Streams of Living Water
Filled By the Spirit
Acts 19:1-7
October 17, 2004
Mark Eberly
Last week we looked at our first stream of living water: the holy life. The counterbalance to the holy life is the spirit-filled life. If legalism and perfectionism are two of the great perils of the holy life, then the flexibility and unpredictability of the spirit-filled life are great counter weights to the perils of the holy life.
Luke 4:14 tells us that Jesus after being victorious over His temptations, left the desert for Galilee filled with the power of the Spirit. The spirit-filled life is about the empowering gifts of the spirit and the nurturing fruit of the spirit.
Paul asks the disciples that he found (and note that they were called disciples so we know that they had become Christian believers but they were still missing something) if they had been filled with the Spirit of God. They hadn’t. When Paul placed his hands on these men, they were filled by the Spirit (and power) of God. God placed within these men two gifts of grace as a sign of this filling.
When God fills a person with His Spirit, God imparts upon them gifts of grace or spiritual gifts that show the work of God in those people’s lives. This is not a brush of the spirit nor is it a dip in the spirit. This is the filling of the Spirit of God in a fresh way.
A city dweller turned farmer went to the local feed store to get some answers: his best cow had stopped producing milk.
“Are you feeding her right?” asked the storeowner.
“Just what you sold me,” replied the rookie.
“Are you milking her every day?” the owner asked.
“Just about. Sometimes when I only need six or eight ounces for breakfast, I just let her save up to get it all later,” came the reply.
The storeowner explained that it doesn’t work that way. “You have to take all there is to give,” he said.
But you know what? That is exactly the way it is with God and His Spirit. You have to take all He has to give you. That is the basic definition of being filled with His Spirit. It is not a smorgasbord. You don’t pick and choose. Get a little of this and a little of that. It is all or nothing.
From the Apostle Paul we learn three functions that spiritual gifts do. These three principles can be found in Paul’s extensive teaching in 1 Corinthians.
Spiritual Gifts Serve the Body By:
A. Guiding it.
B. Empowering it.
C. Building it.
And notice that the spiritual gifts serve the body not the individual. Most of the abuses of spiritual gifts and most of the improprieties that have occurred were caused when a person either intentionally or unintentionally sought to build his or herself up instead the body. Every spiritual gift can be grouped into one of these categories as its primary function. For example, the gift of prophecy is meant to empower the body somewhat but mostly to guide it. The gift of mercy is for the building of the body. The gift of leadership is for empowering it.
And here is a very important principle for determining whether or not something is “of the spirit.”
The sign of the Spirit is when output exceeds the input.
When the output exceeds what we possibly could have put into it on our own, is a very clear sign of God’s Spirit at work. This means that life in and through the Spirit will have three signs.
a. Power in the Spirit.
b. Growth in the Spirit.
c. Joy in the Spirit.
A person that is living through and by the Spirit will have a supernatural power that is evident in his or her life. Be careful! This evidence will not be the same for every person! A great heresy that you may have heard is that there is only one spiritual gift that is evidence of God’s Spirit. This is not a biblical doctrine. If fact, Paul emphasizes the opposite by saying that not all parts of the body have the same function and that the body needs all of its diverse parts.
Healthy spiritual power ties together the spiritual growth of the holy life. When brought together, the greatest miracles are not outward ones but inward changes in a person’s heart.
Then when the power of the Spirit is present, the people will sing with such a fervent joy and the word of God will go forth in might and power.
One day three men were walking along and came upon a raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do it.
The first man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength to cross this river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours.
Seeing this, the second man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and ability to cross this river." Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about three hours.
The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength, ability, and intelligence to cross this river." And Poof! God turned him into a woman.
She looked at the map, then walked across the bridge.
And this leads me to some of the perils of the spirit-filled life.
Perils of the Spirit-Filled Life
1. Wrong Focus.
It is real easy to focus on the gift instead of the giver. Too often, we demand a sign from God to be a witness, when all He needs is a willing witness. Too often the demonstration of power gets the attention instead of focusing on who provided the power.
2. Rejection of Reason.
Often we can seek the feeling that comes from the Spirit of God moving in power that we reject the intellectual and rational. Sometimes the move of God cannot be rationally explained but this does not mean that we are in an either/or situation. It is both/and. It is both feeling and emotional expression with critical thinking and understanding. Over-emphasizing the emotional aspect, can lead to dangerous cultic practices. Like-wise, the neglect of our emotional expressions can lead to a cold, hard-hearted religion.
