If we just ask our selves, ‘What could be fundamentally wrong with women functioning in ministry, serving others from a heart of compassion and using their God-given gifts? What moral or ethical principle might that violate?” Then we shortly realize that the only possible violation of principle would be if a woman’s ministry somehow violated God’s order for the relationships between men and woman, husbands and wives. In both of the ‘problem passages” under consideration, Paul appeals to the divine order in marriage as the basis of his concern.

Thus we realize that women are only restricted in ministry in a very small sense. In so many other ways, God wants to use women for His glory, and He has been doing that for thousands of years. Scripture speaks of many positive contributions that women have made to God’s kingdom, some of which we have already considered. Let us not forget that some of Jesus’ closest friends were women (see John 11:5), and that women supported His ministry financially (see Luke 8:1-3), something that is not said of any men. The woman at the well of Samaria shared Christ with the men of her village, and many believed in Him (see John 4:28-30, 39). A female disciple named Tabitha is said to have been ‘abounding with deeds of kindness and charity which she continually did” (Acts 9:36). It was a woman who anointed Jesus for burial, and He commended her for it when certain men complained (see Mark 14:3-9). Finally, the Bible records that it was women who wept for Jesus as He carried His cross through the streets of Jerusalem, something not said of any men. These examples and many like them should encourage women to rise up and fulfill their God-ordained ministries. We need them all!

Another woman whom God raised up as a leader in Israel was Deborah, who lived during the times of Israel’s judges. She, too, was a prophetess, and was just as much a judge over Israel as were Gideon, Jeptha and Samson during their lives. We are informed that ‘the sons of Israel came up to her for judgment” (Judg. 4:5). So she rendered decisions for men, not just women. There can be no mistaking this: A woman told men what to do, and God anointed her to do it.

Like most women whom God calls into leadership, Deborah apparently faced at least one man who had difficulty receiving God’s word through a female vessel. His name was Barak, and because he was skeptical about Deborah’s prophetic instructions for him to go to war against Canaanite general Sisera, she informed him that the honor of killing Sisera would go to a woman. She was right, and a woman named Jael is remembered in Scripture as the lady who drove a tent peg through sleeping Sisera’s head (see Judg. 4). The story ends with Barak singing a duet with Deborah! Some of the lyrics are full of praises for both Deborah and Jael (see Judg. 5), and so perhaps Barak became a believer in ‘women’s ministry” after all.

A third woman who is mentioned in the Old Testament as being a well-respected prophetess is Huldah. God used her to give reliable prophetic insight and instruction to a man, the troubled king of Judah, Josiah (see 2 Kin. 22). Again we see an example of God using a woman to instruct a man. Most likely, Huldah was used by God in such a ministry with some degree of regularity, otherwise Josiah would not have had such faith in what she said to him.

But why did God call Miriam, Deborah and Huldah as prophetesses? Couldn’t He have called men instead?

Certainly God could have called men to do exactly what those three women did. But He didn’t. And no one knows why. What we should learn from this is that we had better be careful about putting God in a box when it comes to whom He calls to ministry. Although God normally chose men for leadership tasks in the Old Testament, sometime He chose women.

Finally, it should be noted that all three preeminent examples of female ministers in the Old Testament were prophetesses. There are some Old Testament ministries to which no women were called. For example, there are no women who were called to be priests. Thus God might reserve some ministry offices exclusively for men.

Every person who has truly believed in the Lord Jesus has experienced a work of the Holy Spirit in his life. His inward person, or spirit, has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit (see Tit. 3:5), and the Holy Spirit now lives within him (see Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 6:19). He has been “born of the Spirit” (John 3:5).

Not understanding this, many Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians have made the error of telling certain believers that they did not posses the Holy Spirit unless they had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues. But this error is obvious from Scripture and from experience. Many non-Charismatic/Pentecostal believers have much more evidence of the indwelling Spirit than some Charismatic/Pentecostal believers! They manifest the fruits of the Spirit listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23 to a much greater degree, something that would be impossible apart from have the indwelling Holy Spirit!

