How To Be Filled With The Holy Spirit Series

✎ When was the last time you fed a baby oatmeal? Peaches or applesauce? How about my all time favorite green beans or peas? Regardless of what you may be serving when your baby does not want to eat his or her entire body gets engaged in the struggle. The jaws become cast iron letting nothing enter the mouth. Any food that may miraculously make it past the lips is pushed out by an iron tongue. The baby develops great eye coordination at these times when you want it to finish the last few bites, but he or she has had enough. The spoonful headed for the mouth hits the ear instead, a small hand pushes the spoonful into your lap. How many of you have ever been there?

Babies need to eat. Good nutrition is important for the growth and development of every infant. However, no matter how hard we may try, and regardless of how tasty the food may be, UNLESS THE BABY IS YIELDED AND WILLING TO EAT, WE CANNOT “FILL IT” WITH FOOD. When the same baby is hungry or thirsty and is crying out making its desire know, then it is much easier to “fill” the baby.

Similarly, the Holy Spirit does not force Himself to “FILL US.” In the same way that a baby needs to have a desire for food or drink to be willing to eat, we must also crave the presence of the Holy Sprit in our lives in order to be “filled with the Spirit.” If we are to be receive the Spirit, then as we will see today, we must submit our minds, spirits and bodies to Jesus.

+ John 7:37-39 37On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (NIV)

JESUS OFFERS US “STREAMS OF LIVING WATER.”

Jesus is not the little boy who set up a lemonade stand and offers you a small drink for a quarter; Jesus offers us an inexhaustible or limitless portion of no ordinary drink. We can receive an abundant supply of “living water.”

WHAT IS "LIVING WATER?" John answers that question in verse 39; “when he said ‘living water,’ he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory” (NLT). “Living water” is the Holy Spirit. Jesus offers to fill you an I to overflowing with the Spirit of God.

According to Jesus, this abundant filling with the Holy Spirit is not automatic. Before anyone can be filled, Jesus identifies three prerequisites, three things we should do in order to be filled with the Spirit.

▸ Before we look at what how we can be filled with the Spirit, some of you may be wondering what being filled with the Spirit is. It’s a good idea for us to all be on the same proverbial page and know what we are talking about.

What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

[1] Simply put it means to be filled with God, because the Holy Spirit is God. God lives within you and me. The Bible tells us that when a person believes upon Jesus and is rescued from their sin, the Holy Spirit come into that individual.

+ 1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (NIV)

You are the sacred dwelling place of the Holy Spirit! God is not just “out there somewhere;” God designed you and me to be His home on earth. God lives in you.

When we accept Christ as our savior, God takes up residence in our lives at that very moment. The Holy Spirit comes into our lives and makes an immediate transformation within us; as the Bible says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17 NIV)! However, being filled with the Spirit is more than just God living within us.

[2] The Bible also teaches us that there is a subsequent spiritual experience called the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” or “being filled with the Spirit.” (These two terms are used interchangeably.)

This second in filling of the Holy Spirit is evidenced by “speaking in other tongues.” The book of Acts records how the early Christians experience this dynamic experience.