Turning Point

Guest (Female): Are you trying to live the Christian life under your own power, or are you relying on the power of the Holy Spirit? The difference is like night and day. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers what it means to be filled with the Spirit and how it is the key to living a life of victory. From the series, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, here is David to share his message, The Filling of the Spirit.

Dr. David Jeremiah: The Bible speaks about being filled with the Spirit of God once you become a Christian. What does that mean? We will talk about it on today's program, and hopefully this mystery that is in the mind of so many people will be resolved—not because I have the answer, but because the Bible has the answer. We will show you from the Scripture what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and how you can be filled with the Holy Spirit today.

Guest (Male): In just a moment, we will get to the teaching of the Word of God. But first, let me remind you that the Holy Spirit book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, is available during the month of June for a gift of any size to Turning Point. This hardcover, 250-page book will show you with fresh eyes that through the Holy Spirit, God offers you hope and belonging in God's family.

You will find guidance daily for important decisions, a Bible that comes alive and speaks directly to your heart, and unique gifts that encourage others and fill you with purpose. This book is only available from Turning Point. It is not available in any bookstore; you cannot get it anywhere else. But when you send your gift of any size to Turning Point during the month of June, simply ask for it and it will be sent to your home address immediately. It is yours for a gift of any amount when you ask for this resource. We will send it to you right away. We are so happy to have the opportunity to put these resources in your hands. Long after the radio is silent, the books are there to help you and encourage you, and we hope you take advantage of them. Here is part one of The Filling of the Spirit.

Dr. David Jeremiah: One of the most memorable events of my childhood happened when I was living in Dayton, Ohio years ago. My father was a pastor in that city and I was a paperboy at the time. I think I was in the seventh grade. My paper route went up and down Woodman Avenue into some very interesting subdivisions that were being built along that road. Living in one of the subdivisions was a very mean man, mean in every sense of the word.

He did everything he could to terrorize the kids who lived in the neighborhood, and if you happened to be a paperboy there, you delivered your papers on that street as fast as you could and got out of there. One Halloween, some of my buddies and I decided it was time to get even with this guy. We cooked up some elaborate tricks because we knew Mr. Nasty wouldn't be giving out any treats that night.

When my friends and I got to his door, however, it became immediately apparent that somebody had already been there before us with the same idea. Old Mr. Nasty was primed and ready. He came around from outside of the back door and started to chase us, screaming at the top of his lungs and firing tin cans at us like missiles. He might have been old, but he was fast, and he almost got on top of us before we knew what was happening.

I honestly tell you, I don't think up until that time I had ever been so afraid in my life. You see, it was dark, it was Halloween, and we were doing something we knew we shouldn't do. I won't tell you what I did because I don't want to contribute to the delinquency of any minors here this morning. I took off from the front porch as fast as I could, tore down the cul-de-sac, raced across Woodman Avenue, and jumped over a fence I could not jump over again if I lived to be a hundred years old.

The next day, I found myself back at the scene of the crime delivering my papers, and I remember driving by that fence I had jumped over and straddling my bike and thinking, "How in the world did I ever jump over that fence? Man, I should go out for track." Oh, the wonders of adrenaline. I was filled with fear. I had discovered strength I never knew I possessed. Have you ever been filled with fear?

I have read stories about women, mothers, who were filled with fear who actually lifted a car off of one of their children. Is it a possible thing? No, but when you are filled with fear, all kinds of things happen. There is a story about a young man who was going home from work one night and he decided to take a shortcut through the cemetery. He did not know that that very day they had dug a fresh grave and it was dark, and lo and behold, he fell into the grave.

He tried to get out and he couldn't. Every time he tried, he just pulled more dirt in behind him. Finally, he gave up and thought he would just sit in the corner of the grave and wait until the daylight and maybe somebody would come and get him. In the meantime, another guy was walking through the cemetery and fell in the other end of the grave. He started the same routine, trying to get out, pulling dirt down on himself.

Finally, from the end of the grave where the first guy was, he heard, "You can't get out of here." But he got out. He was filled with fear. I used to think when I read these passages about being filled with the Spirit, I wondered if it meant filled up to the waist, filled up to the shoulders, filled up to the... No, it's not being filled up like you fill up a canister. Being filled means to be controlled by.

So when you read the words, "be filled with the Spirit," what it means is be controlled by the Spirit. The illustration that is given in Ephesians is an interesting one because it compares being filled with the Spirit to being drunk with wine. When you are drunk with wine, the wine takes over and you end up doing things you never would have done outside of it. When you are filled with the Spirit in a very positive way, you live life in a supernatural way unlike anything you would ever be able to do if He weren't controlling the situation.

