I am in Christ; Christ is in me. I can be in the Spirit and the Spirit in me. Being filled with the Spirit requires an understanding of our own spirits and of our spiritual nature.
This message should help anyone who has ever had a problem with the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, etc. It should open up the whole process of what God desires to do by giving us the Spirit.
We receive the Holy Spirit and forget that we’re not just receiving the Holy Spirit so much as the Spirit Himself comes to generate and develop a whole new nature; to bring to us a new heredity, a new environment, new abilities, new capacities, new attributes. He is to bring a whole new plane of existence, a sphere of life we’ve never known before.
We will never know what Christ has for us if we sit off remote from the Lord, worshiping Him and saying, “Please, Lord.” We would be as bad as the Syrophoenician woman who, though she had a lot of faith, was willing to get the children’s crumbs (Mark 7:28). We don’t want the crumbs! We want to be actually grafted into God until His very life flows into us.
We want a whole different approach than the one we have had in our minds. If the approach we have been using had been perfectly right, we would be farther down the road than we are. I don’t want to just have a shallow manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit from now on, I think we should go right on to sonship. In order to do that, we have to understand more of what the whole process is all about, and get into it as much as we can.
We can talk about body ministry, but the thing that really counts is when you get your walls down and your spirit begins to reach in and penetrate into other people’s lives, and theirs into yours, so that everything that is in Christ begins to flow through a many-membered body.
In your own body, every cell in every part of your body is renewed over a period of seven years or less, some more frequently. The cells are constantly dying and being renewed.
The Lord has away by which His life flows through every member of His body, constantly renewing it, regenerating it, bringing it into what He has for it. That is the process of maturity.
You don’t mature because you suddenly decide that you want to be a spiritual Christian. You mature because of what Christ has become in you and what you have become in Christ. It is a matter of the interpenetration of your spirit and God’s spirit.
We don’t want to hear as though we’re hearing some fine doctrine. We are not people of Athens desiring to hear a new thing; we are New Testament saints ready to hear a word from the Lord that will have every practical and spiritual aspect of it made real to our hearts so we can walk in it.
There has been a constant battle to keep from straying away from a pure walk with God. I know that other people have had greater followings, for a little time. They arbitrarily set themselves up as the final interpreters of truth, and people fall for it until they realize it isn’t working in their lives.
A real walk in the spirit will work in people’s lives! God takes men who are not professionals and makes them pastors of churches. We are not professionals—if we were, we repented of it long ago. God removed it from us. What we are is humble brethren who have come into truths of God that are real; it is what God is saying.
This walk in the spirit is the most practical thing in the world. You can lay your life down for it. This is something to live for. It’s something worthy of dying for. It’s the most precious thing in all the world.
Are you satisfied with your walk with the Lord? It’s not that we are displeased with the walk; we are displeased with the way we are walking. There is a difference.
If there are no other objectives reached, except that God brings us into a walk with the Lord, a closer walk with God, then we’ve found what we’re really after.
Anything that is anointed of God will be a little beyond our minds’ ability to comprehend. If I want to get a blessing, I listen to a sermon I have preached, or message I have written. Sometimes I sit there in wonder, because it is beyond human intelligence or human ability. It is reaching into the wisdom of God and God is giving apostolic wisdom to teach us.
There are still a lot of missing pieces in this truth, but there is an experience of severance, something that cuts out the lower plane and projects us onto the new. We’re going to experience that with this message.
There is no answer to the basic loneliness that people have. It’s the one nature that drives them into this walk walk with God. But after we get into the walk, there’s another kind of loneliness we are unable to define.
Human relationships, and even our relationship to God, somehow are not quite adequate and we find something missing. Believe me, the Body of Christ being one, this penetration into one another’s lives and spirits and into God, is an absolute necessity.
This interpenetration of spirit has had enough fulfillment that you know it’s real. It is as if we’ve had the hors d’oeuvres, the appetizers, and we’ve found reality in the Body of Christ, but we don’t know the real fulfillment of that hunger, that deep thing God put in man.
God knew what He was doing when He said, “It is not good for man that he should be alone.” Of course, we take it very superficially that it meant he needed Eve, but it didn’t turn out that Eve was the full answer, either. No man or woman is the complete answer for each other. It’s in our relationship to the Lord. That’s why we have to understand what the Lord is trying to do for our spirits. It’s our relationship to each other.
Relationships fall short, not by divine intention but because we are on a limited plane. Your marriage will be better as you move into this plane. All your relationships will be better! But principally, because you find your place in the Body of Christ, the walls come down and you’re open to one another, you’re open to God, and there begins that free flow without walls and barriers. It’s beautiful.
