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by Dr. Bill BrightWhy is the Average Christian Not Filled with the Holy Spirit?
The average Christian continues to live in disobedience to God and is not filled with the Holy Spirit for two reasons:
a lack of knowledge
unbelief
From the moment of your spiritual birth, you have the power to go on growing toward maturity in Christ. And yet, the average person, not understanding how to live by faith, lives on a spiritual roller coaster, careening from one emotional experience to another.
In Romans 7, Paul describes the predicament of the carnal Christian,
"For that which I am doing I do not understand for I am not practicing what I would like to do. But I am doing the very things I hate, Wretched man that I am. Who will set me free from this body of death?"
In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul describes a carnal Christian. Such a Christian is usually a miserable person. Even more miserable than a non-believer.
Having experienced the joy and the blessing and fellowship with God the carnal Christian has lost present contact and does not know how to recapture that lost fellowship. Yet the worldly believer can never be satisfied with that old way of life again. And in a search for happiness and fulfillment, this person has become self-centered instead of Christ-centered.
Confusion and Frustration
As a result, he has become increasingly confused and frustrated and does not know what to do about it. This worldly believer does not know how to live by faith - living instead by feelings. The carnal Christian tries rather than trusts. He does not know how to stop being carnal nor how to become a spiritual Christian. The only one who can enable the worldly believer to change is, of course, the Holy Spirit.
In West Texas there is a famous oil field known as the Yates Pool. During the Depression, this field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named Yates. Mr. Yates was not able to make enough money on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family, like many others during the depression he had to live on government subsidy.
Day after day, he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he no doubt was thinking greatly troubled about how he would be able to pay his bills and meet the needs of his family. Then a seismographic crew from a major oil company came into the area and they suggested to Mr. Yates that there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a contract.
At 1,115 feet they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were even more than twice as large. In fact, some fifty years after the discovery, a government test of one of the wells showed that it would still produce the potential of 125,000 barrels of oil a day.
And Mr. Yates owned it all! The day he purchased the land he received the oil and mineral rights. He was a multi-millionaire but he was living in poverty! The problem? He did not know the oil was there. He owned it, but he did not possess it.
I do not know of a better illustration of the Christian life than this. The moment you become a child of God through faith in Christ, you become an heir of God, and all of His supernatural resources are made available to you. Everything you need - including wisdom, love, power - to be a man or woman of God and to be a fruitful witnesses for Christ is available to you.
Spiritual Poverty
But most Christians continue to live in self-imposed spiritual poverty because they do not know how to appropriate from God those spiritual resources which are already theirs. Like Mr. Yates before the oil discovery they live in ignorance of their vast riches.
Lack of knowledge is not the only reason that Christians are not filled with the Holy Spirit. But a lack of faith keeps many people from being filled with the spirit as well.
Many people do not believe in God's trustworthiness and are afraid to relinquish the control of their lives to the Holy Spirit for fear that God will require the impossible from them. That He will change their plans, require them to give away their wealth, take all the fun out of their lives, make them endure tragedies or something similar.
An outstanding young minister, a seminary honor graduate, once told me, "I have never surrendered the control of my life to Christ because I have been afraid of what He will do to me." Then he told me how, years before, he had had what he thought was a premonition from God, that if he committed his life to Christ, his parents would be killed in a tragic accident. He was afraid to say "Yes" to God for fear his parents would lose their lives - that God would use such an experience to test him to determine the genuineness of his commitment.
Now let me ask you. Does that sound like a loving Father? Who do you think put that idea into his mind? Certainly not God. It was Satan saying, as he said to Adam and Eve centuries ago, "You can't trust God." But I can say you can trust God! He loves you and He is worthy of your trust.
God has proven over and over again that He is a loving God. He is worthy of your trust in Him. And Jesus assures you,
"If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!"
