SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/17/2019
10:21 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Means of Being Filled”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
5:18b
Message of the verses: “Instead, be filled
with the Holy Spirit” (NLT).
When
we talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit there are some who think that
you have to be of some influential group of people and have some kind of a
special formula in order to have this privilege of being filled with the Holy
Spirit. When we look at both Colossians
3:16-25 and also Ephesians 5:19-33 we see Paul writing what happens when a
person is filled with the Holy Spirit.
The following is from Colossians 3:16-25 “15 Let the peace of Christ
rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be
thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom
teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 Whatever
you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks through Him to God the Father.18 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as
is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered
against them. 20 Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this
is well-pleasing to the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so
that they will not lose heart. 22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your
masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please
men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do your
work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, 24 knowing that from the
Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom
you serve. 25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong
which he has done, and that without partiality.” I have to say that this puts a whole new
light on these verses to me.
John
MacArthur writes “To be filled with God’s Spirit is to be filled with His
Word. And as we are filled with God’s
Word, it controls our thinking and action, and we thereby come more and more
under the Spirit’s control. As Charles
Spurgeon said, the Christian’s blood should be ‘Bibline,’ bleeding Scripture wherever
he may be pricked or cut.”
When
we think about the apostle Peter we often talk about some of the things that he
says and does which make us think about Peter having foot in mouth
problems. However as long as Peter
stayed close to the Lord he did not have this kind of problem, and as long as
we stay close to the Lord through His Word and the preaching and teaching of
His Word then we will also be better off just like Peter.
A
couple of examples in Peter’s life are the fact that he was the only person,
other than Jesus Christ who walked on water, that is until he took his eyes off
of the Lord. Next example was when Jesus
asked His disciples who He was and Peter right away said that He was the
Messiah, and was his Lord. Jesus told
Him that it was not flesh and blood who told him that Jesus was the Messiah,
but “My Father in heaven.” John MacArthur
writes “A short while later, however, Peter pitted his own understanding
against the Lord’s and discovered that he then spoke for Satan rather than for
God (16:22-23).”
Now
it was after Jesus was raised from the dead and then taken back into heaven
that His promise of the Holy Spirit filling His disciples was fulfilled. In my Bible reading this morning I was
looking at Acts chapters three and four, and in chapter four we see the
boldness of Peter as he confronts the Jewish leaders, and the reason that He
does this is because he was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is recorded in Acts 4:1-22.
I
will conclude this SD with one more quote from John MacArthur’s commentary
where he writes “To ‘be filled with the Spirit’ is to live in consciousness of
the personal presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, as if we were standing next to
Him, and let His mind dominate our life.
It is to fill ourselves with God’s Word, so that His thoughts will be
our thoughts, His standards our standards, His work our work, and His will our
will. As we yield to the truth of
Christ, the Holy Spirit will lead us to say, do, and be what God wants us to
say, do, and be. ‘We all, with unveiled
face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into
the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit’ (2 Cor.
3:18). Christ consciousness leads to
Christ likeness.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: To yield to the Spirit’s control is what we
are learning about here, and this is something that I indeed desire to do.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to remember that everything that I
do for the cause of Christ I need to be humble in doing it because that is the
only way I can do things for the cause of Christ.
Today’s quotation is from Corrie Ten
Boom who states “Worry is and old man with bended head, carrying a load of
feathers which he thinks are lead.”
7/17/2019 10:56 AM
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