A few days ago, I posted the first part of my story which continues here.

I wonder if my father really thought that what had happened that night had been real. I was so young, could I really understand it? Had I understood the simple gospel not so very different from the one my wife would teach our sunday school almost thirty years later? Could this short conversation which ended in me praying really make such a difference to me? Could it be true that I had accepted Christ at such a young age?

Well I remember being in no doubt about it the next morning when I had an argument with a member of my family. I wanted us to tell my two year old sister, the grown-up believed she couldn't understand yet. �No ones too young� I argued.

Arguing. Now there's a theme for my life. For not only did I accept the gospel as true, I would spend much of the rest of my life arguing about it, and about just what the bible says, but more of that in another post.

I am sure my parents at times doubted the veracity of my conversion- what parent of a sometimes rebellious child wouldn't? But I resolved that day to prove anyone who ever doubted my determination to follow christ wrong.

There was something inside that was driving me towards and not away from God. It would never go away. Years later I would realise that it was God that had put it there.

I was fortunate enough to from a young age attend a new church- part of what was eventually to be called �newfrontiers�. Formed from a small group of people who had been thrown out of an evangelical church for speaking in tongues the group originally met in Nigel Ring`s house. It was what was then called �a house church�

Nigel had struck up a friendhip with a man called Terry Virgo who had trained at London Bible college and been exposed to Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones teaching and the charismatic movement. We joined the group just as they started to meet in Claire Hall in Haywards Heath.

As a young child that church made massive impact on me. Nigel's wife was my sunday school teacher and I watched her prophecy on sunday mornings.

Soon I desired to prophecy also and at one stage wrote my lifes goals on the back of a postcard- one was to pophecy, and another was to score a goal in football- something I never did quite manage.

Around this time and still very young I started to ask to be baptised. I wanted to join the many that were regularly baptised in what was a burgeoning church. My parents and the elders were reluctant.

Then, one year, I am fairly sure at the first ever Downs Bible Week I received the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. I remember the experience vividly to this day. The tongues weren't the most important bit- rather it was the sense of being loved by God and marked out as being one of his.

To me receiving the Spirit is always a conscious thing, it always has this element of �now I really know God loves me�. Many have described this as assurance, or empowering for service.

Although I will never forget my first experience of the Holy Spirit I have been blessed to have many such experiences since. Even as I write it I feel a yearning in my heart to know more of God and a greater sense of his empowering. Send more of your Holy Spirit lord to me and the readers of this blog. As William Booth wrote years ago

�God of Elijah here our cry
send the fire
to make us fit to live or die
send the fire today.
To make our weak hearts strong and brave
send the fire today....
look down and see this waiting host
we need another pentecost
the revolution now begin
send the fire today.....�

My story continues at part three