The brethren dwell together in that oneness; it is like the precious anointing oil that ran down Aaron’s beard, even to the hem of his garment (Psalms 133:2).
As we open the Scriptures to several references, let your spirit be open so that it’s just not an intellectual exercise of trying to analyze Scripture. We would be lost if we went back to building doctrines; they have to be living truths for us.
I know the word “regenerate” occurs in the New Testament, but I wonder if our term, “regeneration,” speaking of the birth of a man into Christ, is really accurate.
John 3:3–8: Jesus (talking to Nicodemus) answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again (and that word “again,” according to the margin, should be “from above”—he has to be born from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he? Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above’ (It reads again). The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is every one who is born of the Spirit.”
Actually, birth, natural or spiritual, is one of the greatest mysteries and wonders of life. A doctor who brings a lot of babies into the world, said he never ceases to be amazed when he sees a little baby born. And I don’t cease to be amazed to see what God does with individuals who are lost in sin, dead in sin.
The Lord said, “The Spirit of God blows where it wishes. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know from whence it comes or where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul prayed, I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That shows us the triune nature of man, because it identifies a spirit, a soul and a body. Remember, he is writing to Christian believers. Would he have said the same thing if he were addressing the world?
We often take Scriptures that are addressed to the people of God and try to apply them to man in general, outside of God, and I don’t think we can honestly do that. If he were writing to people out in the world, would he have said, “I pray that your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved?” No, he would have been talking about soul and body.
In the book of Acts or the teachings of the epistles, salvation, as a process, always refers to the soul. “The Lord added to the church day by day such as were being saved” (Acts 2:47). “We believe unto the saving of the soul” (Hebrews 10:39). But the Word doesn’t say anything about saving the spirit or that God is trying to save the spirit. The Word never speaks about regenerating the spirit. It talks about regeneration to Christians as though there would be a renewal, so I’m wondering if it is regeneration, or is it just “generation” period?
Ephesians 2:1 presents it very clearly: And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. What was dead? The soul? No, there could be a spiritual death on it in a sense, but what happens out in the world where witchcraft takes place? Do witches have spirits, or is it soul activity?
The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 1 Corinthians 15:45. The second Adam, then, becomes the head of a whole new race of spirits. Adam became a federal head of a race of souls.
The second man, Adam, became a life-giving spirit; the first Adam was a living soul—God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). You were dead in your trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). Is it possible that since Adam’s time—“In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17)—that the spirit died, as far as man was concerned, and man perpetuated himself as a physical and a soulish being?
In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. Ephesians 2:2–5a.
It doesn’t say, “regenerated” but the idea is generation. He made us alive. The Spirit came to generate the life of God in us. And since He generated the life of God in us, the human spirit of a believer is not truly human; it is divine. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 3:6.
Born of what spirit? Born of the Holy Spirit, His Spirit. Are you going to say, “We’re born of the Holy Spirit, so we become a human spirit?” Or are you going to say, “We’re born of the Holy Spirit, we become part of the Holy Spirit?” Our spirit is a holy spirit, a divine spirit! It can’t be any other way, can it?
Even when we were dead in our transgressions, (God) made us alive together in Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship … Ephesians 2:5–10.
Your spirit was generated at the time that you accepted Christ. “He that believeth not is condemned already (John 3:18), but he that believeth passes from death unto life” (John 5:24).
The whole picture of what happens to a believer is important because everything else the Holy Spirit brings forth in our lives will have to be understood on this basis.
That’s why this foundation is being laid. It’s not a speculative question, but if God generated His own Spirit within us, then we can begin to understand how He can also foster His own attributes to come forth in His own Spirit within us, and He can bring us forth, many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10)!
This was the whole purpose, that whom He would foreknow He would also predestinate to be conformed to the image of His son (Romans 8:29). We are going to be exactly like Jesus Christ—in nature, in life, in everything. It is the purpose of the Holy Spirit that when you accept Christ, the Holy Spirit generates that same spirit within us. We are His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10)!
Now let us go to the book of Genesis and find the pattern for this generation He is bringing forth within us. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light.” Genesis 1:1–3a.
Is this a pattern? We learn more in these first three verses than we could ever dream of. What chaos rests upon man with no form, the void, the chaos that is in human lives. The Spirit of God hovers over the chaos of our lives when we’re without God—dead in our trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of the prince of this world (Ephesians 2:1, 2); slaves of sin, blinded and dead.
