On the Filling of the Spirit

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The Holy Spirit is present with us here, now. As we come to this Table, He is the one who makes it all efficacious.

Now He is always at work, regardless of our disheveled condition. He deals with us when we come prepared as we should have been prepared, and He deals with us when we come unprepared. God is never caught by surprise when we show up at His Table, in whatever condition we might be in.

Remember that this Spirit is a Person. Not only a Person, but an infinite Person, an ultimate Person. It is His work to mold us into complete persons, restored persons, to build us back into what God intended for us to become. He is not a powerful but impersonal force, like electricity. He loves, He gives, He admonishes, He grieves, He praises. He sculpts. He shapes.

What He does as He works in our lives is to grow us. He encourages us, and He knits us together. As He does this, we have to remember that He does not do it from some external position or place. He indwells us. Through His Spirit, God has shed His love into our hearts. Put another way, He works in us by filling us.

We are therefore to seek this filling. All true Christians are baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit, a once and for all kind of thing. But the filling of the Spirit is ongoing, and can wax and wane, ebb and flow. This is why Paul can command the Ephesians to be filled with the Spirit as they submit to one another, and as they sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

So as you come to this Table, if you feel somewhat tattered and broken, and not filled, what should you do? You should ask.  Our Father is not stingy. He knows how to give good gifts to those who ask, and so we should ask for the Spirit to fill us (Luke 11:13).

So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.