As we grow in our trust of God in our daily walk there are some things he may choose to hide from us. The reasons for such actions I’m sure are many, yet to understand the basic reasons would be helpful to us so that we can know if God is withholding truth because we are not prepared for it, like the early disciples who walked with Jesus in ministry.
The Church has been wrestling with the concept of grace for ages. In fact, ever since the reformation of the 1500s when Luther, Calvin and Zwingli helped usher in the start the reformation from the corruption of the Catholic church, theologians and pastors have wrestled with the simply awkward definition of Grace as “Unmerited Favor.” To be honest, many doctrines the church has embraced and taught today came out of an over-correction of errors that the Catholic church was steeped in. When there is an over-correction of concepts often the new “Version” is flawed as well. The word and concept of “Grace vs Works” is one of them.
We live in a strange time in history because we live with so many images of people who are “Inauthentic” and just pretending to be genuine. For example, news commentators and politicians continually craft an image or narrative instead of being authentic about who and what they believe about God and life in general. It seems that modern culture has increasingly traded good character for a good image. The really sad thing is that can be expected from the world but many pastors have gotten in lock step with the world when it comes to working on their image more than their character.
When I look at the average believer today I am saddened by the lack of the ability to understand what’s going on in the spirit in any given conversation, let alone what’s going on in one’s own personal life. Too many believers walk in life as if they were never born again but only have the knowledge that God loves them and Jesus died to forgive them.
We live in a day and age when this life is hard pressed on so many fronts. Turn on the nightly news and one quickly sees people are so stressed out they end up doing extreme things that are out of control, like pulling out a gun and shooting someone for little to no reason other than they were mad. It seems people have little to no ability to control their emotions these days.
I have spent four articles thus far building the case that the average Christian believer walks out their Christian experience periodically fueled by their knowledge of the Scriptures and yet very little by the counsel and power of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the carnality within the church or individual believers. If one would just study the nature of the church today you would quickly discover that most churches and denominations came out of church splits, and not expansion from evangelism since the 1500s when the reformation happened. To be truthful, this had to happen because carnality had been settling into the church since Constantine in 320 AD and the breakaway factions wanting to get back to what the bible said about living as Christ intended believers to live.
This is now the fourth article on being “Spirit Filled” and there is so much that could be written about the subject, yet I have chosen a path of explaining the topic from a logical as well as a biblical explanation that should be sufficient to challenge peoples’ perspectives. Please start by reading article one through three before reading this one as there is a progressive thought which builds on the previous article. I have laid out both my reasoning and scripture references that substantiate why I believe being filled with the Holy Spirit is a daily choice as well as a necessity to live a victorious Christian life.
By the time the Roman Empire embraced Christianity as a state religion, by the Emperor Constantine, around 300 BC, the church had lost it’s footing on a gospel of personal relationship with God, and for the next 1,000 years the church lived in what was called the dark ages because the church as a whole drifted into religion with form and not substance. All of us who claim to be children of God can easily do the same if we are not careful, and therefore the subject of what is a Spirit Filled Life and how it should function is crucial to maintaining a real tangible walk with God. To think otherwise is just plain religion without the power and means of transformation.
What we as believers are called to be as children of God depends on our relationship to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our link to our Heavenly Father and through whom we have access in the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that provides us the “TOOLS” with the gifts he bestows in order to walk the Christian life in victory and not defeat. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to be “More Than Conquerors” and not our scriptural memorization nor our religious traditions and rituals no matter how beneficial they might seem.
Romans 8:37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
John 14:16
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—
There are whole chapters in the book of 1 Corinthians that define what role the Holy Spirit should have in every believer’s life, as well as every church body, and yet it is amazing to me how illiterate in bible knowledge and function most churches are towards this truth. Now, to be fair, many churches are ignorant about the importance of the Holy Spirit due to bad seminary training of their pastors, yet for other churches it is not ignorance but rather fear of equipping people to trust the Holy Spirit because of insecurity over what man may think.
How have we have drifted as a church culture from educating everyday believers in who the Holy Spirit is and how we should function in our everyday lives with his guidance and power that many believers walk their whole lives powerless to live like Jesus. We are in danger of becoming like the church during the dark ages where few live with an active life in the Spirit. I’m not sure if it’s more ignorance or just pain disobedience but the end result is the same with believers acting as if supernatural power of God is out of our reach.
The apostle Paul challenges us in the book of Romans to be “TRANSFORMED” in our thinking because surely we are not thinking Biblically. If we are to live “normal” Christian lives then we have to start thinking with the book of 1 Corinthians in mind in which Paul lays out the importance of the Holy Spirit and the gift he offers every single believer. Transformation comes from the word of God being revealed to us and then from us surrendering our lives to his guidance and power.