The picture of the man there is utter chaos. Then God sends His word and we’re born of incorruptible seed by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever (1 Peter 1:23). God said, “Let there be,” and there is.
We are born by the seed of the Word that comes, and the hovering Spirit takes it and creates the order, the life and newness that God wants to bring forth in us. That’s the way it happens. He sends His Word, and the Holy Spirit hovering over us brings us a whole new life and effectiveness.
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7. The first man, Adam, became a LIVING SOUL (quoting Genesis 2:7). The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 1 Corinthians 15:45. That’s our Christ, made a life-giving spirit.
I am convinced that many things we call spirit are really soul. The people need to know again what Hebrews 4:12 means when it says, “The Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” We need that done, because even yet, we are not aware that a lot of our activities in the religious sense are soulish.
We need to be free of the soulish aspects of them, because the soul is very religious. That’s why every place in the world has religions. The primitive people have religion, even if it is catching a man in a neighboring tribe, killing him, roasting him in fire and eating him. Some shrink heads for souvenirs; others rip the kidneys from a dying man to get his strength and spirit.
Yes, even the primitive people have religion! Lucifer is a religious spirit, don’t forget that—like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). He loves to transform his ministers as ministers of righteousness, so that he can deceive us.
Even in this walk, we need to recognize what is of the flesh and soul and to recognize what is of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God is coming forth within us. We’re all born of that one Spirit, generated by it. We dare not lapse back into expressions of our soul.
How do I liberate my spirit to function with the restrictions that are upon my soul and body? It seems like my spirit knows things when my mind and the rest of me lag behind; I really know something, yet I can’t recall it, I can’t think of it. Isn’t that what Paul is talking about when he says, But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:16. “In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and you are complete in Him” (Colossians 2:3, 10).
Christ has tried to tell us a thousand times in the Word what His relationship to us is—He is the Head (Ephesians 1:22), and we are members of His Body.
We still don’t get the idea that we are complete in Him, that we are rich in Him, that we are one spirit. “Wherefore they are all of one spirit,” Hebrews 2:11 tells us. “Both He that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all of one spirit.” One Spirit of God is behind the whole thing.
It is frightening when I think that my spirit is not some individual thing of myself but is something of God that was separated from Himself in the sense that it’s still all one spirit. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. 1 Corinthians 12:13.
We are begotten of God, and we grow and develop in that spirit of God and that is very, very important to us.
If the Holy Spirit came and created this whole process of life, what happens when we’re baptized with the Holy Spirit? What happens when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? What happens when we receive a ministry?
We have looked upon these things as gifts, in the sense that I could reach in my pocket and hand you a five dollar bill, but that is not the way the Word reads. It is an endowment, but it would be better for us to look at it a little differently.
Let’s not look at the fruit of the Spirit, that which the Holy Spirit is producing within us, the gifts of the Spirit or the ministry as things outside of us, but as something that God is (God is all of these things) and that He is transmitting and bringing forth within the spirit He has generated.
So that, literally, I can choose either to be a son of the first Adam or I can choose to be a Son of the second Adam. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. John 1:12.
I have decided that I’m going to follow the second Adam, the life-giving Spirit. Then I can abandon what I have in heredity from the first Adam. That is Scriptural. “Mortify your members which are upon the earth; put them away” (Colossians 3:5). I can put away all these things; I don’t have to have that inheritance anymore. I don’t have to have that heredity. “But,” you say, “my father had it, my grandfather had it, and I have to have it.” You don’t, either. You don’t have to submit to the old heredity all the way back to Adam. God can take it from you.
If you don’t like who you are, you can become someone else. That is one certain fact of the Scriptures. You say, “Well it will take time.” That is a mistake, too, because God is able to instantly impart of Himself, of His own attributes.
The minute a man takes Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, he takes on the greatest attribute of God—eternity. He has passed from death into life (John 5:24); He will never die. He has a spirit that will be as unending as God Himself, because God generated that spirit in him. Can he take on the attribute of God’s love? Can he take on the attribute of God’s faithfulness? Can he take on any other attribute God has? Can he take on an attribute of omnipresence? Though it has been limited, it has been done in the Scriptures. Paul said, “Though absent, I rejoiced to behold your order …” (Colossians 2:5). He surveyed the churches more than you think.
We are going to be more and more aware of the ministries being present with us. If we take on the attributes of God, we shall be able to minister in God’s ability. “If any man minister, let him minister of the ability that God giveth. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11). If we can’t hold that objective before us, we shall be misguided, misdirected, inefficient, and inadequate people who will never get the job done. We have to see an end of human limitation and the beginning of divine ability.
Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. Ephesians 3:20.
