Pneuma Review: Please tell our readers about your Pentecostal roots.

Andrew Gabriel: I grew up worshipping in primarily Pentecostal churches, although we did, at times, attend some other denominational churches. After graduating from high school, I studied at a Pentecostal Bible college, and eventually I was ordained in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, as I still am today.

Pneuma Review: In your book, Simply Spirit-Filled, you said that at one point in your life you were a spiritual experience junkie. Please explain what you mean by that and why you went through that phase.

Andrew K. Gabriel, Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit (Emanate Books, 2019), 179 pages.
Read John Lathrop’s review.
Read an excerpt from the book: “Two Common Myths about the Spirit-Filled Life.”

Andrew Gabriel: As I think about it now, the term ‘junkie’ might sound pejorative, but I don’t mean it to be. My heart was certainly in the right place. I was a young, somewhat naïve, Christian who wanted “all that God has for me,” as the preachers used to put it. As a result, you could say that I was “all in” when it came to trying to experience God.

The result was that, like some others around me, I wasn’t too concerned with trying to discern if experiences were authentically from God, or if they were emotional experiences that were being manufactured by the groups that I worshipped with. And, for the most part, I think the people that were manufacturing those experiences had good hearts too. They also wanted to experience God, but they thought that there were only certain ways to do so. So, for example, the music had to be a certain way, or maybe they would “encourage” you to fall down.

Pneuma Review: Later in your life you became quite skeptical of spiritual experiences. What factors contributed to that skepticism and what eventually brought you back to again appreciate the value of these spiritual experiences?

Andrew Gabriel: I think my skepticism was simply me over reacting to my realization that not everything I had experienced in the church was truly from God. And it probably stemmed from the same thing that made me a spiritual experience junkie in the first place—namely, a desire to experience God. Only now, I was more concerned with having authentic experiences of God.

Andrew Gabriel is an ordained minister; he holds credentials with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. He has a doctoral degree from McMaster Divinity College and is associate professor of theology at Horizon College and Seminary in Saskatoon, Canada. He has also served in pastoral ministry. Dr. Gabriel, whose Pentecostal roots go back to his childhood, brings both theology and his practical experience of the church together in this book. He has written other books which are more academic in content. Simply Spirit-Filled is written on a more popular level which makes it accessible to a wider readership. His desires for this book are that it will help those who are skeptical about experiencing the Holy Spirit to be more open to Him, and to help those who are very open to experiences of the Spirit to be more discerning (page 10).

The book consists of seven chapters and a postscript prayer. The chapter titles are: “Confessions of a Recovering Spirit-Experience Junkie,” “Shake and Bake,” “Knock, Knock, Who’s There?,” “Crazy Talk,” “Living Large,” “ Measuring Up?,” and “What Does It Mean to Be Spirit-Filled?” The postscript prayer is the text of Ephesians 3:16-21. In the course of these chapters the author weaves theology, observation, and personal experience together as he deals with such subjects as hearing God, speaking in tongues, shaking, being slain in the Spirit (people falling over, usually backwards), the health and wealth gospel, and the characteristics of a Spirit-filled person. At the end of each chapter there are questions for reflection or discussion. These questions help the reader interact with the material in each chapter. This book can be used for either personal or group study.

I particularly enjoyed Gabriel’s treatment of some of the more controversial physical manifestations that are sometimes seen in Pentecostal/Charismatic meetings. I am referring here to people shaking and being slain in the Spirit. In addressing these manifestations the author avoids making general statements that either wholeheartedly endorse or completely condemn such manifestations. He acknowledges that there are a number of possible reasons why people may exhibit these manifestations. Sometimes people behave in these ways because the physical reactions have been subtlety, but humanly, prompted. Gabriel knows this, in part, because of his own experience. He admits he copied the behavior of others at times, including shaking (page 4). So, people may feel a sort of “peer pressure” to conform to what others are doing. Another example, which he points out, is that a person may be primed to expect to be slain in the Spirit by having “catchers” put in place behind them prior to receiving ministry (page 32). There is an element of community pressure to conform. That being said, Gabriel believes that at times manifestations such as shaking and being slain in the Spirit are genuine responses to the Presence and power of God.