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
So, if we trace the words of Jesus about the Holy Spirit in the book of John 14 & 16 and then read through the book of Acts 3 we will see The Holy Spirit brought wisdom and power upon believers who are hungry and open to the Spirit’s help. In acts 2 The Holy Spirit manifested his power in the believers by giving them the gift of a spiritual language, or what most of us call tongues. This manifestation of what is termed “The Baptism in the Holy Spirit” is mentioned five specific times, three of which included the observation of people speaking in tongues. The last reference in Acts 19 happened some 20 plus years after the resurrection of Jesus as well as the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Acts 19:1-2 & 6
While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are in fact the supernatural ability and presence of God. So often we relegate the idea of the supernatural only to miracles, yet the term is meant to convey something “Super” meaning having something with increased ability and “Natural” meaning operated in the natural laws of nature. To operate in the gifts of the Spirit is to operate with God’s assistance in our activities and operations. We, in essence, “Partner” with the Holy Spirit. He does not do all the work and neither do we. We work together, not separately.
Paul says the Holy Spirit enables us to function in the Holy Spirit and that manifestation is for the good of all. So if I am cooperating with the Holy Spirit and he enables me to have a spiritual supernatural manifestation, then life is imparted to me and to those I minister as well. On the other hand, if I operate purely with the natural man, without the Holy Spirit, I may appear spiritual but in essence I am “Masquerading” as a spiritual man when in fact I am not. Consider that during the dark ages of the church, people acted like they were spiritual when in fact they were carnal and imparting death instead of life to the church. The common person didn’t know the difference during this time only that they felt no spiritual life or relationship with God. Fear of god was the norm but not personal relationship with God.
1 Corinthians 12:7
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
In chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians Paul lays out a clear picture of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the body of Christ to walk in. These gifts are not automatically given nor operated in without individual believers choosing to operate in them. The gift of “Spiritual Language,” or tongues, only happened because people opened their mouths in faith but not because the Holy Spirit forced them like a marionette on a string. Experiencing baptism of the Holy Spirit operates the same today when people, by faith, receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit. People don’t speak in tongues unless they receive and they open their mouths in faith when they are filled with the Holy Spirit. If no supernatural impartation occurs then no baptism did either.
Secondly, Paul states very clearly in 1 Corinthians 14 that we can actually chose different gifts based partly on how intense our desires are for such gifts. A false assumption for many is they are born with certain gifts only because the Holy Spirit makes many gifts available to us. We may reject particular gifts like speaking in tongues because of some teaching we received in the past or because of some fear in our hearts of looking foolish if we did speak in tongues. The movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives always responds to the measure of faith we choose to walk in, not just because of some sovereign will of God. God’s will is always that all of us would walk boldly in faith and that we would operate effectively in his gifts.
In the next article I will explore the idea of being filled with the Holy Spirit and the two primary gifts mentioned of speaking in tongues and prophecy. Paul writes extensively about these two gifts in 1 Corinthians 14 as major gifts we can all choose to embrace.
Questions
1) Do you struggle with the Holy Spirit having a greater role and function in your life? Consider the fact that Jesus left the Holy Spirit in charge when he went to be with our Heavenly father and it is his challenge for us to obey him.
2) Do you fellowship with truly Spirit-Filled people or do you fellowship with people afraid of the gifts of the Spirit? Consider what Paul said about people that hung around people who didn’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
Pastor Dale
When people often talk about being Spirit filled they often refer to a point in time when they experienced a move of God on their soul either during their conversion or some time after. They may have felt empowered by the Holy Spirit for some purpose, like understanding the Bible when the scripture used to seem confusing or equipping their prayer life to become personal and rich with the presence of God and experiencing break through with God. Deep down inside people know when the Holy Spirit has touched their lives and if they need a fresh filling again.
The first article I wrote on this subject asked the question of whether we are fueling our Christian life by the Holy Spirit or just by our human will power. I used the Jesus Movement as an example of what I and others of this time period noticed, namely the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many believers. It was a powerful time to grow in Christ and I believe it could happen again today if believers become informed and hunger for God like never before.
The subject of what a “Spirit Filled Life” looks like isn’t taught much these days, however when I got saved in the early 1970s it was a big focus. Why? Because there was a thing called the “JESUS MOVEMENT” going on and the Holy Spirit was pouring out his power in extraordinary ways that brought many young people to a saving knowledge of Christ. Miracles were taking place often and tons of young people were getting born again. The whole idea of revival in the church should be where born again believers come to discover an awakening in their souls for a closer walk with God. Mind you, in many churches today, revival ends up being no more than becoming excited about going to church meetings instead of an awakening of their spiritual lives with the power of the Holy Spirit. The strategy of the enemy is to get believers occupied with having more meetings and church attendance rather than becoming passionate about our personal relationship with our Heavenly Father.
