Spirit-Filled

One thing that God has challenged me with over the past semester is to be Spirit-filled.  It is one thing to be a believer and have the Holy Spirit, and it is another thing entirely to be completely saturated and filled up with the power and love that is the Holy Spirit.  

"To be filled with the Spirit means simply that the Christian voluntarily surrenders life and will to the Spirit.  Though faith, the believer's personality is permeated, mastered, and controlled by the Holy Spirit… When we invite the Spirit to fill us, the Spirit's power grips our lives with this kind of strength and passion." -J. Oswald Sanders

But it's important to distinguish something.  Being Spirit-filled does not involve me going out and getting the Spirit.  When surrendered to Him, the Spirit fills me.  As I heard this past Sunday, "I don't get more of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gets more of me."  He takes over our lives by changing our thoughts, actions, and motivations.  All we must do is humble ourselves and surrender to His will.

"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."  John 14:26

We are able to understand Scripture and what God is teaching us through living a life that is lived IN the Spirit; a life that is filled with the Spirit.

"You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.  But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.  And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you." Romans 8:9-11

A life surrendered to and controlled by the Spirit is a life that pleases God and glorifies 

Christ.  Because the Spirit is in believers, we experience new life and a new beginning every day.  We are not people who have gone from bad to good, but people who were dead and are now alive!

There is so much to be experienced in this life.  The Christian life is not boring.  The Christian life is the farthest thing from boring.  When we have the Spirit of the Living God who raised both Christ from physical death and us from spiritual death... how can that be a boring life?!

"You are going to live an adventure.  The question is whether or not your life will be an 

adventure with God or with the sin of the world."