Acts 4-6 • Spirit Filling

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As we have worked through Acts so far, we have seen that the Holy Spirit’s presence and transforming power is the dominating factor in the Christians’ response to every situation in which they find themselves. That includes trusting Jesus to make decisions. In the last blog, we looked at the meaning and radical blessing of Spirit Baptism. This is post #4 in the Radical Acts blog series. We will look at the filling of the Spirit as the fruit of living dependently on Christ as Lord of our lives.

Listen to this post as a similar podcast from our Radical Acts Bible Study covering the book of Acts in the New Testament. (11 lessons)

What Began at Pentecost

At Pentecost, those gathered together for prayer received Spirit Baptism. The Bible says that they were also filled with His Spirit and began praising God in languages they did not know. Others heard those words and were drawn to listen and find out what was going on. The Spirit filled a once-cowardly Peter so that he preached a powerful sermon about Jesus Christ to a huge crowd of people. Three thousand of the listeners trusted in Christ and were saved.

In Acts 4:8, Peter and John stood in front of the same religious rulers who had condemned Jesus to death. Instead of cowering or shaking in his boots, Peter held them accountable for Jesus’ death and boldly declared that Jesus was the only way to get salvation,

for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

That took courage. Where did Peter get that kind of courage? The Bible says he was filled with the Spirit.

Then, after Peter and John were released, they went back to the Christ followers and held a praise service. The place in which they were gathered together was shaken by God, and they continued to speak the word of God with boldness. How could they do that in the face of the threats of punishment? The Bible says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit—not just the apostles but all of those present.

We read in Acts 6 about Stephen who was a man full of the Holy Spirit. What did he do? He rocked the world of his fellow Grecian Jews and infuriated the Jewish religious leaders by adamantly preaching Christ. He faced death with courage and faith. How could he do that? The Bible says he was filled with the Spirit.

Then, we get to chapters 9-12 and see more evidence of people being filled with the Spirit in such a way that just blew the minds of their fellow believers and the watching world. What is this filling of the Spirit? How does it differ from Spirit Baptism? How does it happen and to whom?

The Filling of the Spirit

What the Bible teaches

Spirit Baptism occurs once at salvation. On the day of Pentecost, every believer present received Spirit Baptism. And every person who trusts in Christ since that day is Spirit baptized. At Spirit Baptism, the Holy Spirit connects us with Christ so that He is with us and in us forever. Every Christian is permanently indwelled by the Holy Spirit and added to the Body of Christ. You have all of Him, not part of Him. Both of these actions are related to salvation, done once for all time through Spirit Baptism (the previous article).

After we are saved, the Holy Spirit who is now living within us empowers us to live the kind of life our God desires for us to live. He is God’s empowering presence in our lives. When we walk in submission to and dependence on the Spirit by faith daily, that leads to the filling of the Spirit. Let us look at what the filling of the Spirit is not and then what it is. Okay?

What it is not: The filling of the Spirit is not getting more of the Spirit inside of us. We have all of Him with His indwelling. It is also not something magical or mystical. You will not hear any kind of gong when you are filled with the Spirit.

What it is: The filling of the Spirit is you choosing to be more influenced by God than by yourself or anything else.

Paul uses an analogy in Ephesians 5:18 to explain this contrast of influences. He says,

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18)

He compares being filled with the Spirit to drunkenness. So “filling” is a metaphor (picture) of control. Both forces of these influencers are internal.

This is not talking about drinking a glass of wine. Paul took something from his culture which if done in excess will take control over your behavior from the inside and produce recognizable ungodly fruit.

What things take control of you from the inside? We look at alcohol or substance abuse and easily recognize those controls. But what about other things that take control of us and produce not-so-good fruit? You and I can become addicted to social media, shopping, and gambling. We can also become addicted to work—filled with an obsession to work, producing stress and neglect of family.

Let us go back to Paul’s analogy using the over-indulgence of wine:

Being filled with wine refers to excessive intake of alcohol which fills your bloodstream and influences every area of your life as long as you consume it. Drunkenness results in ungodly behavior. That is the fruit.

