Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day.

Speaker 3

This Bible teaching program on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

You see, when you become a Christian, you have all of the Holy Spirit of God. The question is, does the Holy Spirit have all of you? Does he have possession of every room in your life? Or is he stuck in some back corner?

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. The Bible clearly indicates that every Christian receives the Holy Spirit at salvation.

But once we've been saved, is there an additional encounter with God's Spirit that we should seek to experience? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Speaker 3

Dr. Jeffress thanks David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. For many of our listeners, Pathway to Victory has become a trusted place for reliable Bible study tools. And that truly delights me because we're completely focused on helping you take your next step in your walk with God.

Well, today I'm pleased to offer an exclusive resource I've designed with help from our talented team here at Pathway to Victory. It's called the Jesus Map. This is a beautifully illustrated reference tool that traces the footsteps of Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, along with 52 key events that took place along the way. You won't find this resource anywhere other than right here. And the Jesus Map is my gift to you, simply for contacting pathwaytovictoryptv.org today.

Throughout the month of May, we're concentrating on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Along with this daily teaching series, I'd like to send you a book that dovetails naturally with this life-changing topic. My book is called I Want More. So many Christians are well-intentioned but often feel like they're missing an important dimension of their walk with God. My book, I Want More, explains the Holy Spirit's abiding role in your life, and I want you to have a copy. I'll send one to your home when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory.

I'm going to say more about this book later on, but right now, let's turn to Ephesians 5 and begin our study about the Holy Spirit called Second Blessing.

Speaker 2

Well, they say variety is the spice of life, so we're going to do something different this morning. We're going to read the Scripture now at the beginning of the message. And so, in preparation for the message, I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 5, Ephesians chapter 5. And we're going to stand and read together verses 18 through 21. We're reading from the New American Standard Version. And I invite you to stand. Come, you're doing it without me asking you to. Isn't that great? You know, to stand. In honor of the reading of God's Word, we're going to begin with verse 18 of Ephesians 5 and conclude with verse 21. Let's read together.

"And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation. But be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father. And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." May God bless the reading of His Word. You may be seated.

A number of years ago, I decided to go home for lunch. You may ask, why in the world would you report such a mundane activity? Well, the reason is because at that time in my life, I never went home for lunch. But I just felt an urge to go home for lunch that day. In fact, it was such an unusual thing for me to do. When I opened the front door, Amy just about jumped out of her skin. And she said, "What are you doing here? Are you sick? Did you get fired? Why are you here?" I said, "No, I just had an urge to come home for lunch, if that's okay."

So I walked in, and our daughter Dorothy was a preschooler at that time. She was seated at the table eating her lunch. I went over to the counter to make myself a sandwich, and Amy went back to the back room where she was working on a project. As I was making the sandwich, I suddenly heard Dorothy begin to choke. I looked over, and she was grabbing her throat, turning red and then purple. I had heard about the Heimlich maneuver but didn't have a clue how to perform it. So all I knew to do was to go over and just start beating on her back, pounding as hard as I could. I pounded and I pounded and I pounded until the remnant of a piece of ravioli rocketed from her mouth across the room. And she was okay.

Now, she had never choked before like that, and I hadn't been home for lunch before, but I just happened to come on that day. Was that a coincidence? Or was it something more? Have you ever had an experience like that? You felt a prompting to do something, you didn't know why you felt it, but only later did you discover the reason why. Or maybe you've been in a situation like this: you get some terrible, devastating news, and yet inexplicably, you have a sense of calm about you when normally you would collapse under the weight of that news. You feel a supernatural sense of peace inside of you.

Or have you had this experience before? You're in a conversation with somebody, and you know what you need to say to them. You know they need a word from God. For some reason, you feel this surge of courage come upon you when normally you would remain quiet, and you speak a bold word for God, telling them exactly what they need to hear. Inner promptings in our spirit. Inexplicable peace when the world's collapsing around us. Unusual courage to speak God's truth. What do all of these phenomena have in common? They are all evidences of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

If you have your Bibles this morning, I want you to turn to Acts, chapter two. Acts, chapter two. We begin a series called Unleashed. We're looking at how to experience more of the Holy Spirit's power in our everyday life. And remember, we've seen already that if you are a Christian, part of the basic package of your salvation was receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. The Bible calls it the baptism, the immersion with the Holy Spirit of God. The foundational passage for that experience is First Corinthians 12:13. Paul says, "For with one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body."