You say, "What does this have to do with the world as we live in today? Is it some mysterious doctrine that belongs to the mystics? Does it have anything to do with real life? I mean, does it have anything to do with Monday morning, the pile of dirty laundry, the stack of bills, or the daily commute?" Most of us would agree that the standards of Christianity are impossible—impossibly high. Christianity is not hard; it's impossible if you do it in your own strength.

Scripture tells us to be humble, to be gentle, to always be rejoicing, to be constantly praying, to be taking every thought into captivity, to be loving those who oppose us. Trying in our own strength to do all that is exhausting. Not only is the standard too high, but we face an enemy at every step who is trying to oppose us in our walk with the Lord. If we don't have a power beyond ourselves, the Christian life becomes one long defeat.

I love that old joke about the man who bought a new chainsaw from a local hardware dealer. He took it home and he cut a cord of wood. The dealer happened to be in the area just as the man was finishing up, and he stopped to chat with him. He said, "How do you like that new saw, sir?" He said, "Well, it's all right, I guess. To tell you the truth, it's not much of an improvement over my old saw."

The store owner said, "Really? That doesn't seem right. This is the latest model. Let me see that thing." He picked it up, he pulled on the starter cord, and the big saw roared to life. The man who had bought the saw said, "What was that noise?" So what was going on was he was trying to saw wood with a power saw where there was no power. That's so like so much of what we do as Christians.

We feel frustrated that we can't get stuff done that we know God has called us to do, or act this way, or live this way. But if we do it in our own strength, it will always be frustratingly a failure. The Bible tells us to be filled with the Spirit. Let me explore that for just a moment. In the Bible, we are told that this is something we are supposed to do. It is nothing less than a command.

"And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit." That's what Ephesians 5:18 says. Now, there are a couple of things about this command that I want you to note. First of all, it's in the imperative mood. That means it's not an option. It isn't something that says if you have time to ponder for days or weeks, you might come to the conclusion about being filled. It's not one of those nice-sounding but far-away goals.

The Word of God says that every believer, no matter who we are, no matter how long we've been saved, is commanded to be filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is in the plural rather than in the singular. That means it's for all of us. It is not just for special people, spiritual giants, or super saints. It's for everybody. And then it's in the passive voice, which means the object has something acting upon it from outside.

In other words, we don't fill ourselves. The Holy Spirit is given to us by God, and we pray and God fills us with His Spirit so that we are controlled by the Spirit. Paul compares being filled with the Spirit to being filled with alcohol. When someone drinks, the alcohol comes from the outside and starts to control them on the inside. When you let the Holy Spirit have access to your heart, your mind, and your life, He begins to guide and strengthen and empower you from the inside out.

And then the last thing about this is that it's in the present tense. That means you don't just get filled once. Actually, the text really says, "Keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit." All of us know there are times when we just slip into doing our own thing, whether we like to admit it or not. But if you want to have victory in your Christian life, you need to let the Spirit of God tell you what to do.

You say, "Well, how does that work, Pastor? How does the Spirit of God tell me what to do?" First of all, I believe the Spirit of God speaks to us inwardly. The Bible says one of His goals is to convict us. Have you ever noticed that you're walking along doing your own thing, and something comes along and you yield to it and you feel very uncomfortable about it? That's the Spirit of God in you saying you're going down the wrong road.

The same thing happens when something good approaches and you know you're doing the right thing; the Spirit of God speaks to you. But most of all, the Spirit of God speaks to us through the Bible. The Bible is God's written word, and when we read that, two things happen. We have the inspiration of the Spirit in the writing of the Bible, and we have the Holy Spirit living within us helping us to understand what the Bible says.

I remember hearing a guy say, "I never could understand the Bible, then I got saved and in the meantime I discovered somebody rewrote it." No, they didn't rewrite the Bible; you just got the interpreter on the inside and he's helping you understand it. The Bible says the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit, for they are spiritually discerned. That means if you don't have the Holy Spirit because you're not a Christian, you can read the Bible until your eyes fall out and it won't make any difference in your life.

More and more as I grow in the Lord, I understand being filled with the Spirit is an ongoing process. Sometimes as I am reading and studying the Bible, the Spirit of God will reveal something to me—some area of my life or ministry that isn't under His control—and He brings it to mind. He does. And I have to either yield that to Him or I have to deny it and go on doing my own thing.

