My first dose of Pentecostal charismatic experience was an utter failure on my part. God did His part. The Holy Spirit provided it all perfectly. But I knew what to do and failed miserably. It started with a vision. A bucket of building sand on a building site was there in the vision, as, in private, I asked God earnestly for the Holy Spirit. The bucket was tipped out, and sand flowed out of it. The words BUILD THE TEMPLE appeared. Later it was all confirmed threefold in a church, proving to me it was from God. I knew what it meant. I must not keep to myself what I am given, because no Temple gets built that way. I must tip it out. Share it with the Temple, to help build it. Months later it was time to do what I was told. I failed. I was asking around at church about Pentecostal gifts like tongues. A leader took me to a church far out of the city centre where he assured me I would see tongues in evidence: The real deal. He was right. The service was blessed by a pastor standing at the microphone and speaking a wondrously eloquent message in a non-human, heavenly language. Every word of it powerfully inspired words in English in my head. This was how I was given the interpretation. But I froze. I should have emptied the bucket out. I should have stood up and spoken those holy words. “Consider the trees,” it went. “They put forth buds and leaves. They do so by the power of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” It carried on further. Had I spoken up, the pastor speaking would have known I too had the same Spirit and faith he had in giving the tongues message. He knew the interpretation too, because seconds later he spoke it at the microphone. It was exactly the same words I was given. So I knew he was blessed and a true believer, but he did not know the same about me. This ended badly later on. My first chance to obey the heavenly vision, to build the Temple, and I failed miserably.