We said the baptism with the Holy Spirit, first of all, is something that is experienced by all believers, not just a select few. Secondly, he said, not only is it something that happens to every believer, it is a once-for-all action, and it occurs at his salvation. And then thirdly, the baptism with the Holy Spirit results in our total possession of the Holy Spirit of God. We receive all of him at the moment of our salvation.

And yet, even though every Christian has all of the Holy Spirit, every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, not every Christian is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. In fact, I would say the majority of Christians I know do not experience the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, not on a consistent basis. If you don't believe that, look around at the majority of Christians around you. Or better yet, look in the mirror yourself. Are you experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit consistently? Most Christians I know aren't.

The majority of Christians I know struggle to have a consistent prayer life. They have at least one addiction or habit in their life they can't break. They have difficulty controlling their thoughts or their actions. They find it difficult to think about God consistently during the week. Sunday mornings is about it for them. They allow external circumstances to quench the joy that they have in Christ. That is the norm for most believers.

But there's a remnant of believers, a small group of Christians who live in a different way. It's not that they don't have struggles too, but somehow they maintain and they're able to live above those struggles. They have this power to say no to sin. They have joy no matter what's happening around them. They're the kind of people that have a yes answer to their prayers more often than no. It seems like they just live in a different realm. It's these kinds of Christians that you're tempted to go to whenever you have a problem and you want good, sound advice. It's this group of people that you want praying for you whenever you have a special need.

You know the kind of people I'm talking about. What is it that separates them from the mass of other believers? It's that they've experienced something additional, something beyond the basic package, something else other than the baptism with the Holy Spirit. If you talk to them, they'll say that, yes, I was saved, but after my salvation, there's something else that happened to me. There's an additional experience I had with the Holy Spirit of God.

What is that additional experience that others have had? Simply put, it is the filling of the Holy Spirit of God. You say, well, why do we need another experience with the Holy Spirit? Pastor, you just said we all were baptized with the Holy Spirit of God. Why do we need some additional experience with the Holy Spirit of God? If he's inside of us, why do we need anything else?

When we're talking about receiving the filling of the Holy Spirit, we're not talking about getting more of the Holy Spirit in our life. You see, when you become a Christian, you have all of the Holy Spirit of God. The question is, does the Holy Spirit have all of you? Does he have possession of every room in your life? Or is he stuck in some back corner? When we talk about receiving the filling of the Holy Spirit, we're talking about allowing God's Spirit to take full control of our life, to allow him free reign in every part of our life, not just one room or two rooms or three rooms.

Today we're going to talk about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Now I'm speaking to some of you this morning who know as Christians that something is missing in your life right now. You don't have that joy. You don't have that ability to say no to sin. You're living a subnormal Christian experience. What is missing in your life is what we're talking about this morning, the filling of the Holy Spirit of God.

Now, first of all, I want us to define what we mean by being filled with the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, you'll discover that this phrase "being filled with the Spirit" is used 15 different times. The phrase "be filled with the Spirit" is used in two very distinct ways. First of all, and write it down, sometimes to be filled with the Spirit means it is used to describe the baptism with the Holy Spirit. And that's what makes this confusing sometimes.

Luke, for example, in the Book of Acts, uses the phrase "filled with the Spirit" as a synonym for being baptized with the Spirit. He's talking about that initial experience at the time of salvation when we are baptized with the Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit indwells us, changes us, and connects us to the body of Christ. Look at Acts 2:4, the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit first came. Look at verse four of Acts two: "And they were all filled." The "all" refers to the eleven apostles. It refers to the 120 who were gathered with them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

That was the first instance of this gift of tongues. But notice here, being filled with the Holy Spirit is the baptism with the Holy Spirit when he first came into their life. Turn over to Acts 9:17. You see this with the apostle Paul. What happened to him when he was converted? Acts 9:17: "So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on Paul, said, 'Brother Saul, the Lord who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.'" See, there it is again. Paul was saved; he was filled with, baptized with the Holy Spirit of God.