Just because a person has been born of the Spirit, however, does not guarantee that he has also been baptized in the Holy Spirit. According to the Bible, being born of the Holy Spirit and being baptized in the Holy Spirit are normally two distinct experiences.

As we begin to explore this subject, let us first consider what Jesus once said about the Holy Spirit to an unsaved woman at a well in Samaria:

If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water….Everyone who drinks of this water [from the well] will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (John 4:10, 13-14).

It seems reasonable to conclude that the indwelling living water of which Jesus spoke represents the Holy Spirit who indwells those who believe. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus again used the same phrase, “living water,” and there is no doubt that He was speaking about the Holy Spirit:

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.'” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:37-39; emphasis added).

In this instance Jesus did not speak of living water becoming “a well of water springing up to eternal life.” Rather, this time the living water becomes rivers that flow from the recipient’s innermost being.

These two similar passages from John’s Gospel beautifully illustrate the difference between being born of the Spirit and being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Being born of the Spirit is primarily for the benefit of the one who is born again, that he might enjoy eternal life. When one is born again by the Spirit, he has a reservoir of Spirit within him that gives him eternal life.

Being baptized in the Holy Spirit, however, is primarily for the benefit of others, as it equips believers to minister to other people by the power of the Spirit. “Rivers of living water” will flow from their innermost beings, bringing God’s blessings to others by the power of the Spirit.

How desperately we need the help of the Holy Spirit to minister to others! Without His help, we can never hope to make disciples of all nations. That is, in fact, the very reason Jesus promised to baptize believers in the Holy Spirit—so the world would hear the gospel. He said to His disciples:

Behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49, emphasis added).

Luke also records Jesus as saying:

It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:7-8, emphasis added).

Jesus told His disciples not even to leave Jerusalem until they were “clothed with power from on high.” He knew they would be essentially powerless otherwise, sure to fail at the task He had given them. We note that once they were baptized in the Holy Spirit, however, God began to use them supernaturally to spread the gospel.

Many millions of Christians around the world, after being baptized in the Holy Spirit, have experienced a new dimension of power, particularly when witnessing to the unsaved. They found that their words were more convicting, and that they sometimes quoted scriptures they didn’t realize they knew. Some found themselves called and specifically gifted for a certain ministry, such as evangelism. Others discovered that God used them as He willed in various supernatural gifts of the Spirit. Their experience is thoroughly biblical. Those who oppose their experience have no biblical basis for their opposition. They are, in fact, fighting against God.

Let’s review the five examples. In at least four of them, the baptism in the Holy Spirit was an experience that occurred after salvation.

In three of them, Scripture plainly states that the recipients spoke with other tongues. Moreover, in Paul’s meeting with Ananias, his experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit was not actually described, but we know that eventually he did speak in tongues. That represents the fourth case.

In the remaining case, something supernatural occurred when the believers in Samaria received the Holy Spirit because Simon tried to buy the power to impart the Holy Spirit.

Thus the evidence is quite clear. In the early church, born-again believers received a second experience with the Holy Spirit, and when they did, they spoke in other tongues. This should not surprise us, because Jesus said that those who believe in Him would speak in new tongues.

So we have conclusive evidence that every one who is born again should also experience another work of the Holy Spirit—that of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Moreover, every believer should expect to speak with other tongues when he does receive the Holy Spirit baptism.

According to Paul, when a believer prays in tongues, it is not his mind praying but rather, his spirit:

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also (1 Cor. 14:14-15).

Paul said that when he prayed in a tongue, his mind was unfruitful. That means his mind had no part in it, and he did not understand what he was praying in tongues. So, rather than praying all the time in tongues without understanding what he was saying, Paul also spent time praying with his mind in his own language. He spent time singing in tongues as well as singing in his own language. There is a place for both kinds of praying and singing, and we would be wise to follow Paul’s balanced example.

