man at the door. Another man is holding the sanctuary
door open. Since I didn’t know anyone, every pew I passed had someone in it.
But the front row was empty. My focus though, was on a rush of something that
hit me when I crossed that threshold that I didn’t have a word for. Not fear
exactly. Not guilt exactly. Something I had never felt before in my life.
I didn’t hear a single word of the worship music. I didn’t hear the sermon. I
sat in the front row and cried the entire service, and couldn’t have told you
why.
That was the day I finally met Holy Spirit. The person I had been searching
for, but didn’t know it.
Not on the day He arrived. He’d been there since I was nine. But that was the
day the door opened, and He walked into the everyday reality of my life in a
way I could no longer ignore. It felt like a second baptism. In every
experiential sense, it was a first. Ten years of Him knocking, and I finally
stopped long enough to let Him in. To receive Him.
Part Three: The Lie That Cost Me Years.
After that day in Colorado Springs, I went deep. I wantedeverything God had. And somewhere along the way, the question of tongues came
up.
I had been raised in circles that didn’t believe in speaking in tongues. Then I
visited some Pentecostal churches where the whole congregation seemed to be
praying in tongues at once. Nobody translated. Nobody explained anything. I
didn’t know what to make of it.
Then I kept running into the teaching that tongues was the evidence — the sign,
the proof — that you’d received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Like Pentecost.
Like the upper room. If you hadn’t spoken in tongues, the argument went, you
hadn’t fully received. You needed a second baptism, a baptism of fire, and the
evidence of that fire was tongues.
So I prayed for it. I sought it. I asked for it. And it didn’t come.
And I carried that weight for years. The quiet, grinding feeling that I was
spiritually deficient. That maybe I hadn’t surrendered fully. That maybe God
was holding something back. That maybe I wasn’t as saved as the guy next to me,
who prayed in a heavenly language. That maybe something was wrong with me.
I’m going to say that plainly: that teaching is not supported by Scripture. And
it caused real damage.
What Paul Actually Said.
“All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, arethey? All are not teachers, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do
they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?” —
1 Corinthians 12:29-30 (NASB 1995)
The answer to every single one of those questions is no. And Paul wasn’t asking
them to point out who was lacking. He was asking them to make the point that
this is how it was designed.
We are a body. Different parts. Different functions. All essential. All
empowered by the same Spirit. And that same Spirit distributes gifts not
according to your hunger level or your sincerity or how many times you’ve asked
— but according to His will.
“All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one
individually as He wills.” — 1 Corinthians 12:11 (ESV)
As He wills. Not as a denomination dictates. Not as a doctrine demands. As He
wills.
And then Paul says something that should end this debate entirely — he then
says prophecy is greater than tongues in the context of building up the body
when it is not translated. Not greater in rank or worth, but greater in benefit
to others. And then he goes further and says there’s something even higher than
all of these gifts.
Love. First Corinthians 13. The more excellent way.
You can speak in the tongues of men and angels, Paul says, and without love
you’re just noise.
Holy Spirit Has Not Gifted Me With Tongues... Yet, Maybe Never
I was so busy chasing the gift I didn’t have that I nearlymissed the gifts He’d already placed in my hands.
Prophetic writing. Speaking into lives. The ability to hear from God and put it
on a page in a way that reaches a man who’s been sitting in a church for twenty
years and still feels like something is missing. That’s what He gave me. That’s
what this book is.
Not tongues. Not because I’m deficient, or not fully surrendered, or less
anointed than someone else. Because He wills it this way, and His design is not
a mistake.
Not all speak in tongues. Not all prophesy. Not all teach. Not all heal. And
none of that makes you a second-class believer. It makes you a specific part of
a body that needs exactly what you carry.
If the Holy Spirit lives in you, you are sealed. You are filled. You are
equipped for the assignment He has for you. The problem is we’ve been taught to
measure spiritual maturity by a single gift instead of by the fruit of the
Spirit and faithfulness to His voice.
So, Here’s What I Want You to Walk Away With.
If you were saved and never discipled in the Spirit, you’renot alone, and it’s not your fault. He was there the whole time. He’s there
right now. Open the door.
If you had an experience later in life that felt like meeting Him for the first
time — that was real. He was always with you. But something shifted when you
finally surrendered to His function. Don’t let anyone minimize that.
And if you’ve been told you need to speak in tongues to prove you’ve really
received the Spirit — I want you to hear me clearly: that is not what Scripture
teaches. Your gift is not less. Your faith is not smaller. Your standing before
God is not diminished.
Stop striving for the things you don’t have or you believe might be missing,
and start walking in the confidence and knowledge Holy Spirit and God have
chosen those things He already gave you.
That’s what this book is about. And that’s what we’re going to keep digging
into right here.
— Scott A. Elston
Founder, Ordinary Man Ministry | Ordinary Man Press
Life After John 3:16: What Your Pastor Didn’t Tell You.
lifeafterjohn316.com| Substack: Ordinary Man