Be Filled with the Spirit
Be Filled with the Spirit
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Matthew 5:6).
Hunger and thirst precede being filled.
As you read this article, would you candidly evaluate your own current experience with the Holy Spirit? Whether you’re a new Christian, an experienced Pentecostal or Charismatic, a mature Reformed believer, or maybe you’re not even sure what it means to be a Christian - would you prayerfully consider that there’s probably room for a more vital relationship with God’s Holy Spirit? I’m doing the same.
Jesus, the Baptizer
Let’s begin with John the Baptist introducing Jesus to the Jewish world. As John was baptizing multitudes in water with the baptism of repentance, he said that there was One coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). That, of course, was Jesus.
Of all the amazing things Jesus did and is known for, probably his role to baptize us in the Holy Spirit is the least talked about. We speak of him as Shepherd, Healer, Redeemer, Teacher, Miracle Worker, and his many other names and activities. Let’s add to that Jesus’ ministry as the one who baptizes us in the Holy Spirit.
In the Bible, the word baptism is used in different ways. There is water baptism, Holy Spirit baptism, baptism of repentance, baptism of suffering, baptism into the Body, and baptism into Christ’s death. Essentially baptize means to immerse or submerge.
Kenneth Wuest, in his Word Studies from the Greek New Testament, says the New Testament word for baptize (baptizo)
can be illustrated by the action…of the dyer dipping the cloth in the dye for the purpose of dying it...The word refers to the introduction or placing of a person or thing into a new environment or into union with something else so as to alter its condition or its relationship to its previous environment or condition.
So for Jesus to baptize us in the Holy Spirit, we become immersed in and saturated with the Holy Spirit. Our very nature is altered. The fabric of our life is affected as cloth is affected by dye.
Is that the normal experience of most church goers?
After his resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus told his apostles in Acts 1:5:
For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
These apostles had already been told about the Spirit. Jesus said to them “you know him for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14:17). At one point he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). But even though they knew about the Holy Spirit and had even experienced him, they were yet to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. That would happen on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
And for Cornelius and the Gentile believers, that would happen in Caesarea.
As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 11:15-16).
Four Scriptures, Four Categories
Let’s look at four passages about being filled with the Spirit that point to four categories of relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Be (continually) filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:16).
And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).
…for he (the Holy Spirit) had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 8:16).
And he said to them (disciples in Ephesus), “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (Acts 19:2).
1. When Paul told the Ephesian church to be continually filled with the Spirit (5:18), he was speaking to Christians, some of whom had been discipled by Paul himself. You could say these are mature Christians and Paul was exhorting them to be filled with the Spirit.
2. In Acts 4, a group of believers were gathered in a prayer meeting and they were filled with the Spirit. These same people had been baptized in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost just weeks earlier. You could say they were Pentecostals who had previously been baptized in the Spirit and now were being filled again.
3. In Acts 8, there were believers in Jesus who had been baptized in the name of Jesus upon whom the Holy Spirit had not yet fallen. Peter and John prayed for them and they received the Holy Spirit. You could say these were genuine believers in Jesus with little experience with the Holy Spirit.
4. The situation in Ephesus in Acts 19 was that there were disciples of John the Baptist who had been baptized with his baptism. They had an incomplete knowledge of who Jesus was. Paul explained who Jesus was. They were then baptized in the name of Jesus, after which Paul laid his hands on them and “the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying” (vs. 6). You could say these were not yet Christians but about to be converted and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Phenomenon, not just Facts
For many of us, these scriptures provoke theological issues. For some, our first response is to try explain the uniqueness of the apostolic era, and that we can’t apply the description of believers in Christ without the Holy Spirit to today’s believers. Everyone who is in Christ, we might say, has the Holy Spirit. They just need to appropriate what they already have.
But before we land there, let’s look around. Are there not those we know who fit into each of these categories? And what about us? Where are we?