We see here that if we are filled with the Spirit we have the greatest key of becoming like Him—in what He is, what He knows, what He can do. And we have the greatest key to getting rid of the other.
That’s why contemplation upon the fullness of the Lord, drinking of it, is where God transmits of Himself so freely to a man who is open to Him. Moses stood on the mountain, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory” (Exodus 33:18). He came down with his skin shining like the sun in its strength, for God transmits of Himself to any person who is open to Him.
2 Corinthians 3 says that same Spirit is permanent for us. With Moses it faded away, but with us it will be permanent. We are changed from glory to glory even as by the Lord, the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). We take our veil down and stand before Him.
Do you want to change? Don’t try to reform the old man, the old soul and physical nature of man. You’re going at it wrong. They can be completely dominated by the strength of your spirit coming forth in God-likeness. That’s the way to change. I don’t think you really change any other way. You can suppress the flesh, but God says to mortify it. That means put it to death, crucify it. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and its lusts” (Galatians 5:24). There is only hostility, for the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. These two are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the thing that you would (Galatians 5:17). You’re aware of it, so put it to death. What happens? “If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
Why does Paul say if we walk in the Spirit, we’re not under the law (Galatians 5:18)? Because it is God’s Spirit, and the law was made for humans. Move into God’s Spirit. There is no law for those who live in the Spirit. They have passed out of that realm.
This is very, very practical, and simpler than we ever realized. We can just get down and begin to seek the Lord and be filled with the Spirit anew. The key of every outstanding thing that ever happened in the New Testament was that they were filled with the Spirit. It was that fullness that brought it about.
Maybe we haven’t understood what we should be doing. Maybe in spite of ourselves we have lapsed back into human zeal and human effort, instead of opening our hearts constantly to be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, constantly letting the Lord fill us, getting the walls down toward God so that He can bless us and minister to us.
Let’s see what the Lord had to say about it in the book of Acts. The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering … Acts 1:1–3a.
The Lord did everything by the Holy Spirit and it makes me wonder: many Scriptures talk about Christ and His pre-existence, so we know that He was in the form of God. Yet He thought it not robbery to be called equal to God, but He made Himself of no reputation, etc. (Philippians 2:6). We know that the Scriptures clearly teach of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ as God. All things were made by Him and without Him there was not anything made that was made (John 1:3). But if there was not one verse of Scripture, I would still accept Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, because He was the first and only begotten of God. If He had had no existence until He came forth upon a human plane, I would still reverence Him just as much as I do now, knowing that He was the pre-existent Eternal One.
The Father gave Him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34), and He was able to attain to a life from God by that transmission of the Spirit. Whatever it was that He laid aside as God, He still attained it again as a human being. So that the day He came forth from the grave, resurrected, He said, “Thou art My beloved Son; this day have I begotten Thee” (Hebrews 1:5). This means (I give you this as my own opinion; I don’t know whether I have it full and correct or not) Christ was not only the Eternal God from ages past, the begotten Son of God, but I think, as a restricted human being, He attained sonship, the first one to ever do it in all the earth. I reverence Him as a twofold Son of the Living God. Twice He has attained sonship, as the Eternal Son of the Father and again as the son of man.
That encourages me, because I can attain sonship the same as He did. Of Himself and by the Holy Spirit He made it possible for me to come into that. He is bringing many sons to glory. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10), and He leads us on, bringing all of us into the glory and the oneness by the same Holy Spirit which was His only means, in His hours and days of limitations in the flesh, of attaining sonship in Himself. He makes at our disposal the same means by which He came into that perfect sonship as the son of man.
He gathered the disciples together and said, “Wait for the promise of the Father which You heard from Me. For John baptized with water but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit (the Greek reads “in the Holy Spirit”) not many days from now, … but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and you will be My witnesses” (Acts 1:5, 8).
The second chapter of Acts tells us: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Acts 2:4.
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of the people.… .” Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.… . And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of God with boldness … And with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. Acts 4:8, 13, 31, 33.
Acts 6:3 (picking out deacons to serve the widows): But select from among you, brethren, seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, (full of the Spirit and of wisdom) whom we may put in charge of this task. In Acts 9:17, Ananias greets Saul of Tarsus, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Chapter 11 says about Barnabas: for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord. Acts 11:24.
The fullness—to be filled—is the one thing He was trying to tell us. “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The third chapter of Ephesians tells us to be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19).
God intended to fill you with the Spirit of the Lord as a means to an end—an end of you, so that you will be just like Him! You will take on His nature. You do this by appropriating and being filled with the Spirit. It is the Spirit’s function to take of all the fullness of Christ and manifest it to you, to lead you into the complete submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to everything that God has for your life.