Or look at Acts 10:44, the story of Cornelius, the Roman centurion who believed in Peter's message and was saved. Luke records, "While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon those who were listening to the message." They believed the message; they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Sometimes the filling of the Spirit refers to the baptism with the Spirit.

But more often than not, the word "fill," the filling with the Spirit is used to describe being controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. That is the major way this phrase is used in the New Testament. It's talking about being controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. The word "plero," being translated "filled," was a Greek word that was used to describe the wind that would come into the sail of a ship. It would fill that sail and thereby control the direction of the ship. That's the word picture here. To be filled with the Holy Spirit of God means that God's Spirit so controls your life that it controls the direction of your life.

And in most instances, that is how this phrase is being used. It's being used to describe being directed by, being controlled by the Holy Spirit. I want you to notice from this short verse three truths about being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Jot them down. First of all, being filled with, that is being controlled with the Spirit, is a command, not a promise. It is a command, not a promise. Now that's different than the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Did you know in the seven times the phrase "baptism with the Spirit" is used in the Bible, never is it used as a command? Never does God say to us as Christians, "Be baptized with the Spirit of God."

You know why he never commands us to be baptized with the Spirit of God? Because there's nothing we can do to baptize ourselves with the Spirit. That's something God has to do. You know, it would be like God saying to me, "Robert, have brown eyes." Well, I don't care how hard I tried, I could never give myself a pair of brown eyes. That's something God does for me. It's the same thing with the baptism with the Spirit. Jesus is the one and the only one who can baptize us with His Spirit.

Remember, the baptism with the Spirit is the process by which the Holy Spirit changes us. He changes us from being guilty, disobedient sinners, enemies of God. He turns us into forgiven, obedient disciples of Christ who are the friends of God. That's what the baptism with the Holy Spirit does. It changes us and it also connects us to Jesus Christ, the head, and to other Christians in the body. That's something Jesus does for us.

However, when we come to Ephesians 5:18, we are commanded to be filled with the Spirit. That is our responsibility. That is not God's responsibility. You and I have to choose whether or not we are going to be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. The command to be controlled by the Spirit is a command; it is not a promise.

And that leads to a second truth that we find from this verse. Being filled with the Spirit is a continual experience. It is not a one-time action. Now, the Bible says being baptized with the Spirit when we're saved, that's a one action. Ephesians 4:5 says, "There's one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." Is there a second baptism of the Spirit? Absolutely not. A third baptism? No. There's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

However, the filling with the Holy Spirit of God, that is a continual action. Again, remember that nautical illustration I used? The word used, "plaro," was used to describe the filling of the sail of a ship for a long journey. Now think about a sailboat going across the Atlantic Ocean. How does the wind work? Does the wind come one time and fill those sails continually for the entire journey? The wind doesn't do that. The wind comes for a while and then it leaves. It comes back again. It may even change direction. It's the same way with the filling of the Holy Spirit.

The tense of the command here could be translated "keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit of God." People ask me, "Pastor, do you believe in a second blessing?" Absolutely. I believe in a second blessing. I believe in a second blessing, a third blessing, a fourth blessing, a fifth blessing. Those continual blessings are the continual filling of the Holy Spirit of God. You see, choosing to be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God is a habit we develop. And the more often we say yes to the Spirit and no to sin, the easier it becomes the next time to say yes to the Spirit and no to sin.

Let me illustrate it for you this way. How many of you have ever taken a golf lesson before? You ever had a golf lesson before? Before, when I was in the eighth grade, I took golf lessons. I remember exactly; it was like yesterday it happened. You know, the instructor tells you, he says, first of all, he tells you how to grip the club. You know, you grip it just like this. And then he tells you how to position your feet. And then he talks to you about addressing the ball. Remember the old Art Carney routine, "Hello, ball?" That's not what he's talking about when he says "address the ball." Here, he's talking about how you stand in relation to the ball.