Wherever we are, can we be so bold, so abandoned and so hungry as to invite the Holy Spirit to fall on us in a fresh way?
In my university days, I got a degree in something called the Phenomenology of Religion. Taught from a secular perspective, religions were analyzed by the phenomena that undergirded their forms and philosophies. Secular though it was, it left me with an appreciation for the phenomenon of God. God’s glory, for instance, is a phenomenon, not just a fact. God’s intervention in our lives is a phenomenon. To be filled with the Spirit is a phenomenon.
Scripture describes encounters with the Holy Spirit with phrases like the Spirit falling on them (Acts 8:16), the Spirit was poured out (Acts 10:45), and the Spirit came on them (Acts 19:6). These were not just realizations, but God-initiated intervening activity. They were demonstrable phenomena. Paul may have been the original existential theologian when he said, “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
My Experience
I first experienced the reality of the Holy Spirit on a Saturday night in the Spring of 1969 in Tallahassee, FL. I was a year and a half into my Christian walk and active in Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru) at Florida State. In a designated study room in our house, I was preparing to preach in a small Methodist church the next morning. My roommate, Bob Sutton, who had led me to the Lord, was across the room studying.
I was reading a book about people being filled with the Spirit. I remember slamming my fist down on the desk and saying to myself, “There’s got to be more!” Bob looked up from his book, walked over, closed the door and said, “Let’s talk about it.” Over Spring break he had been prayed for in Miami to be filled with the Holy Spirit… and was! He explained some Scriptures. (We had a motto in our house to try to prevent crazy-college-student ideas: Chapter and verse, please.)
After leading me through a prayer of surrender based on Romans 12:1 - Present your bodies as a living sacrifice - he laid his hands on me and prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit to come on me and to fill me. Nothing demonstrable happened… or so I thought. But the next morning, I preached like I had never preached before. Words of insight flowed effortlessly. Almost as an observer, I thought, these are not my words! I was experiencing God’s power and authority in a new way. It was demonstrable. It was the first of many other similar encounters with the Holy Spirit.
That experience has deeply affected my life for over 50 years. It has left me with a knowledge that the Holy Spirit is not just a Biblical subject to study, but a powerful, intervening Person to whom I need to carefully pay attention, every day!
An Invitation
Has the Holy Spirit fallen on you? If not, express your hunger to the Lord, prepare yourself with prayer and studying the Scripture (See footnote below). Ask a spiritual leader to pray with you. There were occasions in the Scripture, (though not all the time) where the Holy Spirit came upon people with the laying on of hands. (See Acts 8:17, 19:6. See also Hebrews 6:1 and 1 Timothy 5:22.)
For those who say, “I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit when I was born again,” I won’t argue. Let’s assume you did. But go on and pray for a subsequent filling of the Holy Spirit. Remember Acts 4.
If you’ve walked with the Lord for many years, Paul would say to you, as he did to the Ephesians, “Be (continually) filled with the Holy Spirit.”
And if your experience is like those who told Paul, “We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit,” draw near and offer him your empty cup.
He anoints my head with the oil of the Holy Spirit, and my cup overflows.
Be filled with the Holy Spirit!
Footnote: Here’s a list of references to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. No doubt, he was a major player! Acts 1:2, 1:5, 1:8, 1:16, 2:4, 2:17, 2:18, 2:33, 2:38, 4:8, 4:25, 4:31, 5:3, 5:9, 6:3, 6:5, 6:10, 7:51, 7:55, 8:15, 8:17, 8:18, 8:19, 8:29, 8:39, 9:17, 9:31, 10:19, 10:38, 10:44, 10:45, 10:47, 11:12, 11:15, 11:16, 11:24, 11:28, 13:2, 13:4, 13:9, 13:52, 15:8, 15:28, 16:6, 16:7, 19:2, 19:6, 19:21, 20:23, 20:28, 21:4, 21:11, 28:25.
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