February 23, 2003: Filled With The Spirit

Someone sent me these questions: How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit? How can I tell when I'm Spirit filled? Here is my response:

Ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit. Make it a regular prayer request. Jesus said, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13) That last part, to those who ask him!, is important. God likes to be asked. Perhaps the reason that some Christians are less Spirit-filled than they could be is because they do not ask for it. (See James 4:2b: "You do not have, because you do not ask God.")

I believe the Bible uses the phrase "filled with the Spirit" in two different ways. There is the temporary, powerful, even miraculous indwelling of the Spirit that is given for a particular purpose, as in Acts 4:8: "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said...", or Acts 13:9: "Then...Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas...". I would distinguish that focused, temporary filling of the Spirit from the more general type that speaks of a person's character, as in Acts 6:5b: "They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit."

This latter type of being Spirit-filled is not binary (either you are or you aren't), but a matter of degree. Some are "more full" than others. See Ephesians 5:18, where fullness of the Spirit is contrasted with drunkenness: "Do not get drunk on wine...Instead be filled with the Spirit." The more you drink, the drunker you get - so also the more you partake of the Spirit, the more full of him you will be.

How can you tell when you are Spirit-filled? I am not sure that is for us to say. It is the job of others, and ultimately God, to determine whether you bear the fruit of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23) that are the signs of the Spirit's presence.

An example may help:

I doubt that my sister would be the type to conduct a spiritual self-examination and afterwards conclude, "I am full of the Holy Spirit." But she is full of the Spirit, and I'll say it for her. Last Tuesday she stood in a courtroom and embraced the sobbing young man who murdered her son last year. She did this without the support of
her husband, a hell-bound lying adulterer who stayed home. How can she do that - how can she forgive a murderer, and continue faithfully to fulfill her marital vows to a beast who renounced his? Only by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God. Sometimes the best way to understand what it means to be full of the Spirit is to find a good example and say, "Oh, I see. THAT is what it looks like to be Spirit-filled."