Many people come to me for counsel concerning God's will for their lives. Often they are fearful of what God will ask them to do. Usually I ask them, "Do you believe that God loves you? Do you believe that He has a wonderful plan for your life? Does He have the power to guide and bless your life if you place your trust in Him?" As a rule, the answers are in the affirmative. I then ask them, "Are you willing to trust Him right now to direct and empower you to live a holy life and to be a fruitful witness for Christ?" By this time most of them are ready to say "Yes" to Him without reservation. They have begun to recognize that their feelings of doubt have been placed there by the enemy of their souls.
When you give your life to Christ, you need not worry about what is going to happen to you. Maybe you are afraid that He will take away your pleasures, cause you to leave your business or profession, take away your health, or terminate a friendship or love affair. You may fear that He will send you, as a missionary, to some remote part of the world where you will lose your life for Him.
He may indeed ask you to do one or more of these things, and again He may not. If He does, you will rejoice in the privilege, for God always blesses those who trust and obey Him. The happiest people I meet are not those who have all the best of what this world has to offer - or those who have achieved great success in their professions - or those who are in great positions of power and influence. The happiest people I meet are those who have learned to totally trust and obey God in their lives no matter their circumstances.
As God reminds us in 1 John 4:18:
"We need have no fear of someone who loves us perfectly; his perfect love for us eliminates all dread of what he might do to us. If we are afraid, it is for fear of what he might do to us, and shows that we are not fully convinced that he really loves us."
The word of God and the experiences of multitudes through the centuries give unqualified assurance that you can trust God with your life, your all.
How can I be Filled with the Holy Spirit?
The last question to answer is 'How can one be filled with the Holy Spirit?' How did you become a Christian? By faith. "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." How are you filled with the Holy Spirit? By faith. The scripture says: "As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him." You receive Christ by faith. You walk by faith. Everything you receive from God, from the moment of your spiritual birth until you die, is by faith.
Do you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? You can be filled right now, by faith.
You do not have to beg God to fill you with His Power. You do not have to barter with Him by fasting or weeping or begging or pleading for a long period of time. I remember in my own experience I used to fast for a week at a time and I would cry out to God for His fullness. Then one day I discovered from the Scriptures that the "just shall live by faith." You do not earn God's fullness. You receive it by faith.
Let me illustrate. Suppose that you want to cash a check for a hundred dollars. And you had a thousand dollars on deposit. Would you go to the bank and get down on your knees, and beg, "Oh, please, please, cash my check?" No, that is not the way you cash a check. You simply go in faith, place the check on the counter and you wait for the money which is already yours. Then you thank the teller and go on your way rejoicing.
Millions of Christians are begging God, as I once did, for something which is not only readily available but already theirs - just waiting to be appropriated by faith. They are seeking some kind of emotional experience, not realizing that such an attitude on their part is an insult to the God who said we are to live by faith it is an act of denying faith itself.
Though you are filled with the Holy Spirit by faith and faith alone, it is important to recognize that several factors contribute to preparing your heart for the filling of the Spirit.
First, you must desire to live a life that will please the Lord. You have the promise of our Savior, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
Second, be willing to surrender your life totally completely and irrevocably to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In Romans 12:1,2 we are told: "Dear brothers, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice, Holy, the kind He can accept. When you think of what he has done for you is that too much to ask? Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world but be a new and different person." With a fresh newness in all you do and think and then you will learn from your own experience how His ways will really satisfy you.
Third, confess every known sin which the Holy Spirit brings to mind and experience the cleansing and forgiveness which God promises in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong."
It is completely proper for God to do this because Christ died to wash away our sins.
If you have wronged a brother or have taken that which is not rightfully yours, the Holy Spirit may lead you to make restitution to right your wrong. If so, obey Him, or you will miss His blessing. The blessings of the fullness of God's Spirit come only to those who willingly obey Him.
Again, you are not filled with the Holy Spirit because you desire to be filled nor because you confess your sins or present your body a living sacrifice to the Lordship of Christ - you are filled by faith.
These are only factors which contribute toward preparing you for the filling of the Spirit by faith. There are two very important words to remember. They are the words: command and promise.
In Ephesians 5:18, God commands you to be filled:
"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit."
Not to be filled, controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, is disobedience.