Then he says, you know, you're supposed to angle the head of your club in a certain way, and then on your backswing, you need to go just like this and so forth. I mean, detailed instructions. Now, whenever you go to a golf course, you can always tell the novice golfers because there they are, you know, just thinking about how they're going to grip that club and making sure they're standing right and angling the club right. But a seasoned golfer, does he think about those things? No, they're second nature to him. He just goes up, swings, and drives that ball down the fairway. Why? Because he's practiced over and over and over again. It's become second nature to him.

It's the same way with saying yes to the Spirit of God. Saying yes the first time makes it easier to say yes to the second time, the third time, and the fourth time of being controlled by, being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It is a continual experience, not a one-time action.

The third truth we see in Ephesians 5:18 is being filled with the Holy Spirit is God's desire for every Christian, not just a select few. It's God's desire for every one of us that we be filled with, controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is not reserved for a select few group of super saints. The old preacher Dan Savner said one time, "Most Christians are so subnormal that when they act normal, people think they're abnormal." No, that's really true. Most Christians are living such an inferior spiritual life. Most Christians are living so far away from the Holy Spirit of God that if anyone ever starts living under the Spirit's control on a regular basis, people say, "Oh, they're a fanatic," or "They're a super saint. They're like Mother Teresa or somebody."

It's hard to believe that that is God's desire for every Christian. But that's what he says in this verse. He says, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit of God." And that verb that he uses in Greek, "plero," is constructed in such a way that it has a plural audience. If Paul were from the south and writing in English, he would say, "You all be filled with the Holy Spirit of God." That's what that verb means. "Be filled" means "you all be filled." He wasn't just saying to one or two groups in the Ephesian Church to be filled. He was saying everybody is to be filled. The filling of the Holy Spirit is not reserved just for a select few group. It is God's desire for every believer.

Now, what have we seen about being filled with the Holy Spirit? First of all, it is a command. It is a continual command. It is a continual command for everyone. But it's also a command that has some very real practical benefits in our life. And next week, we're going to look at four of those practical benefits in your everyday life of choosing to be filled with, controlled by the Holy Spirit of God.

Speaker 3

If you feel like something is missing in your walk with God, it's likely this very issue. Or maybe you've become caught in a cycle of sin, confession, forgiveness, and you can't seem to break the pattern. Well, you're not alone. And if you're like me, it means that you haven't learned to unleash the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

As I mentioned earlier, I've written a book to help you. It's called *I Want More*. It was born out of my personal experience. By God's grace, I discovered that my desire for more—more joy, more peace, more daily victories—could be realized by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. And I want to help you discover that power as well.

When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, I'll be pleased to send you a copy of my book called *I Want More*. Your gift not only entitles you to request my book, but your investment has eternal implications as well. Your gift will be used by God to touch lives.

Not long ago, I heard from Robert in Pennsylvania who said, "As the youngest of 10 children given up for adoption, I grew up in foster homes. Until the age of 18, I spent my life angry at my mother until I heard you teach about true forgiveness and its power. It changed everything for me." Well, Robert, thank you for writing—what an encouraging story!

And to everyone listening today, please give generously so that we can continue to provide clear and bold biblical teaching to men and women all across our country, like Robert, who are starving to hear the truth.

Don't forget you can watch Pathway to Victory on television on Saturdays. We're on at noon Eastern on TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. On Sundays, we're on hundreds of stations, including TBN at 10:00 AM Eastern.

Speaker 1

David, thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the book called *I Want More*. Call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org. When your investment is $75 or more, we'll also send you the complete, unedited CD and DVD teaching set for *Unleashed*. That's the series from Dr. Jeffress about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit. To request both resources, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like. The mailing address is P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, TX 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins inviting you to join us again next time when we discover the practical benefits of continuously surrendering to the Holy Spirit. Hear a message called *What the Holy Spirit Can Do for You*. That's Monday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.