“The Spirit of God never works apart from His Word so it’s to have God’s Spirit; to take in His Word and fill your heart with it, renewing your mind,” explains Richard Jordan. “It’s an objective, measurable operation of the Holy Spirit. It’s something that can be measured by words on a page in the Bible and be identified in your life in specific ways.
“To be filled with anything is to be saturated by that thing to the point of total dominion and complete control of your life.
“In Luke 5, when it says the Pharisees were ‘filled with fear,’ that’s saying they were so astonished and afraid that the fear just took control of them; the emotion of fear just completely consumed them to the place they were incapable of doing anything.
“In Luke 6:11, they were ‘filled with madness,’ meaning they were completely controlled by their rage and it gripped them and carried them along and they couldn’t get shed of it.
“John 16:6 says ‘sorrow hath filled your heart.’ Same thing. The emotion grabbed them and wrenched them to a place of being helpless to it.
“It has to do with surrender. It’s the absolute surrender of your life and your thinking to the control of the Holy Spirit so that He carries you along through life.
“Being filled with the Holy Spirit is you lose, you can’t, you give up and He does. Paul said, ‘I’m crucified.’ If your Christian life is going to be what God produces, it won’t be you.
“It requires the DEATH of selfishness and of self-will in your life. It isn’t my thinking, my way. It’s His way. Moment by moment, day by day, I am to live in an attitude of complete, total surrender to the Spirit of Almighty
“Like I said, it’s not simply a subjective feeling you get inside, that your emotions point you to. It’s an objective work of God the Holy Spirit in a non-experiential realm in your life, and you can measure it and identify it objectively.
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"Just as Paul writes to be 'filled with the Spirit,' he refers to 'speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.'
"This same advice is found in Colossians 3:16: 'Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.'
“If you get the same results from being filled with the Spirit that you get from letting the Word dwell in you richly, what does that tell you?!
“Listen, if you get exactly the same results, doesn’t that tell you that being filled with the Spirit is equal to being filled with the Word of God? Sure it does!
“It’s the Holy Spirit working THROUGH the Word of God to fill your life with the qualities of spiritual maturity. It’s taking the Word of Christ and letting it INFUSE every part of your being.
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“One of my favorite verses is I Thessalonians 2:13. Paul says, ‘For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you ‘that believe.’
“There’s a lot of things to get from that verse. It’s the Word of God that effectually works in people that believe. When you by faith take the Word of God and step out upon what God says, God the Holy Spirit takes His Word . . .
“God the Holy Spirit today works indirectly in your life through the instrumentality of the Word of God as you by faith rest upon it. I don’t know how to say that any clearer; if I did, I’d say it another way.
“The way God’s going to work in your life, it isn’t you sitting down and saying, ‘Lord, please take this problem out of my life,’ and God’s just going to zap you and it’s going to be gone. That isn’t how that happens.
“As you objectively take your thinking processes, your actions, your attitudes and begin to think in your own heart and mind the way God says He thinks in His Word, that is God the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
“So rather than asking God to move and do out there, it’s His Word that WORKS and He’s in us, living His life out through our mortal bodies as we walk by faith in what He says in His Word.
“If something is effectual, that means it WORKS. It’s effective; it gets the job done. It’s not a misfire. It works effectually IN you. That’s where God’s working starts. It’s in you that BELIEVE! That’s the catalyst of it.
“Colossians 1:9 says, ‘For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be FILLED with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.’
“There’s that word again! Let the Word of Christ DWELL in you! Let it come and fill up your life and be at home in you and live there!
*****
“The first thing God is interested in you understanding about Jesus Christ is not His earthly life and ministry. That’s what religion wants you to know about.
“When you look back to Calvary and watch all the things that happen there, then the Lord speaks seven times. Now, you can only see into the heart of a person when the words come out of their mouth. You can’t watch the actions of a person and tell exactly what’s inside of them. They can be fooling you.
“But you listen to the words that come out a person’s mouth and the Lord says that’s where the Spirit’s revealed. That’s where your inner man comes out.
“Paul implores the Philippians to ‘only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.’ The use of the word conversation doesn’t have to do with speaking:
“In the middle of that word are the words ‘converse’ and ‘concourse.’ That doesn’t just have to do with speaking. When you’re conversant with something, you’re intimate in the way it works.
"You know how it happens and how it’s accomplished, and you can become conversant with a book, or a subject, or with a computer, or whatever it is you want to be conversant with. You have a thorough knowledge of it where you’re able to live it and handle it and deal with it.
“Conversation is more than just being able to talk about it. It’s that you get right into it, and into its life, and let what’s at the basis of who you are, and the way you live, be as ‘becometh the gospel of Christ.’ Let your manner of life, your lifestyle, who you are be becoming, adorned, make look good…
“Let who you are down inside adorn the doctrine. It’s Titus 2 terminology. Or as Paul writes in Philippians:
[8] Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, [9] And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: [10] That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.
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