The other word is promise - a promise that makes the command possible:
"This is the assurance we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him."
Now let me ask you, is it God's will for you to be filled and controlled by Him? Of course it is - for it is His command! Then right now you can ask God to fill you - not because you deserve to be filled, not because you have fasted and prayed and begged and pled with God long enough, but according to His promise.
If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit already dwells within you. Therefore, you do not need to invite Him to come into your life. He did this when you became a Christian, and Jesus promised that He will never leave you.
The moment you received Christ, the Holy Spirit not only came to indwell you, but He imparted to you spiritual life, causing you to be born anew as a child of God. The Holy Spirit also baptized you into the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul explains,
"We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body."
There is but one indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one rebirth of the Holy Spirit, and one baptism of the Holy Spirit - all of which occur when you receive Christ.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit, however, is not a once-and-for-all experience. There are many fillings, as is made clear in Ephesians 5:18. In the Greek language in which this command was originally written, the meaning is more clear than that in most English translations. This command of God means to be constantly and continually filled, controlled and empowered with the Holy Spirit as a way of life.
Who is in Control?
I cannot control myself and be controlled by the Holy Spirit at the same time. Christ cannot be in control if I am on the throne. So I must abdicate. This involves faith. As an expression of my will, in prayer, I surrender the throne of my life to Christ, and by faith I draw upon His supernatural resources to live a holy and fruitful life.
Do not think that you have to have an emotional experience or that something dramatic must happen to you. How did you receive Christ? Was it because of some great emotional pressure brought to bear upon you? Your emotions may have been involved. But ultimately, you became a Christian, not because of your emotional experience, but because of your faith. For the Bible clearly teaches, "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith."
The Holy Spirit is not given to you that you might have a great emotional experience, but that you might live a holy life and be a fruitful witness for Christ. So, whether or not you have an emotional experience is not the issue.
There is no place in Scripture where you are told to pray for an emotional experience. Or even to pray for the filling of the Holy Spirit because you are filled by faith. However, since the object of your faith is God and His Word, I suggest that you pray to be filled with the Spirit as an expression of your faith in God's command and in Godís promise.
Have you met God's conditions? Do you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Have you confessed all known sin? Do you sincerely desire to make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life? Do you sincerely desire to be controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit? If so, I invite you to bow your head and pray with me right now this prayer of faith. Silently inviting the Holy Spirit to fill you with His power. As I pray, you pray with me. Make this your prayer:
"Dear Father, I need You. I have lived in the energy of my flesh. I have been doing my own thing and going my own way. I have sinned against You. Now I hunger and thirst to be a man or woman of God. I want to turn from my own self-centered ways. I want to invite Jesus Christ to be my Lord, my Master and my King. Now by faith I invite You to fill me with your Holy Spirit. Empower me father that I may live a holy life and be a fruitful witness for You. That the fruit of the spirit will began to mature in my life. That I will truly will be a man or woman of God after Your heart. I pray this in the wonderful name of the Lord Jesus who lives within me. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Amen."
Now, if you sincerely prayed that prayer, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. From now on through the enabling of the Holy Spirit you will begin to experience a greater love for God. You will want to spend time with Him in studying His Word and in prayer. You will want to share your love for Christ with others who do not know Him.
According to our many surveys, you can be sure that most of your Christian friends will want to know how they too can be filled with the Holy Spirit. So I would like to suggest that, within the next twenty-four hours, you tell at least one other person about how God has filled you with His Spirit. Telling another person will give tangible expression of your decision to claim the fullness of the Spirit by faith. And by telling someone you may also help them understand how they can also enjoy the abundant life promised by our Lord through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Now lets pray together.
Holy Father thank you that you sent the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, convict us of all sin, to glorify Christ. Everything about the Christian life involves the Holy Spirit. So help us to learn everything we can about how You reveal yourself to man through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So that we can serve, love and obey the Lord Jesus Christ more fruitfully and effectively. For we ask it in His holy and wonderful name. Amen.
If you have sincerely prayed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we would love to hear from you.
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