![]() ![]() Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”(-Ephesians 5:18-20) Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. The Spirit also fills our lives and our speech with praise, worship, and thanksgiving to God. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives …. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. First, the Holy Spirit supernaturally fills us with wisdom, understanding, and the knowledge of God’s will. Joe Wall, recently reminded me that according to Scripture, there are two primary ways in which the Holy Spirit fills us. My friend and longtime associate at East-West, Dr. ![]() ![]() On the positive side, what can we do to increase or enhance the overflow of the Spirit’s work through our lives? The short answer is to simply pray daily and continuously ask God to fill us to overflowing with the Person, presence, power, and ministries of the Holy Spirit! Obviously, sinning against, grieving, or quenching the Spirit will significantly, if not completely, hinder the powerful flow of the ministry of the Holy Spirit through our lives. Since we are commanded to continuously go on being filled with the Holy Spirit, this clearly implies that we may choose to obey (or disobey) this command. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:38-39). This filling or overflow of the Spirit is exactly what Jesus had in mind when He proclaimed, “‘Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. And we cannot do it ourselves!īy faith, we must continuously depend upon the divine Person of the Holy Spirit to be filled to the full, fully supplied, or as it were, overflowing, with the indwelling Spirit of God. The phrase “be filled with the Spirit” is a present, plural, passive imperative, meaning that God commands (not an option!) you, me, and all believers to continuously go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 5:18, the Apostle Paul exhorts the Ephesian believers with a command, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit (NASB)”. As I mentioned on my blog before, most of us know far less about the Holy Spirit than the Father and the Son, but we need to see Him and His work with new wonder and appreciation. What does that mean? My friend Kurt Nelson explains more in this excerpt from his book Awakening to the Holy Spirit: Person, Presence, Power, Purpose in Our Lives. Note from Randy: Scripture tells us it is God’s will that we be filled with and controlled by His Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:17-18). ![]()
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