PT-5 "The Meaning of Being Filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:18b)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/15/2019 9:11 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                     Focus:  PT-5 “The Meaning of Being Filled”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Ephesians 5:18b

 

            Message of the verses:  “but be filled with the Spirit,”

 

          John MacArthur writes the following after writing about how Stephen was filled with the Spirit even when he was about to be stoned to death.  “Being filled with the Spirit detaches us from the desires, the standards, the objectives, the fears, and the very system of this world and gives us a vision of God that comes in no other way.  Being filled with the Spirit makes everything else of secondary importance, and often of no importance at all.”  Just before Stephen died by stoning he looked into heaven and saw the Lord standing beside God.  I have read that Jesus stood up to welcome Stephen into glory.

 

            As we look through the New Testament we see that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and then later in Acts 4:8 we read that Peter was filled with the Spirit again as he was speaking to the Jewish leaders.  When Saul saw the Lord on the road to Damascus he became blinded and three days later God sent Ananias to lay his hands on Saul and tell him that he would regain his sight and that he would be filled with the Spirit to accomplish what the Lord had for him to do for the cause of Christ.  We also see in Acts chapter eleven that Barnabas was also filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

            John MacArthur concludes this long sub-point with the following paragraph:  “The concern we often hear about recapturing the dedication, zeal, love, and power of the early church is commendable.  But we cannot have the early church’s spiritual power simply by trying to copy its methods of operation.  We can experience those believers’ spiritual power only when we are surrendered to the Holy Spirit’s control as they were.  It was not their methodology but their Spirit-filled lives that empowered believers to turn the world upside down in the first century (Acts 17:6).”

 

            It is my desire to have the Holy Spirit fill me each and every day, but especially when I am doing the things that God has chosen for me to do which He ordained for me to do before the foundation of the world as seen in Ephesians 2:10 that way He will receive all of the glory and that is the main thing that I want to do.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I desire to keep my life clean from the things that are in this world in order for the Spirit of God to fill me to accomplish what the Lord has for me to do.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  To continue to think about and learn humility so that the Spirit can fill me.

 

Today’s quotation is from John Wesley:  “O Lord, let us not live to be useless, for Christ’s sake.”

7/15/2019 9:33 AM