LUKE 11:9-13; EPHESIANS 5:18
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds, and him who knocks, it will be opened.”
Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him (NASB)?
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit (NASB).
INTRODUCTION
Like wind or breath, the Holy Spirit cannot be seen. Jesus declared, God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Some people don’t believe there is a Holy Spirit because they cannot see the Holy Spirit. Dr. Jerry Vines tells a story about a cynic who was talking to a Christian one time about the Holy Spirit. The cynic said, “I don’t believe there is a Holy Spirit.” “I can’t see any Holy Spirit.” He then said to the Christian, “Have you ever seen the Holy Spirit?” The Christian said, “No.” “Have you ever tasted the Holy Spirit?” “No.” “Have you ever smelled the Holy Spirit?” “No.” The cynic said, “Then how do you know there is a Holy Spirit?”
The Christian said to the skeptic, “Well, have you ever seen your brain?” The skeptic replied, “No.” “Have you ever tasted your brain?” “No.” “Have you ever smelled your brain?” “No.” “Then how do you know you have a brain?”
We cannot see the Holy Spirit but we can see the results or effects of His work in our lives. I would like to share with you on the subject: “How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit.”
I. UNDERSTAND THE HOLY SPIRIT
The first step in being filled with the Spirit is, understanding. That is, there are certain things you must know and certain truths God has revealed to us in His Word, the Bible. The first truth you must understand is that God has given His Holy Spirit and He indwells those who have received His Son Jesus Christ. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit dwells within you. Remember, you may not necessarily feel His presence, but that does not mean He is absent. It is the fact of His presence that you must understand. God has promised that the Holy Spirit lives within you if you belong to Christ and God cannot lie. You accept this fact by faith. You must also understand that God commands us to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). That means it is His will and His desire for you to be filled, and to refuse to be filled with the Spirit is to act contrary to the will of God. It is a command and therefore it is His will. God wants to fill you and me with His Spirit. That is a wonderful truth to you and me. God does not give us the full measure of the Spirit grudgingly and unwillingly. No He wants the Holy Spirit to control and guide our lives.
If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13). If you fail to be filled with the Spirit, remember that it is not because of God’s reluctance. The fault is entirely yours. This leads to a further point we must understand, and that is the presence of sin in our lives. What is it that blocks the Holy Spirit in our lives? It is sin. Before you can be filled with the Holy Spirit, you must deal honestly and completely with any known sin in your life. This may be very painful for you and me as we face up to things we have hidden or not realized about our lives. But there will be no filling with the Spirit apart from cleansing from sin, and the first step in cleansing from sin is the awareness of its presence.
There are some preachers today who have bought into the philosophy of our day that says it is not politically correct to preach about sin. In fact, there are some pastors who have removed the word sin from their vocabulary. No wonder the glory of the Lord has departed from such churches (Ekabod). For man calls sin an accident; God calls it abomination. Man calls sin a blunder. God calls it blindness. Man calls sin a chance. God calls it a choice. Man calls sin a defect. God calls it a disease. Man says sin is an error; God calls it enmity. Man says sin is frivolity; God says it is fatality. Man calls sin a trifle; God calls it a tragedy. Man says sin is weakness; God says sin is wickedness. God hates sin just as a doctor hates cancer in a human body. He hates sin like a sharp shooter hates a mad dog in the children’s playground. God hates sin but He loves the sinner that is why He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross to save us from sin.
Most of us have had the experience at one time or another of having our pipes in our homes clogged so that the water came through only in a trickle, or perhaps stopped entirely. So it is with sin in our lives. Sin is like a frozen ice in our pipes, our spiritual life has been frozen by a hostile world. There is only one solution, and that is repentance to clear the blockage and restore the flow of the Holy Spirit. Sin is the great clogger, and the blood of Christ is the great cleanser when applied through repentance and faith.
Therefore, you and I must deal completely with sin if we are to know the infilling with the Holy Spirit. This is not easy because pride is often at the root of our sins, and our pride is often deeply wounded when you and I honestly admit before God and others that we are not as good as we have thought we were. You must not only know your sin, but you must also repent of it. Sin also blinds you spiritually. It blinds you to its awful reality. You must confess your sin to God. You must confess not only what you think is sin, but also what the Holy Spirit labels as sin when you really listen to His voice from the Word of God. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
Confession should be as broad as sin. The Song of Solomon warns about the little foxes, that spoil the vines (2:15). This is the picture of the way little sins can destroy your fruitfulness for the Lord. There may be pride, jealousy, or bitterness in your life. There may be backbiting, impatience, resentment, unkindness or lack of self-control. Any of these can make life miserable for others around you. You must bring every unclean thought to God for cleansing. It can be gluttony or laziness that needs to be dealt with. The Holy Spirit may be speaking to you about the way you use your time, money, your lifestyle, neglect, use or abuse of some gift He has given you. Perhaps your treatment of someone close to you has become cold and indifferent. In other words, every sin you and I can identify in our lives should be brought to God for confession. The deepest sin that you need to confess is your failure to let Christ rule your life. The most basic question that you and I can ask is this: “Who is ruling my life, self or Christ?” Jesus said, If any one wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me (Luke 9:23).
