If man, being fundamentally evil, knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those asking Him. So said Jesus (Luke 11:13).
Every Christian has a measure of the Holy Spirit; if not he is not truly a Christian, for Paul wrote that “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8:9). Each believer, on believing, receives the deposit, or down payment, of God’s faithfulness, His promised Holy Spirit; “in whom also after that you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory (Ephesians 1:13-14).
But whether we respond to the inspiration of the Spirit and allow Him the power to do His will in our lives is a matter for each one of us; it is the choice of each individual to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us. The fact is that all Christians would want to be full, but, sadly, not many want to be filled; we are all as full as we want to be, because in order to be filled there are conditions that we must first meet; we can’t have the joy of being full without the sacrifice of meeting the conditions.
Most importantly, we must first empty ourselves; God cannot fill what is not empty. This involves a sacrifice of self; self righteousness, self indulgence, self confidence, self aggrandizement, self awareness, self esteem and all the self sins that are so enamoured by the world; the desire to be filled with the Spirit must be greater than the desire for any other thing; if God is not the centrepiece of your longing you cannot expect to be filled.
What we have become in this life is what we take with us to the next; there is no half-way house where we can be made into what God requires of us; death will not transform our character, attitudes and dispositions; if we are not faithful worshippers in this world, how can we expect to be worshippers in the next?
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