What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
“Mom, Dad … Do you know about the Holy Spirit???”
As a matter of fact, we did, but how did our teenage daughter not know that? Children keep us humble, and in that moment, my husband and I felt like we had failed as parents.
Having recently come alive in her faith, we’d noticed Autumn had been changing. Connected to a group of young people in love with Jesus, she’d started attending worship nights, and gone up for prayer to be “filled with the Holy Spirit.” As far as children go, Autumn had never been any trouble. Growing up in church, she loved God, had given her life to Jesus at a young age, gone to church camp year-after-year and attended youth group. She was trying to do all the right things and yet her faith hadn’t fully been ignited.
As she participated in these worship nights and gone up to the altar for prayer to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, this good, Christian girl, with whom nothing seemed amiss, powerfully changed! We noticed it at home, but hadn’t put the pieces together until that day, when she walked into the room with her face lit up like a lightbulb and presented us with this question, “Do you know about the Holy Spirit?”
The truth was that both my husband and I had been “baptized in the Holy Spirit” as teenagers. We’d been part of the Pentecostal movement and cherished the vital third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. But through the years there had been abuses. Speaking in tongues, miracles, and outward demonstrations of the Holy Spirit got out of balance and became the emphasis rather than the Holy Spirit Himself. Instead of the sweet gift the Holy Spirit is meant to be, the filling of the Spirit became an area of confusion and chaos.
Most painful of all, the teaching we received that everyone who was filled with the Holy Spirit would speak in tongues, brought confusion to our older children who had been prayed for to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and hadn’t received the gift of speaking in tongues. They walked away questioning why God had passed them by, or if they could trust the church’s teaching at all.
With Autumn being our youngest child, by the time she was a teenager, my husband and I had stopped talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the churches we attended had too. Not knowing whether that period of Church history was just a craze or from the Lord, many believers and churches put the filling of the Holy Spirit on the shelf because we didn’t know what to do with it.
Yet, here was our daughter, showing us once again, that what Jesus told his disciples was true–that the Holy Spirit is a beautiful, essential part of the New Testament church that He came to give us, and the empowerment we need to carry on His work in the world.
Firsts and lasts have special significance and the very last thing that Jesus told his followers before He ascended to heaven, was that they needed the full impartation of the Holy Spirit before they could bring Him to the world. We need the same thing today!
From Jesus’ instruction we know that we need the baptism, but that baptism can show itself in different ways, not just one! At times, the full impartation of the Spirit would show itself through speaking in tongues, other times His filling was evident as boldness to preach the gospel, or to minister to someone in miraculous love, joy, peace, or wisdom.
Rather than focusing on the outward sign of our filling, we should focus instead on what Jesus told us in Luke 11:11, “that if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Acts 1:7 that, “when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power to be His witnesses,” and John 14 that after we are filled with the Spirit, He will, “teach us all things, and remind us of all Jesus said.”
Like the difference we observed in our daughter who had been trying her best to live the Christian life, the filling of the Holy Spirit makes all the difference in our faith being fully ignited. But, like God the Father, and Jesus, the Holy Spirit will never force Himself upon us. We must welcome Him in.
I wonder what would happen in our church if we all took Pastor Jim’s challenge, and like the disciples in the upper room, prayed each day this week and continually as we study the book of Acts, “Holy Spirit, come and flood my life.” … Not afraid or ignoring this vital third person of the Trinity, but excited about all the blessings He will bring.
I’m willing, how about you?