There is so much more leading up the moment of my baptism in the Holy Spirit, but let’s rewind to about 8 months before I headed to ministry school. I had recently returned to Mauritius from Norway, and about 10 months prior to this, I had entered a season where I decided to let go of everything I held onto in terms of beliefs and religion in order to find the truth of who God really is. I said, “Jesus, I need to let go of you enough that if I find You I know that You are real, and I don’t want to find you through a book, or a person, I need to…” in my words today, “encounter Your Person.”
He did incredible things in that season, and broke off a lot of fear that He replaced with boldness, dreams, freedom, pursuit, and fun. Fast forward those 10 months and I was back in Mauritius, hoping to head back to Norway to settle down. My plan was to do a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oslo, and I would receive the response about 3-4 months later: in March/April. Around January, God began to give me imagery to describe my current state and what I was really asking for. Several times He showed me an image of me being in something almost like an egg, which was made of thick semi-transparent plastic, but the plastic was so thick that I could only see a blur of what was on the other side. There was something inside of me that knew that this reality on the other side was what I was asking to be revealed.
That imagery tugged my heart with a growing longing to see this reality clearly and break through the space I was in to fully experience this mysterious reality that somehow seemed more real that anything I currently knew. Around mid to late March I received an answer from the University of Oslo. I had been accepted into their Master’s degree, and had 2 weeks to respond with acceptance or decline to their invitation. I could feel with assurance that God was asking me to say no, and I said to God, “okay, I’ll say no, but I need to step into this reality that you’re showing me if I’m going to say no.” God was so gracious and kind.
One weekend during those two weeks I was dog sitting for my brother. Alone in the house, dogs and myself, I sat on the couch and made a decision. This was the moment.
“Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
I made the decision that nothing was going to get in the way of me breaking through whatever this thick plastic represented, and stepping into the reality that God had shown me existed on the other side.
So many distractions and threats filled my mind: “you need to go and do this”, “if you don’t write this down you’ll forget to do it later, and if you forget to do it…” Somehow all of the possible distractions and draws away from this moment presented themselves for me to choose whether to continue, whether this truth I was pursuing to find was more important than these other tasks, threats and responsibilities that were presenting themselves. I chose to pursue the truth I was seeking.
Then more thoughts and images of expectations of the world and belief systems moved through my mind, and as I chose to pursue the truth that God had shown me a blurry image of, it felt like the layers of the world were peeling off of me one by one. As I chose Him, to see Him and where He was leading me above everything else that presented itself to me, the layers peeled off, and broke off, until the moment came where it felt like He baptized me into an ocean of His love, and into living from the Spirit rather than the flesh.
I’m not sure if many have as extreme of an experience, but I felt such a tangible difference before and after this moment. I didn’t have the language fully formed for it, or people around me that I knew I could ask to explain, but what I could discern or describe at that point was that it felt like I started living from the leading of my spirit rather than my body or soul, that the cravings or leadings I had before, even in terms of what food to eat, were from a place of benefiting my body rather than following its cravings. It was interesting and beautiful. I tangibly felt baptized in Love, and I could feel an “intuition” leading me that I didn’t have words for yet. Later on I found out that the “intuition” that I had a constant desire to seek, follow, be sensitive to and know was actually Holy Spirit. After spending nights on my rooftop getting to know and falling in love with a Person that God was introducing me to, He introduced Himself to me as Yeshua.
He began leading me into the Bible and leading me into repentance, from purity in action to purity of the heart. That purity of the heart leading to greater purity in action. The purity in action began to be from a place of knowing my worth, rather than fearing punishment or missing the mark in obedience. He showed me that He made me worthy of respecting my value rather than giving it away, and that that was why He called me not to sin. Sin falls short of our value in God, He created us as sons and daughters in His image. We were made for oneness with the Holy One, a oneness that creates wholeness (Romans 5:1). Anything outside of that is missing the mark of who He created us to be. But we won’t hit the mark by looking away from it.
I’ve missed the mark since this moment, but I know that oneness with Him, knowing Him and being known by Him, is the only way to be whole, and I intend to pursue this oneness and the reality of the kingdom of God for the rest of my days. If better is one day in His courts than thousands elsewhere, then I too would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than glance at the tent of wicked (Psalm 84:10).