It is one thing to have the Holy Spirit indwelling your life; it is quite another thing to have Him filling and controlling your life. Every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; 1 Corinthians 12:13); every Christian is sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). But every Christian should be filled with the Holy Spirit:
Ephesians 5:18c: “but be filled with the Spirit”
The point is that Ephesians 5:18 contains a two-fold command – and the positive command is as binding as the negative command. We are horrified at the thought of being drunk with wine. Are we horrified also at the thought of not being filled with the Spirit? What is our response to God’s command to us to be filled with the Spirit?
Before the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were ineffective, failing servants of the Lord Jesus, but after the Day of Pentecost the disciples were ‘all filled with the Holy Spirit’ and they began to serve the Lord effectively (Acts 2:1-4). It is only when we work in the power of His anointing that anything is accomplished for His glory. All work rendered in the energy of the flesh or in the wisdom of man is bound to fail (Zechariah 4:6; and compare Acts 1:8).
Here is God’s remedy for that all-too-common up-and-down experience of the Christian life. Are you living a switchback life – rejoicing in the things of God one day, and down in the valley of defeat and humiliation the next day? God’s remedy for this is the filling of the Holy Spirit. While we remain Spirit-filled we shall not, cannot, backslide. The way to experience 1 Corinthians 15:58 is by Ephesians 5:18!
(Romans 8:14). It is when the Holy Spirit fills us that we are led in the way of God’s choosing for us. It is when we are filled with the Spirit that we are able to acknowledge Him, and this is the one essential condition for a God-guided life (Proverbs 3:6).
God’s will for each one of His children is that they should bring forth ‘fruit’ (John 15:2); ‘more fruit’ (John 15:2); ‘much fruit’ (John 15:5,8); and the nine-fold cluster of fruit that they are to bring forth is given in Galatians 5:22-23. We are all bringing forth either the fruit of the Spirit or the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). How necessary it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit if we are to be fruitful Christians to the glory of God! (Colossians 1:10).
As Christians, our great desire should be to be like our Lord. How can we be like Him? Only as the Holy Spirit reproduces His life within us. We can never be like Him by striving, straining and struggling. The Christian life is not imitation; it is the giving of His life to us, and the reproduction of His life within us, by the Holy Spirit; thus, the measure in which the Holy Spirit fills and floods our lives determines the measure in which we become truly Christ-like.