In the same way, when you trust and obey Jesus as His Word directs for you to do, the Holy Spirit will have more influence over every area of your life. Any Christian who allows the Spirit to influence and direct her thinking and behavior will experience His control as long as she yields her will to the Spirit. The results will be godly behavior. That is the fruit.

We can be filled and controlled by fleshly desires (like what alcohol does), or we can be filled and controlled by the Spirit. What does that look like?

What it means for us

Being filled with the Spirit is an ongoing choice and responsibility. It is expected of every Christian, not optional. Paul’s use of wording is to keep on being filled—continual present tense. We are to continually desire more and more of the Spirit’s control in our lives. We are to continually choose to give Him more control in our lives. And He responds by doing it! That is what is amazing.

Being filled with the Spirit is a privilege for every child of God. We do not earn it. God still chooses to do this to us based upon our responses to Him. It is a fruit of our dependence upon Him and yielding to His control in our lives. When we choose to do anything that God wants us as believers to do, when we choose obedience and dependence, we say yes to allowing the Spirit to fill us with His powerful influence. And there will be spiritual fruit.

We can be too full of other things, other desires, other goals, and other activities. I will go back to my earlier question. What things have you allowed to have influence over you? Have you become addicted to social media scrolling and reading emails or texts immediately upon receiving them? Have you become obsessive about your work so that you cannot get away from it but let it control your days and nights? God wants you to be full of Him, yielded to Him. When you yield to Him, He will fill you with His Spirit and help you learn how to let go of those other influencers and make wise decisions about their use. Yielding to Him is a daily choice.

The Daily Choice of Yielding

Just like choosing to trust in Christ in the first place is a choice, staying dependent on Him after salvation is also a choice. A daily choice.

Yield your body

In Romans 12, Paul wrote these words,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.(Romans 12:1, ESV)

The Greek word translated as “to present” also means “to yield.” Just like a yield sign on the highway means to give the right-of-way to oncoming traffic, to yield to God means to give Him the right-of-way in your life. You yield to God at salvation, then continually yield to His Spirit’s influence over your thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds. You have to want it. It starts with your heart. You present your body as an act of worship. That is yielding your body to God for His control and purpose. Nobody can do that for you.

Yield your mind

Then, Paul goes on to say,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2, ESV)

Once you have yielded your body to God, then you yield your mind to God. You do that by yielding to the Word of God. That is how your mind is renewed to distinguish what is not the will of God from that which is the will of God. We get our minds renewed by spending lots of time in Bible reading and study its teachings and truths. You yield your mind to God as you desire to know His truth. That comes from the heart, too.

Yield your will

As you yield your body to God and yield your mind to God, then you must also yield your will to the sovereignty of God and His will. That is hard. Yielding to the sovereignty of God may include submitting to one particular truth or command in the Word that you don’t like. Yielding to the sovereignty of God may also include God bringing into your life situations or experiences that are not especially pleasant or desirable. We choose to learn from them and use them as opportunities for spiritual growth rather than fighting against God.

The filling of the Spirit involves our yielding to God as God and yielding to His purposes and His truth. God fills what you open up to Him. Author Warren Wiersbe said this,

The baptism of the Spirit means that I belong to Christ’s body. The filling of the Spirit means that my body belongs to Christ. (Adapted from Dr. Constable’s Notes on Ephesians 2019 Edition, page 112)

Your body, your mind, your emotions, and your will belong to Christ. Yielding those to God is living dependently on Him. The fruit of living dependently is Spirit filling and all the Christ-like behavior the Holy Spirit will produce in your life. Through Spirit filling, you dare to be different from your world.

The Spirit’s presence is permanent, but we must repeatedly choose to yield to God to experience the Spirit’s transforming power to change and grow us.

The Fruit of Yielding

We have seen lots of evidence of the fruit of yielding to the Spirit in Acts. I opened this article with that. Praising God openly. Preaching Christ boldly. Courageously standing up to the opposition so filled with the Spirit that the words of Peter and John were God’s words. Serving others unselfishly.

