Daily Devo - More Spirit and Less Stress - Day 2

IL.message series promo

DAY 2: Ask God to Fill You

 

“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit...”

Ephesians 5:18, ESV

 

What does it mean to be “filled with the Holy Spirit”? I believe it means to be filled with the immediate presence and power of God Himself in the ordinary and extraordinary times of life. The goal is help you live more intentionally a life that looks more and more like Jesus (Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 5:1). So how do we do this? First, we must ask our Heavenly Father to fill us with the Holy Spirit. The command that Paul gives the Christians in Ephesus is a present tense imperative. It’s something you must do. To be filled means to make yourself full. He used the opposite illustration with being drunk on wine. If you are drunk, that’s because you filled yourself up with wine. Here he says, don’t do that, but be filled, or make yourself full on God’s spirit. To fill up on God’s spirit is what he’s saying you should do as a Christian. This doesn’t simply happen automatically as a Christian. 

 

We must do something. We must ask God for this. All throughout the Scriptures we are told that we can ask God, that hears us and he wants to answer our prayers, especially when we pray in accordance with his will. Ask whatever you wish and will be done for you, according to John 15:7. Or John says in 1 John 5:14 to ask anything according to his will and God will hear us.

 

In Luke 11:13, Jesus says, “If you know how to give good gifts to your kids, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.” The bible teaches that we can ask God for more of the Holy Spirit. If that were not so, it seems hard to understand why some Christians leaders in the early church were described as being full of the Holy Spirit, and this why they were chosen for leadership. Both Stephen and Barnabas were good Jesus-loving men who were described as being “full of the Holy Spirit”. This seems to imply that some are not as full of the Holy Spirit as others (see Acts 6:3, Acts 11:24). It seems best to take the Apostle Paul’s plain teaching to be filled as something we can do. And it starts with asking the Heavenly Father. So, start today!

 

A Prayer for Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

“Heavenly Father, fill me right now with the Spirit, so that I can live more and more like Jesus, sharing and showing the love of Christ to people all around me. Take my stress as I receive more of your spirit for my daily life and peace. In Jesus’ name, amen!”

Leave a Comment

Comments for this post have been disabled.