La conciencia lingüística hacia los arabismos en el contexto social del

If you'll remember, I said I was actually a little disappointed in my initial experience of getting baptized in the Holy Spirit. I was quite conservative and reserved before I got baptized in the Holy Ghost. So I was just sure that when I received the Holy Ghost, I'd have a loud, emotional, boisterous time in the Lord.

But as it turned out, I didn't do a thing except speak with other tongues. (Of course, that's all the 120 believers did on the Day of Pentecost too!)

So I felt a little deflated. I'd seen others get boisterous and shout with joy when they were filled with the Spirit, and part of me wished I could have that kind of emotional experience when I got filled. I prayed, "Lord, Pentecostal people keep saying that when the Holy Ghost comes upon a person, he shall receive power [Acts 1:8]. So where's the power? If I have any more power than I had before, I don't know it!"

Many times we don't know what power is. We think power is something we feel, and that isn't always so. Jesus didn't promise an emotional experience; He promised an enduement of supernatural ability when the Holy Spirit comes upon us.

ACTS 1:8

8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Even though I felt disappointed, I had enough Bible in me to accept my experience of the baptism in the Holy Ghost for what it was. I said to myself, Well, getting filled with the Spirit wasn't like I thought it would be, but it was scriptural, so I'll stay with it. As far as I am concerned, I'm filled with the Holy Ghost!

Nevertheless, I didn't say anything about it to anyone, nor did I preach about that experience to my congregation. I was still a young denominational pastor of a little community church, so I decided I was going to wait until I had some kind of power explosion before I talked to anyone about it. I thought, I want people to be able to see the proof of the power without my having to say anything! Besides that, some way or another, I had a sense in my spirit—an inward intuition more or less—that I shouldn't say anything about it.

Well, there was a man in our congregation named Mr. Curry. He and his wife had been away on a trip to Europe for three months, and just before they returned, I got filled with the Holy Ghost.

Not long before Mr. Curry left for Europe, some Pentecostal folks began to attend our church because it was the only church in that little country community. These families would have had to travel for miles to find a Pentecostal church to attend, so they came to our church instead.

Even though people from all kinds of denominations attended our church, Mr. Curry was not happy when he learned Pentecostal families were starting to come. So he went to see Mr. Cox, another church member, and said, "I don't know whether we ought to let those Pentecostal folks come or not."

Of course, it was a public meeting, so even if we'd wanted to, we couldn't have kept them from coming!

Mr. Curry went on to say to Mr. Cox, "If that speaking in tongues gets in here, I'm going to pull my family out of this church! I won't keep going here."

Then Mr. Curry and his wife left for Europe, and while they were gone, I received the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with tongues. As I said, I didn't share this news with the congregation at that time because I was a little disappointed about it and didn't "feel the power" the way I thought I ought to feel it.

However, I did talk to one person privately about my infilling experience, and that was Mr. Cox. Actually, Mr. Cox was a very spiritual and biblical man, and he figured out what had happened to me before I said anything. He and his family were the ones who graciously allowed me to stay with them whenever I traveled out into the country to preach on weekends.

Mr. Cox told me what Mr. Curry had said before he left about the Pentecostal folks coming to our church. Later after Mr. Curry had been back for a while, Mr. Cox told me of another conversation he'd had with him.

Mr. Curry said to Mr. Cox, "Something has happened to our little preacher while I was gone!"

Mr. Cox thought, Who told Mr. Curry what happened to our preacher? I know I didn't tell him! Maybe Brother Kenneth told

someone else, and it leaked out somehow. Then Mr. Cox said,

"What do you mean, something happened to him?"

"Well," Mr. Curry said, "he's a better preacher than he was before."

Mr. Cox replied, "Well, Mr. Curry, I always thought Brother Kenneth was a pretty powerful preacher."

"Oh, I did to!" Mr. Curry answered. "But I'm telling you, he has something he didn't used to have!"

By then, Mr. Cox realized that no one had told Mr. Curry anything.

So to encourage Mr. Curry to keep talking, Mr. Cox said, "Oh, sure enough. Well, what is it that our preacher has?"

"Well," Mr. Curry said, "I don't know what it is. But nowadays when he preaches, you can feel it! When he talks, he has a power he didn't used to have!"

The church members were sensing the extra power in my life, even if I wasn't!

"I've always enjoyed Brother Kenneth's preaching," Mr. Curry continued. "But I'll tell you, when he preaches now, it hits you. His message has a punch to it! His words have authority behind them they didn't have before."

Mr. Cox thought, Well, I better tell Mr. Curry what really happened to Brother Kenneth before he hears it from someone else in a negative context. So Mr. Cox said, "Do you want to know what happened to our little preacher while you were gone?"

"Yes!" Mr. Curry replied.

"He was baptized with the Holy Ghost and spoke with other tongues."

Mr. Cox told me later, "When I said that to Mr. Curry, he dropped his head and didn't say anything for a long time. I didn't know if he was going to look up and say, 'Well, that's it! I'm pulling my family out even if it creates division in the church.' I didn't know what he was going to say!

"But when Mr. Curry looked up, he had tears in his eyes," Mr. Cox told me. "And he said, 'Well, I'll tell you one thing about it—it makes a believer out of me. I heard Brother Kenneth preach before, and I've heard him preach since. There is a power, a depth of spirituality he didn't have before."

When I heard what Mr. Curry said, I started repenting. I prayed, "Dear God, I had that power all the time, but I doubted

it. Now I understand that this power wasn't given to me just for my individual benefit. It was given to bless others. That's why my congregation can tell something has happened to me, even if I can't!"

Then I began to notice the difference, too, even in my personal life. I'd come up against tests, trials, and temptations that used to take everything I had to barely squeak through them. But since I received the Holy Ghost, I noticed I had an extra "something"

that helped me come through trials and temptations with a new sense of victory!

I prayed, "Dear Lord, I had this wrong idea in my mind about power. I thought that some way or another, power would be something I'd be able to feel physically. I thought I'd feel like I was about to blow up like a ton of dynamite! And because I haven't felt that way physically, I thought I didn't have any power.

"But You said that out of my innermost being would flow rivers of living water and that those rivers would flow out to bless others [John 7:37-39]. That's the purpose of the power I received from the Holy Ghost, and my congregation can tell the difference!"

Soon it wasn't just Mr. Curry who was talking about the difference in my preaching. Everyone in the church was talking about it as well! They said to each other, "What has happened to our preacher? He's got power! What's his secret? Whatever it is, I want it!"

Finally, I decided it was time to tell the congregation what had happened to me. I said, "All I know is that I got filled with the Holy Ghost and started speaking in tongues. You'll receive power, too, when you receive the Holy Ghost and speak with tongues."

That divine power wasn't evident in my life until I was filled with the Spirit, and my congregation knew it! After all, they had been hearing me preach for the previous two years and hadn't noticed that kind of power in my preaching!

Praise God, my testimony made such an impression on the people that almost every single one of them eventually got filled with the Holy Ghost. And it wasn't long before we'd turned that church into a Full Gospel church! We never lost a family. Everyone kept coming. In fact, the church grew even bigger in the years that followed!

After that experience, I never again doubted the benefits I'd received when I was filled with the Holy Ghost. I understood that it wasn't a matter of "feeling" power. It was a matter of yielding to the Holy Spirit.

It was a matter of releasing the power of the Greater One Who lives within me.