How easy it is for you to set up your own goals, operate by your own motives, and seek your own desires, without ever asking God for His will above all else. The Holy Spirit calls you to renounce your plans and practices, and seek Him. He calls you to step off the throne of your life and let Him rule in every area of your life. When you understand these matters, then you can move to the second step.
II. SURRENDER OR SUBMISSION TO CHRIST
What do I mean by the word surrender or submission? I mean that you renounce your way and seek above all else to surrender to Christ as Lord and be ruled by Him in every area of your life. The importance of this relates to the way sin blocks the control of the Spirit in our lives. The essence of sin is self-will; that is placing yourself at the center of your life, instead of Christ. The way to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to place Christ at the center of your life, instead of self. This happens only as you surrender to Him, as you allow Him to become the Lord of your life. How does surrender or submission become a reality in your life? There are at least two steps: First, there is the step of confession and repentance. We have just seen that one of the things we must understand is the depth of our sin. But we must move beyond understanding. You must confess your sin to God and repent of it.
You cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit while you are harboring your own little pet sins. Maybe, it is a place to which you go, a relationship in which you are involved, the types of entertainment you indulge in, or a habit you have clung to for years, something that you know violates God’s standards. You will never be filled with the Holy Spirit until you denounce it, confess it, and forsake it. The Holy Spirit isn’t just a title, that is who He is, and he does not enjoy living in an unclean environment. If there is an unconfessed sin in your life, the Holy Spirit will not take control. The very fact of your sin is the evidence that He is not in control. Confession is acknowledgment of sin. It is admitting before God that I know I am a sinner, because I have committed certain sins that are known to me. The wonderful thing is that God has promised to forgive us when we turn to Him in humble confession. One of the great promises of the Bible is 1 John 1:9. To repent means to renounce sin. The word, repent means a complete and total change of mind. To repent is not only to feel sorry for your sin, or even just to confess it to God. To repent of your sin is to turn from it, and to turn to Christ and His will.
The second step is yielding yourself to God and His will. Confession and repentance might be described as the negative side of submission; this means getting rid of anything that hinders God’s control of your life. Yielding to God might be described as the positive side of submission or surrender; it means placing yourself completely as best as you know how into the hands of God for His will to be done in your life. Paul teaches this concept in Romans 6. With a deliberate act of your will, hand yourself over to the control of the Holy Spirit. Say to Him, You are the Holy Spirit; here is my life. Here is all I have; take control of every aspect of my life. Put yourself at the disposal of the Holy Spirit, and tell Him, I am yours use me as You wish.
III. WALK BY FAITH
If you have a computer at your office or home with valuable information on it that needs to be protected, chances are you have set up your computer with a password that gives you access to your files while keeping the wrong people out. If you are a Christian, what God says about you is already true but you must also realize that possessing all you have in Christ and accessing those blessings in your daily experience are not the same thing. The possessions are yours; benefiting from them to the full is up to you. Not every Christian is accessing all they have. There are many Christians who have been set free from every shackle and are incredibly spiritually wealthy in Christ, but who are dragging around the chains of bondage and settling for a pauper’s paradise. I like what Dr. Tony Evans says: “Faith is the wire over which the current of God’s grace travels to bring you the privileges of your identity in Christ. Your provision of those privileges comes by grace, but access to your provision comes through faith. Grace gives you what you have. Faith enables you to experience what grace gives you.” When I say walk by faith, I am not talking about saving faith, but the faith that undergirds our daily Christian living.
This is the truth: When you are yielded to God and His will for your life, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit controls and dominates your life. Now you are to act on that truth and walk or live with full assurance that God has already filled you, and you are under His control. There are several things you are to remember at this point. First, the filling of the Spirit is not a matter of feeling, but of faith. Sometimes you may feel the overwhelming presence of the Holy Spirit; sometimes you may not but that does not mean that you have lost the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Second, the filling of the Spirit does not mean that you are perfect and without sins. None of us will attain sinless perfection until we see Jesus Christ face to face. A Spirit-filled believer may sin but he/she does not practice or live in sin. Finally, the filling with the Spirit should not be a once and for all event, but a continuous reality everyday of our lives. It is a process. Therefore, surrender the control of your life to the Holy Spirit on daily basis and He will fill you and use you. Whenever you are filled one of the characteristics is that you will be telling others about Jesus. You are filled to witness to others of Jesus Christ and His love for the human race.