“If you thirst,” Jesus said, “come to Me and drink, and out of your belly will flow rivers of living water.” But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive (John 7:37–39). There will be rivers, not a blessing, not the idea of satisfying us with just a little drink now and then, but we drink with the idea of becoming a fountain. We come to draw the Spirit so that we in turn can become the water of life to the world, the light of the world. Christ is coming forth in us by the Spirit of the Lord to that extent.
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; (the Spirit comes in the inner man) so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14–19.
We’re talking about fullness. Are you walking in as much of the fullness of the Spirit as you know how to walk in, how to appropriate right now? This sermon should not only bless you, it should make us as miserable as the devil himself, because how can we come into more when we’re not using the means that God has given us right now to reach those ends and objectives? We had better start seeking God and see a real Pentecost outpouring upon people who are waiting for the promise of the Father, the Spirit of the Lord. You say, “Well I received once.” Maybe there is only one initial experience, but I’m going to question that.
It said, “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence.” After that the book of Acts doesn’t talk about being baptized. They received the Spirit, they were filled with the Spirit, the Spirit fell on them, but baptism doesn’t occur again. I’m of the opinion that you just learn a little bit more about yielding. You say, “I received the Holy Spirit,” fine. “We’re filled with the Holy Spirit,” fine. “He is there with you to abide with you forever,” fine. But you penetrate into that fullness, deeper and deeper. Some people receive a satisfactory experience in the beginning, and we would say that they received a measure of the Spirit, but you can’t say they have received any fullness. You lay hands on everybody to receive the Holy Spirit and say, “Now they’re filled with the Spirit.” We use that term, but it’s not right. They’re not filled. God wants to fill every part of your being with the Holy Spirit.
I know some of you have received the Holy Spirit and can speak in tongues and prophesy, but I challenge you with this question: Are you really filled with the Spirit? Have you ever been really filled with the Holy Spirit? Are you filled now with the Holy Spirit? I’m not making an unbeliever of you or taking anything away; it is just a matter of terminology.
It is one thing to say, “I’ve got everything.” After a Baptist comes to the altar and gets saved, he is told that he has received the Holy Spirit, too. No, he hasn’t. The Pentecostals say, “I was baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit because I spoke in tongues.” That doesn’t necessarily follow. There are a dozen places where people in the first four gospels of the New Testament, before the day of Pentecost, were filled with the Spirit. I could show you a dozen cases in the Old Testament where they were filled with the Holy Spirit and any one of those people walked in more before the day of Pentecost than you are walking in. They came into a fullness of the Holy Spirit before that experience of tongues ever came on the day of Pentecost. We sell those Old Testament saints short. Some of them were filled with the Spirit. They were doing wonderful things in a lesser dispensation.
I am wondering if you, in your confusion, have not taken a little, initial experience and done the same as some denominations have done—magnified it to say that you have much more than you do. Just be honest and say, “Lord, I have received the Holy Spirit but I’m not filled,” and start waiting on God, appropriating and drinking of the Spirit. “If you thirst, come and drink; and out of your belly will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37–38). It is a promise. Do it.
We can prophesy, but on what level? Is it from a level of fullness or just enough of the Spirit to wheeze out a prophecy? Is there an anointing upon us or is some of it coming out soulish or is it in the depth and the revelation of God? The gifts and the ministries that God has given would be increased a hundredfold if everyone of us would just see that we must walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
I hope this message breaks through to you. You can do something about it. I ask one question: Are you filled? Young prophets, God raised you up to be prophets. Are you filled? Go on to be filled with all the fullness of God. It can be done!
If nothing else, we need to eliminate some of the sophistication in the ministries and just get down and pray with the people, help them to wait on God, get hold of the Lord, take down the walls. Say, “Get those walls down. Open up to the Lord. Drink of the Lord. Drink.” Everyone knows how to drink. Everyone knows how to drink of the Spirit to some extent. You can be more of a filled vessel than you are, without one more new revelation of God, without any one great truth bursting upon you, without some apostle or prophet laying hands on you or a team of elders ministering to you. You can do this on your own. You can walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Stop making a big deal about tongues or prophecy or anything else. Those effects will come in such profusion that we’ll hardly be able to keep them within order. Be more concerned about drinking of that fullness.
The more you appropriate, the more your spirit will take on the attributes, abilities and nature of God. That’s the ministry that comes forth. “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). Paul reached that place. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). We shall never do it any other way but by the fullness of the Holy Spirit.