To be filled with the Spirit

(working on new article to post tomorrow. in meantime:

“Don’t do anything that doesn’t require faith,” advises a preacher. “The key to momentum is to always having something in faith to look forward to; something to anticipate. We live by faith or we don’t live at all. Either we venture or we vegetate.”

I am oft-reminded of an old TV interview Oprah had with a woman who was kidnapped by guerillas and held hostage in the deep jungles of Columbia for six-plus years (2002-2008), tortured and in solitary confinement where she had to ask permission just to use the toilet or brush her teeth.

The woman, who became a French politician, said one of the biggest lessons learned from the ordeal, where she says she was stretched to the absolute limits of loneliness, sorrow and deprivation of all that made life worth living, was, “Whoever the person you ultimately want to be, that one you always dream about one day becoming, just be that person right now. You don’t have to wait.”

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When Paul tells the Philippians to “only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ,' the conversation doesn’t have to do with speaking.

“In the middle of that word are the words ‘converse’ and ‘concourse,’ " explains Richard Jordan. "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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When Paul advises to “be filled with the Spirit” in Ephesians 5, he’s not talking about getting more of the Spirit of God; it’s to be filled by His instrumentality.

“God the Holy Spirit is going to be used by the Father to put some things into you that ought to be there. It isn’t about putting more of the Spirit of God in you; it’s rather by the instrumentality of the Spirit of God--by the working of Holy Spirit --that some things are going to begin to be produced in your life.

“What it is is to have God’s Word—the Spirit of God never works apart from His Word. It’s to have God’s Spirit; take His Word and fill your heart, your understanding, and renew your mind with an understanding of what it is God’s doing.

“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 that it completely dominates and controls your life.

“In Luke 5, when it says the Pharisees were ‘filled with fear,’ that’s saying they were so astonished and afraid that fear just took control of them, and the emotion of fear just completely consumed them to the place they were incapable of doing anything because it controlled them.

“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.’ The emotion just came in and grabbed them and wrenched them to the place that they couldn’t get out from under the control of it.

“We could go on and on with passages like that. To ‘be filled with the Spirit’ simply means to be under the complete, total dominion and domination of the Holy Spirit.

“It has to do with surrender. Boy, we don’t like that word. It’s the total 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. We got this whole thing about ‘my way or the highway,’ but it isn’t that.

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“I was in the bookstore specifically looking for books telling you how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and didn’t find one that had less than six steps to get there and the first two had to do with ‘confessing your sins’ and all that kind of bunk.

“How do you get there? To be filled with the Spirit is easy to understand; it means, ‘I surrender to His control. He controls me moment by moment, day by day.’ My life is to be lived in an attitude of complete, total surrender to the spirit of Almighty God.

“How in the world do I do that? It’s always fascinated me why there’s so much confusion about what it is that produces--what the means of producing this filling of the Spirit is.

“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 being filled with the Word of God, 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!

“Being ‘filled with the Spirit of God’ is equivalent to saying, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.’ 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. It’s having your thinking and actions controlled by the Word of God.

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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, I want you to take away 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 and your attitude and bring them under the control and authority of the Word of God . . . As you 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 looking out there, we look in here. 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!"