****Introduction****
It is appropriate that the theme for this year’s World Day of Prayer is, in fact, a prayer. It is a prayer that the Church has been praying since Jesus went home to Heaven. It is a prayer that God has been pleased to answer since that first Pentecost.
However, it is a prayer that has largely gone unanswered, at least in the way that we expect. Part of this is because the Holy Spirit doesn’t always act as we expect. There are those—and I’m not singling out any particular denomination or movement within the Church—who would claim, or act as if they believed, that they control the Spirit. This isn’t true. The Holy Spirit is sovereign, and acts according to the will of the Father. No human can control him.
**Three pictures of why we can’t be filled**
However, I wonder if the reason we lack the infilling of the Holy Spirit is that we can’t be filled. I want to describe this problem using three different mental pictures.
First, imagine a sponge that has been used to wash the dishes. It’s all full of dirt and food and old water. It needs to be filled with clean water! But how can you do that? Easy. You wring it out, rinse it off, and wring it out again. Only when you have done this can you fill it with clean water.
It’s the same with the Spirit. Here we are, all full of sin and grime and filth. There is no room for him. But once all the filth has been removed, and we have been emptied, the Spirit can come and fill us anew.
Jesus explained this a different way, mainly in regard to institutions as opposed to people. He spoke of filling old wineskins with new wine. Now I don’t know a lot about wine, but I gather from what Jesus tells us that you can’t do it. It’ll wreck the skin, and all the wine will be lost! You need to prepare a new wineskin for the job. In the same way, our nation and our church need to be renewed before the Spirit of God can move in.
Finally, I want you to think of a third picture, the Old Testament picture of an old pot. The soloist sang about this earlier:
Spirit of the Living God
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me
Mould me, fill me.
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
The Spirit can’t fill an old, broken pot. It needs to be broken and remade if it is to be used again.
None of these processes is pleasant. Being wrung out like a sponge, being replaced by a new wineskin and being broken and remoulded like an old pot are all traumatic. Nevertheless, they are the price we must pay if the Holy Spirit is to answer our prayer.
So what is the dirt that fills us, the wineskin that restricts us or the crack in our pot? I would like to ask this question at three different levels—the Nation, the Church and our selves. Each of these needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but like the sponge each has it’s own dirt that needs removing.
**Our Nation**
Legally speaking, our nation can never be a Christian nation. Our Constitution forbids our lawmakers from ever establishing a state church. Likewise they cannot make any denomination or religion eminent over any other.
However, the Spirit is not in the slightest bit concerned about our laws or denominations. Whilst he appreciates these things, he operates outside of them.
Our nation is in desperate need of the Holy Spirit now. The name ‘Australia’ comes from an old Latin name for our southern continent: Terra Australis Incognita. The explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quiros believed he had found this continent, and he renamed it Terra Australia del Espiritu Santo—the South Land of the Holy Spirit. So this land has been associated with the third person of the Trinity since before Europeans arrived here. (History shows that whilst he thought he had found the Lost Continent, he had in fact landed on Vanuatu!)
Yet the Holy Spirit doesn’t fill our nation. Do we need to be emptied?
† We pay lip service to the ideals of justice and fairness to all, yet we treat those least able to access justice with contempt (refugees, Iraq, East Timorese oil). The Australian myth of the fair go for everyone is little more than a myth.
† We constantly preach to the rest of the world about the atrocities committed by their governments, yet we ignore the woeful plight of so many of our indigenous citizens.
† We put the interests of the rich and wealthy before the interests of the poor and disadvantaged.
† We worship the dollar before we worship God. We do not see ourselves as a nation, but as an economy. Why is it that the measure of how good our nation is looks at things like GDP and average standard of living, yet neglects things like measures of morality and justice?
Please don’t get me wrong—I love this nation and I am proud to call myself Australian. But if we want God the Holy Spirit to fill us, we must be prepared to let him empty us of these things. Our wineskin must be replaced, our pot broken and made anew. Holy Spirit, fill us!
**Our Church**
The Church was born by a breaking out of the Holy Spirit. Most of the symbols of the Church and her denominations contain in various ways references to the Holy Spirit. For example, the Salvation Army Flag has three colours, each representing a person of the Trinity. Crimson refers to the Blood of Christ. Blue refers to the Holiness of the Father, which is as boundless as the sea. The yellow star in the middle refers to the Holy Spirit, who comes as a cleansing and life giving fire.
Yet like the sponge, we cannot be filled with the Spirit because we are so full of dirt. What does the Spirit need to fix before he can move in?
† We consider buildings to be more important than people.
† We put saving money ahead of saving souls.
† We care more for reputation and status than we do the poor and disadvantaged in our communities.
† We have become insular and cloistered, too worried about ourselves to worry about the lost masses outside our front doorsteps.
† We worry more about increasing church memberships than we do seeking the Kingdom of God.
† We trust in programmes, business expertise and qualifications before we trust in the Holy Spirit.
† We listen to the traditions of men and women before we listen to the prompting of Spirit God.
What can we say to this? Holy Spirit, fill us. But first, empty us.
**Our Selves**
I have to be careful here, because I know that there are many differences of opinion on the theology of this subject. Christians are united on the idea that God is holy and infinite. We all understand and agree on the teaching surrounding Jesus and his atonement. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we argue. We have managed to make the Holy Spirit, who is the author of unity among Christians, a continuing source of disunity. One commentator quipped that when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we’re unified only in our disunity!
I do not wish to push any doctrine today regarding the Holy Spirit. The Salvation Army has, like most denominations, a distinctive teaching regarding him. However, I don’t want to say more than we agree on.
All Christians recognise the work of the Holy Spirit in their salvation. We all recognise that it is the Holy Spirit who does his work in turning us toward God, and persuading us to accept his mercy.
And we ask him to fill us. However we conceive of him working in us, we believe he is the source of power for our walk as Christians, to live the right way and to have the strength to keep walking.
Yet has he filled us? The work of the Holy Spirit can be so quiet sometimes it is hard to tell from the outside. And I can’t describe the spiritual experience of each individual here today. I suspect though, there are many Christians in this town, even in this hall today who have no experience of the work of the Spirit upon their lives. If the Holy Spirit isn’t filling us, what might some of the reasons be?
My experience tells me that there are some sins that seem common among Christians in Australia. And I am not free of any of these. I speak to myself as much as anyone else!
† Lack of prayer
† Unwillingness to make God the centre of our lives.
† Neglecting to meet with other Christians.
† Laziness in studying the Bible.
† Lack of zeal for seeing our family, friends, neighbours and all others come to Christ.
What is the antidote to these sins? We must be filled with the Spirit. But how can we be full of the Spirit if we are full of other stuff?
The solution is so simple. Talk to God about it. Just as the Spirit wants to move in and fill us, so he is willing to wring us out to make room. He is willing to renew our wineskins so we can be full of his wine.
Where do we start? Individually, we must turn to God. Tell him of the sin that inhabits us, and ask him to clear it before him. Ask him to fill us. And as Spirit filled Christians stand up and repent of their sins, and the sins of their church, and the sins of their nation, the Spirit will move in, clearing all before him, and our lives and our institutions will become places he will be proud to inhabit.
Holy Spirit, fill us!
