- Lesson 11 in the BaptistWay Press Connect360 unit “Living in the Spirit” focuses on Ephesians 5:18-19.
God makes the choice simple for us. Don’t choose to sedate yourself through drunkenness, which will lead to heartache and self-destructive acts and behavior. Instead, choose to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Choose to be intoxicated and saturated in God’s Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Drink your fill of God’s Spirit, and you will experience life as it was intended to be.
The phrase “be filled” in Ephesians 5:18 means to be filled to the full, to be filled so completely that it is spilling over the sides. The Greek verb here is a present, passive, imperative. It is plural. So, it would be translated: “Y’all: Allow God to overly fill your lives with the Spirit of God.” Filling is not something we have to beg or plead for. It is not something that we have to be good enough to receive. When you receive Jesus, you receive the Spirit of God, for that is how Jesus comes to live inside you. As a believer, he is in you.
Being filled with God’s Spirit is not dependent upon how much of God we have in us; it is dependent upon how much of our life we surrender to God for him to fill, control and use. Open up and let him fill you to overflowing. Let God direct every aspect of your life. Let him fill your mind and thoughts. Let him fill your emotions and give you his love, forgiveness and compassion. Let him fill your ears and eyes to hear and see God active in your life.
We ask, and God does the filling
The second thing to realize is that God commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The verb is a command, and since it is “passive,” we don’t do the filling, we ask and receive it. God fills us. He does it to us and for us. Since it is a command of God, we know it is God’s will for us. Since we know that when we ask anything according to his will, God does it, we then know that he fills us when we ask him (see Luke 11:13). Yield to God and let him fill you to overflowing with his presence.
God fills us to overflowing with his Spirit. The Spirit then flows out of us to impact others through the music and songs we share, through the praise and thanksgiving we give to God, and through the quality of our honorable relationships with others. God doesn’t fill us for us to keep him contained within us. God fills us so our lives will incorporate his values and will. He fills us so he himself can go where we go, flow out of our lives, and impact others with his love and reality. God fills us to be carried to others, through us.
Compiled by Stan Granberry, marketing coordinator for BaptistWay Press.
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