We should never imagine that being filled is a once-for-all deal that you can nail down at some Bible camp and throw a chunk of wood on the bonfire and it's all settled. Being filled is a continuous thing. Every day you seek the Lord and you wake up in the morning and say, "Spirit of God, control my life today. I want to be a Spirit-led, Spirit-filled person on this day." Now, what are the conditions for this gracious act?

What do we have to do? How do we go about this? How do I become a Spirit-filled Christian? First of all, you have to desire to be filled with the Spirit. If you have no desire for the Spirit of God to fill you and control you, guess what? It won't happen. John 7, Jesus says, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." And He tells us later in the verse that that verse is about the Holy Spirit.

In the Beatitudes in the New Testament, there is a verse that says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Now, what that means is, if you are a Christian, do you ever have this feeling that there should be something else going on in your life besides what's going on right now? You want something more, something different, something more aligned with what God's will is? You know in your heart you're not walking the straight and narrow; you're living on the fringe areas.

If that doesn't bother you and if you don't have a desire for there to be something more in your life, you're never going to be filled with the Spirit of God because He doesn't come where He's not wanted. He's not going to come into your life and take control unless you ask Him to, unless you desire for that to happen. Are you thirsty? Maybe a little desperate for a closer walk with God?

You say, "Well, that makes me feel like something's wrong." Let me tell you something. The Bible says you're blessed if you hunger after righteousness. It doesn't say you're blessed if you're righteous, although that's true. It says you're blessed if you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Do you have a desire for more of God, more of His will, more of His person? You are a candidate for the Holy Spirit's filling; that's what the Scripture says.

Some people have told me, "Pastor, I wish I could get to the place in my Christian life where I could just be happy." Jesus says you will be blessed if you hunger and thirst after righteousness. The word blessed is the word happy. Happy is the one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. Don't deny that in your life, don't push that away, don't say, "What's wrong with me? I just keep wanting more of God."

If that's true of you, the Bible says you're a candidate for the Holy Spirit's infilling. Then you have to denounce sin in your life. Let me tell you something: the Holy Spirit will not cohabit a life that is filled with willful sin. If you are living in habits that are not honoring to the Lord, the Holy Spirit is not going to move in next to that. His first name is Holy, and He's going to want to be in a place where holiness is true.

Paul explained it like this: he said, "Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates the body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." When we come to be filled with the Holy Spirit, first of all we have to want to be, we have to desire it. And secondly, we have to be willing to deal with the things in our life that are not pleasing to the Lord.

I'll tell you something I've learned. You say, "Well, I don't know if there are things like that in my life." If you ask the Lord to reveal them to you, He flat-out will do it. You won't have to ask Him a number of times. You won't have to say, "Oh Lord, Lord, please show me the things that are wrong in my life." What I've discovered is, if you ask Him for that, He will show it to you through His Word, through a sermon, through something you hear on the radio, through a conversation with... I don't know what it will be, but He has this way of always making us aware of the things in our life that are not pleasing to Him.

You may be afraid to ask that question because you don't want to know the answer. That's what I discovered from a lot of folks I know. Why don't you ask the Lord to show you those things in your life that are not pleasing to Him? Because you already know those things in your life that are not pleasing to Him; you don't need God to tell you those things. So you don't ask. The Bible says if you want to be controlled by the Spirit of God, you have to get serious about not living your life according to the old way before you were saved.

You need to live your life in a new way. Denounce sin in your life. The third thing you've got to do is you have to dedicate yourself fully to Christ. To be filled with the Spirit is to yield to His control. The Holy Spirit doesn't want to just be the resident of your life; He wants to be the president of your life. He wants to sit on the throne of your life. He wants to rule every day in the decisions you make, in the things you do, in the places you go.

I used to pray when I would get up in the morning, "Lord, help me to take Jesus Christ with me wherever I go and be an influence for Him," and then I realized that's a prayer I don't have to pray because He's going with me anyway. So to be filled with the Spirit is to yield to the Spirit's control. Romans 12:1 and 2 have been used over the years to illustrate this, and I'm not going to read it from the King James. I'm going to read it from Phillips' paraphrase because it's so good.

Listen to these words: "With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give Him your bodies as a living sacrifice, consecrated to Him and acceptable by Him. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good and it meets all of His demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity."

So we say, "All right, Lord. You know what I want and my life is clean now and I've confessed my sin. Now I'm just going to give You control—in my business, in my home, in my free time, in every part of me. Lord, You've got it all. No strings attached, no clauses, no reservations. You've got me." Someone has illustrated this as a house with a bunch of rooms in it. Jesus wants access to every room in your life. He wants to control. You can't lock Him out of some rooms. You can't say, "No, this is my thing over here, Lord. I'll take care of this. You've got all the rest of them, but I've got this." He wants absolute, total control.

