3.1 Be Filled with the Spirit
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
God has something very special, now, for you, a gift beyond all measure. God wants to immerse your soul into His Holy Spirit.
In order for you to receive such a gift, however, two things are required of you. First, you must be willing to trust God with your whole life, with all that you are in whatever He intends for you. And second, you must ask. God cannot give you anything of Himself except through your desire and your permission. Asking and believing we have received is our work of faith.
Here is what Jesus said about asking. “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:24).
Ask! In Luke’s gospel, however, Jesus expanded even more on our asking. You can see just how important asking is to our Father. “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:9-13).
This is why we must trust, convinced that Father gives us only goodness with no evil or sorrow in it.
The Spirit Knows. Now, you have already received the Holy Spirit, for it was by the Holy Spirit that you were even able to ask Jesus into your heart. In fact, you have always lived entirely inside God’s Spirit, for there is nowhere else. But that is the problem. You see, you did not know you were always living inside of God and God inside of you. Life is not “God” per se; life is knowing God.
Here is what Paul says about Spirit and knowing. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received… the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:11-12).
Human Consciousness. Paul is describing our human consciousness, that is, our story of self, the words of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves (the things of a man) inside our spirit self-awareness. Even more than that, Paul is telling us that God possesses the same Spirit/Word consciousness. You and God both know things only by the spirit inside of you. For that reason, in order for you to know God, there must be a merging of your spirit with the Holy Spirit.
Paul then goes on to say this. He who is joined to [or – glued together with] the Lord is one spirit with Him – your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God (1 Corinthians 6:17 & 19).
Immersing Your Soul. Your heavenly spirit is joined together as one with the Holy Spirit, and your earthly body is filled with the Holy Spirit as His temple, or dwelling place. Now the Lord Jesus wants to immerse your soul, that is, your thinking, your choosing, and your feeling, into that same Holy Spirit – for one reason – so that you might KNOW Jesus as He is, so that you might KNOW Father. He will not just “do” that, because He will cause you to know Him only with your express permission.
Just before Jesus left His disciples, He said this. “You shall be immersed into the Holy Spirit – You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:5 & 8).
Let’s Ask. Speak these words out loud.
“Lord Jesus, You said that our Father would give me the Holy Spirit in all goodness when I ask. You said that You would immerse me into your Holy Spirit, so that Your Spirit would flood all through my mind and thinking, my choosing and desiring, and through all my emotions, causing me to know You beyond what I ever knew anything about. I trust You, Jesus, that You do all things well. Immerse me, Lord Jesus, into Your Holy Spirit. Fill me with the Spirit of Christ in all the knowledge of God. Fill me with the power from God to be a witness of Christ. I ask this in Your name, Lord Jesus, and I believe that I have received all that I have asked.”
Until You Know. Now that you have asked, believe that you have received. Believe that Jesus has immersed you into His Holy Spirit; believe that you are filled full with the Spirit in power. And continue in exultant expectation until you KNOW.
What will happen as you KNOW full immersion into the Holy Spirit? You will likely find a new heavenly language arising from your heart and flowing out of your mouth in words whose meaning you do not know. That heavenly language is connecting your spirit with the Spirit of God separate from the control of your intellect.
And never listen to any voice that suggests that if you ask for the Holy Spirit, God will give you something nasty or embarrassing. You trust utterly in Jesus; He does all things well.
Something Far More Important. You will also likely know the meaning of these words of Peter in a way you had not known before. God is a very emotional Being, and He has made you just like Himself, as He says. Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory (1 Peter 1:8). You will likely be laughing out loud with overwhelming JOY!
But something far more important than praying with your spirit or laughing with inexpressible joy will happen inside of you when you KNOW that you are filled with the Holy Spirit. You will pick up your Bible to read, and the words on the page will become something far more than you ever knew before.
A New and Living Word. The Bible will become a new and living book to you; in that moment, you will know those words coming into you as the Holy Spirit writing the Lord Jesus Christ upon your heart.
You see, this is what Paul was speaking about. As it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all, even the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 & Isaiah 64:4).
It is only when the Holy Spirit, already joined together with your own spirit and already dwelling in your body, floods also into all the thinking of your mind, all the feeling of your emotions, and all the desiring of your heart that you can now KNOW the “things of God.”
Filled with the Holy Spirit. When you know that you are filled with the Holy Spirit in all overflowing joy, go back and read John’s gospel again, in both versions. Go back through and read again the first two chapters of this book as well. But before you do, ask the Lord Jesus to reveal to you what He means by what He says, the things God has prepared for you, the very depths of God, through what you read. And believe that you have received what you ask.
You see, at no point is your relationship with God about stacking up ideas in your mind. Always, it is about a living connection, the Lord Jesus, every Word God speaks, connecting you with Father and Father with you.
The Spirit Gives Life. Let me now share with you a critical part of knowing Jesus as He is. Consider this statement of Jesus. It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63). When Jesus says here that “the flesh profits nothing,” He is speaking of “hiding” the words of the Bible in your own intellect as ideas about a distant and unreachable “God.”
Word and Spirit are ALWAYS together. Word without Spirit cannot be of God. Spirit without Word cannot be of God. Word and Spirit are always together, yet Word always leads, yet Spirit goes before to prepare the way for Word.
Word and Spirit Together. The full immersion of your soul into the Holy Spirit, enabling you to know Jesus as Word, is the “through-mind” that Jesus gives you that you might know God. The words Jesus speaks, every word in the Bible, are Spirit and they are Life, that is, the Spirit-knowing of God.
You ARE a letter of Christ… written… with the Spirit of the living God… inside tablets of hearts of flesh (2 Corinthians 3:3 – condensed). In the exact same way, the Word that is Jesus written upon our hearts is there only as Spirit “ink.”
Only the Holy Spirit causes us to KNOW what God means by what He says.