The Christian life is to be a life of dependence on the living Christ. Here is the key. If you have listened to any of my podcasts, you have probably heard this.

Human parents raise their children to be less dependent on them and more independent. But God raises His children to be less independent and more dependent on Him. That is called dependent living. Whatever He brings into our lives that makes us more dependent upon Him is good for us.

Our study of 2 Corinthians is all about being God-dependent rather than self-dependent.

Look at the examples from Acts.

Peter and John were arrested. That required them to be more dependent on God than on themselves. They chose to do that and were filled with the Spirit. The result brought glory to God and rejoicing to others.

The believers prayed for boldness because of the danger threatening them. They chose dependence. God answered their prayer by filling them with the Holy Spirit to give them what they needed to do His work. The result brought glory to God and continued boldness to speak about Jesus publicly.

When you choose daily to yield to the Spirit’s influence over your own self-dependence, the Holy Spirit fills you with Himself. The Bible calls that kind of life choice, “walking by the Spirit” or “living by the Spirit.” You will see these phrases used in Ephesians and Galatians especially.

“Walking by the Spirit” or “being filled with the Spirit” means having a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. As you live the Christian life, face temptations, and make decisions, He uses that to transform your life to become more like that of Christ. The fruit of that is what we usually consider the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But it is a lot more. It is sharing Christ with others. It is courage and boldness and using God’s Word to speak and convince others. It is being the visible representation of the invisible God.

But our willingness to let the Spirit control and transform us requires us to recognize that we are weak to do anything of spiritual significance on our own. Let me say that again. Our willingness to let the Spirit control and transform us requires us to recognize that we are weak to do anything of spiritual significance on our own. That goes against the western mindset that you must be strong on your own, stand on your own 2 feet. But our weakness is more useful to God than our self-determined strength.

This quote from author Jim Cymbala captures that thought perfectly:

God is attracted to weakness. He cannot resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need Him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for His power. (Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)

What do you think about that? Does your weakness make room for His power? If that is true, then His power at work in you will produce results that show up in all directions. There will be fruit.

Developing a sensitivity to the Spirit at work

We should sense the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. Why don’t we sense it? Maybe we just are not paying attention. Our society is built on rationalism—everything has to have a naturalistic explanation. I believe we may have become desensitized to the Spirit inside us, and we tend to take credit ourselves for the work that He actually does.

Just to get you thinking about it, here are some examples of the Spirit’s work in you that you might not have recognized:

Has someone explained something to you about the Bible, and you understood what he or she was saying? That is the Spirit inside of you enabling you to understand.

Have you ever felt really loved by God? That is the Spirit inside of you. It does not come naturally.

Do you have a desire to please God with your life? That is the Spirit inside of you. That does not come naturally.

Have you ever started loving someone even more after you started praying for him or her? That is definitely the Spirit.

Do you like to sing praises to God? Do you feel thankful to God for His goodness to you? That is the Spirit filling your heart with praise and thanksgiving.

Have you ever had a huge problem and did not know what to ask God to do about it, but God took care of the problem anyway? That is the Spirit living inside of you working to take care of your need before you even ask.

All of those are the fruit of dependent living and evidences of Spirit power in your life.

So, don’t get hung up on any formulas for being filled with the Spirit. It is a work of God that comes to you when you yield yourself to Him. When you live in conscious dependence on Jesus Christ, choosing not to rely on yourself and your own strength, experiences, or ideas, God will fill you with His Spirit. Then, your thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions will reflect the life of Christ in you. And oh my, what comes from that will be an adventure for sure! In the next two articles, we will see what that looks like in two specific people whose lives were transformed by the Spirit of God: Paul: A Misdirected Life Transformed and Peter: An Ordinary Life Transformed.

Let Jesus satisfy your heart with His Spirit’s transforming power. And say yes to a life of adventure with Him!

All of the above information is covered in the Radical Acts Bible Study of the book of Acts.

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