Some of you know that I went to Dallas Seminary. Dallas Seminary is a wonderful place. It was founded by a man named Lewis Sperry Chafer. I wasn't there when the school was founded; that was a long, long time ago. But I've read a lot about this man and he was unique. He did things most people wouldn't have the courage to do, and usually it turned out pretty good.

I remember reading that on one occasion in Dallas, he was asked to speak at a banquet and there were a lot of preliminaries: a lot of music, a lot of announcements, along with various presentations and endless acknowledgments. I know what that's like; I've been in that spot. I went to a place once where they had a bunch of sponsors on the radio and they let every sponsor speak for five minutes. Well, this event with Lewis Sperry Chafer, it was three hours before he got to speak. Three hours.

He immediately endeared himself to the audience when he got up and he said, "I had prepared a somewhat lengthy message, but the hour is late. I will not detain you. Therefore, I'm just going to present a three-point outline of the message and let the Spirit of God speak to your heart." Here's what he said: "My subject is the reasonableness of fully surrendering our lives to God. Reason number one: He is all-wise and He knows better than anyone else what is best for my life. Reason number two: He's almighty and He has the power to accomplish that which is best for me. Reason number three: He loves me more than anyone else in the world loves me. Conclusion: The most logical thing a Christian can do is to surrender his life completely to God. What more can I say? What need I say more?" And with that, he sat down.

He got a standing ovation—not because of the message, but because it was over. But the message was worth an ovation. God knows you better than anyone else knows you. God loves you more than anyone else loves you. And God is more powerful than anyone else could ever be and can accomplish in you what no one else can do. So why wouldn't you want to give your life over to Him and His Spirit in your heart?

You have to have a desire to be filled. You have to denounce sin in your life. You have to dedicate yourself completely to the Lord. And the Bible says that when we do these things, the Holy Spirit will take control. There are two verses in the New Testament that have often intrigued me about the Holy Spirit. Maybe you've read them and wondered, what in the world does that mean? They have a lot to do with what we're talking about today because these things can get in the way of the Spirit of God controlling your life.

First Thessalonians 5:19 says this: "Do not quench the Holy Spirit." What in the world does that mean? It means that when the Holy Spirit's on fire in your life, don't throw cold water on what He wants you to do. Don't shut Him down. Don't put Him on hold. You quench the Holy Spirit by not doing something He tells you to do. And when you walk in the Spirit and are filled with the Spirit, you don't want to quench Him. When He tells you to do something, do it, because if you don't, you're quenching Him. You're pouring water on the influence of the Spirit in your life.

That's why total obedience is required here. You don't get to pray about it; you don't get to say, "Give me a couple of weeks to think this over, Lord." He tells you to do something, you know it's from Him, you do it, and if you don't, you quench the Holy Spirit. The other one in the New Testament that's similar to this is in Ephesians 4:30 that says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God."

How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? Well, if you're not going to walk in the Spirit, if you're not going to be filled with the Spirit, the last thing you want to do is to grieve Him or in any way to shut Him down. The Holy Spirit tells you to do something and you don't do it, you grieve Him. You do something that's dishonoring to the Lord, you grieve Him. The Holy Spirit is a living, vital person who lives within you and wants to help you live your life.

Guest (Male): So you have the Holy Spirit if you're a Christian, but does the Holy Spirit have you? That is the question. To be filled with the Spirit is to be under the control of the Spirit of God. He is filling you with His presence and with His power, and if you know anything at all about that even for a moment in time, you know that's where you always want to be. We will have more of this on Monday after the weekend: part two of The Filling of the Spirit.

Next week, we are going to talk also about the illumination of the Spirit and what it means to walk in the Spirit. These are truths that are found in the book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, which has just been released, and that book is the resource for the month of June here on Turning Point. If you want to have a copy of this book, send a gift of any size to Turning Point. That gift will be used exclusively to help spread the Gospel around the world, and when you do that, you simply have to ask for the book and it will be sent to you. It is our way of saying thank you in a tangible way and adding value to your life as a follower of Christ. Give us the opportunity to do that; do it today. We will respond immediately.

In the meantime, have a great weekend. Be sure to watch us on television if you're where you can find us, and most of all, go to church. We will see you on Monday. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where you can find it, visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio. Or call 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of David's new book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, a valuable resource that is yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Let us know how God is using this ministry by dropping us a note to Turning Point, Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we continue The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.