Anyone who has made homemade mashed potatoes knows the difference. Yukon Golds, butter, heavy cream, maybe a few chives. It takes peeling, washing, two pots and a mess. Instant mashed potatoes take a kettle and a minute. They look similar on the plate, and you can have them every day. But no one confuses the two once they have tasted the real thing.
Pentecostal and charismatic churches face the same temptation. It is easy to trade the authentic move of the Holy Spirit for something that can be had more frequently, more conveniently and more predictably. It looks like the real thing. It has the form, but not the power. Shaking, falling, shouting: all of it can be done on command. The honest question is whether the Holy Spirit was on it, or whether people were simply doing what they thought was expected.
This is not an argument against Pentecostal expression. The altar, the laying on of hands, speaking in tongues and the gifts of the Spirit are gifts from God. It is an argument against substitutes.
Why the Foundation Comes First
Before any church can pursue Pentecostal power well, it needs a foundation. The church in Corinth was full of spiritual gifts and full of dysfunction, and the Apostle Paul’s answer was not to start with the gifts. He wrote, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Notice the word decided. Paul made a choice about what would come first. The cross is not a stage a church outgrows on the way to the supernatural. It is the ground the supernatural stands on.
Simon and the Power He Could Not Buy
Acts 8 tells the story of the gospel reaching Samaria. Peter and John came down from Jerusalem, prayed for the new believers and laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. A man named Simon, who had been known in Samaria for his magic, watched it happen. “When Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 8:18-19).
It is easy to read this passage as Peter. Most of us are closer to Simon than we would like to admit. Simon saw the power of God and wanted it, which is how many people first come to seek God at all. He was even responsive when he was corrected, asking Peter to pray for him. But one thing was missing: Simon never looked toward Jesus. He looked to his own ability to get what he wanted.
Peter’s reply is blunt: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20).
1. Jesus Must Be the Source
The Pentecostal experience cannot be bought, and it cannot be earned. Many sincere believers have been told that the way to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit is to try harder: push, pray through, fast, give, dance, shout and keep going until something happens. Effort is not the problem, but effort is not the source. Jesus is. The Spirit is a gift to be received, not a reward to be achieved.
2. Jesus Must Be the Highest
Peter’s final words to Simon are, “For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity” (Acts 8:23). The language echoes Deuteronomy 29, which warns of a heart turning away from the Lord to serve other gods, “a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit” (Deuteronomy 29:18). Bitterness is the fruit of idolatry.
A church can make an idol of its own expressions. It happens whenever people say they love Jesus, but what they really want is a certain kind of service, a certain manifestation, a certain sign that God showed up. Jesus becomes a side note. The King of kings is treated like an option, and the Lord of lords like a mascot.
Israel’s history gives a clear picture. In the wilderness, when fiery serpents bit the people, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who looked at it lived (Numbers 21:4-9). God used it to heal. But centuries later King Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan)” (2 Kings 18:4).
God had used it, but it was never God, and it was never the point. Jesus explained what the serpent was for: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The thing God used to heal was meant to point to the One who would save.
When a church’s experience of the Spirit falls off in the parking lot, the reason is usually here. Either Jesus is not the source, or Jesus is not the highest. God’s warning through Isaiah still applies: “this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).
3. Jesus Must Be Our Friend
Jesus told His disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Friendship means participation.
Receiving the Spirit is not the same as doing nothing. Many people who sincerely want the baptism in the Holy Spirit refuse to fake it, and they are right. But some of them are waiting for an experience so overwhelming that they will no longer be able to function, a kick in the chest. Those experiences happen, and they make the best stories. More often, the Spirit’s touch is a tap on the shoulder. You know He is there. You still have to turn around and respond.
John the Baptist promised that Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). The fire is real, and it comes from Jesus. Friends of Jesus step into what He gives.
The Fern Fire and the Real Fire
There is a story from a struggling Mississippi church in the early 2000s about a former pastor who hid pyrotechnics in a fern on the platform, set it off mid-sermon, and then advertised in the newspaper that revival had broken out at “the church with the burning bush.”
Few churches go that far. But many believers have accepted something like it: a placebo that feels good in the moment and changes nothing, an experience that ends at the door. The prophet Jeremiah described something different, “a burning fire shut up in my bones” (Jeremiah 20:9). That fire does not need to be staged.
Paul knew both sides of the real thing. “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:13-14). Real Spirit-filled life holds both: a burning passion toward God and a steady mind for serving people.
The Experience Points to Jesus
The bronze serpent was lifted up to point to Jesus. The Pentecostal experience works the same way. It comes from Jesus so that it magnifies Jesus. When He is the source and He is the highest, the power of God does not fall off in the parking lot. It changes lives.
So stop settling for substitutes. Ask God to purge any tolerance for the instant version, anything that stands in the place of the real fire. We do not need a fern fire. We need a fresh fire. We do not need a pyrotechnic fire. We need a Pentecostal fire.