“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”
You either have the Spirit of God dwelling in you, or you don’t. At Salvation, God puts a new spirit in you and even places His own Spirit in you. It’s like a marriage covenant where we become betrothed to God. His Spirit is the seal of the eternal covenant we enter with God through Christ. If you believe that God sent Jesus to save you, you have been born again and God has placed His Spirit in you, period, end of story.
1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
The baptism of the Spirit and, subsequently, living filled with the Spirit are not all about praying on tongues. That is a capacity or a gift that you can use once God lives in you, but it’s not the culmination or the sole “evidence” of having God’s spirit.
Look at these instances from Acts where believers who already received the spirit became filled with the spirit.
In Acts 4:8 filled with the Spirit and spoke with wisdom to the rulers of the people and elders of Israel
In Acts 4:31 filled with the Holy Ghost and spoke the word of God with boldness
In Acts 13:8 Paul filled with the Spirit gets a word of knowledge about Elymas the sorcerer and rebukes him
So what’s my point?
My point is that if you have placed your faith in Christ, you are indeed complete in Him, and you lack nothing. You don’t need to wait for a separate infilling of the Spirit. You don’t need to receive an aspect of God’s Spirit that you didn’t already receive. And you don’t have to have someone else lay hands on you to get more of God. You either have the Spirit, or you don’t.
What’s Missing?
Once you are born again and God takes up residence in you, it’s your choice to live “filled with the Spirit.” Filled means to be under the influence of or permeated with. You can have God's Spirit in you, but you are not yielding to His influence on your life. You might be born again, but you are not putting on the Spirit or intentionally choosing to allow the Spirit to empower you.
The fruits of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit (including tongues) work in you and through you by grace through faith. Meaning that you believe, and then you experience the influence, power, or manifestation of His spirit in the form of wisdom, healing, fruit, gifts, inspiration to preach, and a host of other capacities.
For the record, the Greek word for “receive” is lambano, which means:
to take with the hand
lay hold of, any person or thing in order to use it
to take up a thing to be carried
to take upon one's self
See the full lexicon entry here: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g2983/kjv/tr/0-1/
To receive the Spirit is to lay hold of it and take it upon oneself to use it. We have this idea that the Spirit chooses to fall on people in His own timing, and you just have to wait for it to happen, but that is not what the definition indicates. And if you re-read the stories in Acts where people received the Spirit, they were either ignorant of the Spirit or were born again and had not yet laid hold of the Spirit to be empowered by Him.
Choose to Yield
God is not going to control you; you must choose to yield to His influence in your heart. If you want to experience the power of His Spirit, you must make an intentional and conscious choice in the situation in which you need His power to yield to Him, to lay hold of His Spirit, and become filled in that specific moment. You carry His Spirit; He’s in you, and He’s not going to leave, but you have to allow Him to empower you, which is an act of faith.
Quit waiting and choose.
Study and Application Exercise
I recommend this study exercise: read through John chapters 14, 15, and 16 and make a list of all the things Jesus teaches about the Holy Spirit. Get a vision for how you can experience each attribute in specific areas of your life. Then, as you live each day, look for ways to be filled with His Spirit; in other words, look for ways to yield to His influence and power (grace) in those moments.
Know Him and how he operates, and then expect to experience Him practically, whether for fruit or gifts.
I’ll post another blog after this one for use as a study guide. Once you have completed this exercise, send me an email on how it affects you.
For more on this topic, check out these series.
➡️ The Ministry of the Holy Spirit series: Download | Watch | Listen
➡️ Grace and the Supernatural series: Download | Listen
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