Notice also that, for Paul, speaking in tongues was just as much subject to his own will as was speaking in his known language. He said, “I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also.” Critics often claim that if modern tongues speaking was truly a gift from the Spirit, one would not be able to have control over it, lest he be guilty of controlling God. But such an idea is unfounded. Modern and ancient tongues speaking is under the control of the individual as God planned it would be. Critics might as well say that people who have hands that are truly made by God have no control over their hands, and that people who make conscious decisions to use their hands are attempting to control God.

Once you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you can easily prove to yourself that your utterance in tongues is coming from your spirit rather than your mind. First, try to carry on a conversation with someone at the same time as you read this book. You’ll find that you can’t do both at the same time. You will discover, however, that you can continually speak in tongues as you continually read this book. The reason is because you aren’t using your mind to speak in tongues—that utterance comes from your spirit. So as you use your spirit to pray, you can use your mind to read and understand.

As one reads through the book of Acts, the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church is evident on every page. If you remove the work of the Holy Spirit from the book of Acts you have virtually nothing left. Truly, He empowered the first disciples to “turn the world upside down” (see Acts 17:6; KJV).

The places in the world today where the church is expanding the fastest are those places where Jesus’ followers are yielded to and empowered by the Holy Spirit. This should not surprise us. The Holy Spirit can accomplish more in ten seconds than we can accomplish in ten thousand years of our own efforts. Thus it is of vital importance that the disciple-making minister understand what Scripture teaches about the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives and ministries of believers.

In the book of Acts, we frequently find examples of believers being baptized in the Holy Spirit and empowered for ministry. We would be wise to study the subject so that we can, if possible, experience what they experienced and enjoy the miraculous help from the Holy Spirit that they enjoyed. Although some claim that such miraculous works of the Holy Spirit were confined to the age of the original apostles, I find no scriptural, historical or logical support for such an opinion. It is a theory born from unbelief. Those who believe what God’s Word promises will experience the promised blessings. Like the unbelieving Israelites who failed to enter the Promised Land, those who don’t believe God’s promises today will fail to enter into all that God has prepared for them. Which category are you in? Personally, I’m among the believers.

When a believer is baptized in the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of his experience will be that he speaks in a new language, what Scripture refers to as “new tongues” or “other tongues.” Numerous scriptures support this fact. Let us consider them.

First, during the final moments before to His ascension, Jesus said that one of the signs that would follow believers is that they would speak in new tongues:

Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues (Mark 16:15-17, emphasis added).

Some commentators claim these verses should not be in our Bible because certain ancient manuscripts of the New Testament don’t include them. Many of the ancient manuscripts, however, do include them, and none of the many English translations I’ve read omit them. Beyond that, what Jesus said in these verses correlates perfectly with the experience of the early church as recorded in the book of Acts.

There are five examples in the book of Acts of believers being initially baptized in the Holy Spirit. Let’s consider all five, and as we do, we will continually ask two questions: (1) Was the baptism in the Holy Spirit an experience subsequent to salvation? and (2) Did the recipients speak in new tongues? This will help us to understand God’s will for believers today.

The third mention in the book of Acts of someone receiving the Holy Spirit is the case of Saul of Tarsus, later known as the apostle Paul. He had been saved on the road to Damascus, where he had also been temporarily blinded. Three days after his conversion, a man named Ananias was divinely sent to him:

So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he arose and was baptized (Acts 9:17-18).

There is no doubt that Saul was born again before Ananias arrived to pray for him. He believed in the Lord Jesus when he was still on the road to Damascus, and he immediately obeyed his new Lord’s instructions. Additionally, when Ananias first met Saul, he called him “brother Saul.” Note that Ananias told Saul that he had come so that he would regain his sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Thus for Saul, being filled with, or baptized in, the Holy Spirit occurred three days after his salvation.

The Scriptures don’t record the actual incident of Saul’s being baptized in the Holy Spirit, but it must have happened shortly after Ananias arrived at where Saul was staying. There is no doubt that Saul spoke with other tongues at some point, because he later stated in 1 Corinthians 14:18, “I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all.”