3. Separating the Gifts from the Fruit.
This is what Paul was addressing at Corinth. It is possible to move into the realm of spiritual gifts without the spiritual maturity that the fruit of the spirit brings to our character. But to do so, will usually result in big trouble.
Cultivating the fruit of the Spirit (as with character) takes time and practicing intentional growth. This is another area where the discipline of the holy life and the spirit-filled life complement each other.
4. Dangerous End-Times Theology.
Perhaps because of the sometimes over-reliance on prophecy and visions, groups that stress the spirit-filled life tend to tie themselves to unorthodox (which means believing in something most Christians throughout history have not accepted as truth) view of end-times. These end-times scenarios then encourage people to isolate themselves from the world claiming that they are the only truly faithful ones. Lastly:
5. Putting God in a Box.
Interestingly enough, a common pitfall is to believe that just because God moved in a certain way at some point in time, then we have to seek that same move of God. If God doesn’t move, then we just don’t have enough faith and need to believe harder. Or if I exhibit certain spiritual gifts then God will answer all of my requests.
In the midst of pursuing a wonderful tradition, we can easily get off-track from any one of these perils. And it can happen to the best of us.
The Times-Reporter of New Philadelphia, Ohio, reported in September 1985 a celebration of a New Orleans municipal pool.
The party around the pool was held to celebrate the first summer in memory without a drowning at the New Orleans city pool. In honor of the occasion, 200 people gathered, including 100 certified lifeguards.
As the party was breaking up and the four lifeguards on duty began to clear the pool, they found a fully dressed body in the deep end. They tried to revive Jerome Moody, 31, but it was too late. He had drowned surrounded by lifeguards celebrating their successful season.
What can I do to help cultivate the spirit-filled life?
Cultivating the Spirit-Filled Life
1. Ask.
If you have been wondering if something has been missing, perhaps like the disciples that Paul encountered, you have never asked God to fill you with His Spirit? Don’t just assume that knowing about the Holy Spirit is any better! It isn’t. Ask God to fill you. Kneel before your God and let your brothers and sisters in Christ lay hands upon you. There is something wonderful and powerful that happens when we physically obey God that I can’t explain and you cannot receive simply by staying in your pew.
2. Take Responsibility.
Every spiritual gift is needed and every part of the body is needed. No matter how small your gift is or how great it is, take responsibility to fulfill your part in the body.
3. Accept Limitation.
No single person contains all the gifts of the Spirit. I have the privilege of sitting on our state credentialing team. We get to interview people seeking ordination. It is such an honor and serious responsibility. One of the tools we use is a spiritual gift inventory. It is a man-made tool that can serve as a starting point for discovering and deploying your spiritual gifts. Occasionally, we find a candidate who scores his or herself with four’s (the highest) for every question. Jesus probably wouldn’t have scored as high as they did.
These people could very well think that they can (and have to) do it all themselves. This is dangerous to others and ourselves. We need accept our limitations and trust that God will make up for the rest.
4. Esteem Others.
God has arranged the body and the gifts of His Spirit so that we will always be dependent upon one another. You cannot properly exercise your gifts apart of the community of God’s people. And in doing so, make sure that you value everyone’s gift as important because there no gift is unimportant nor is any believer insignificant.
5. Maintain Unity Within Diversity.
Even though we can have different personalities and gifts, we can still function as whole. We are linked through the blood of Christ to suffer and rejoice together.
What a wonderful description of our life together! If you have never made Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior then you are missing out on a whole different life that is led and controlled by God’s Spirit within a dynamic community of faith. Why not ask Him to forgive, cleanse, and fill you?
Listen to the description of a spirit-filled life by the ’Sunday Times’ journalist Matthew Parris – a man, who is by his own confession, not a Christian.
“The New Testament offers a picture of God, who does not sound at all vague. He has sent His Son to earth. He has distinct plans for each of us personally and can communicate directly with us. We are capable of forming a direct relationship, individually with Him, and are commanded to try. We are told that this can be done only through his son. And we are offered the prospect of eternal life – an afterlife in happy, blissful or glorious circumstances if we live this life in a certain manner.
Friends, if I believed that, or even a tenth of that, how could I care which version of the prayer book is used?
I would drop my job, sell my house, throw away all my possessions, leave my acquaintances and set out into the world burning with desire to know more and, when I had found more, to act upon it and tell others.
Far from being puzzled that the Mormons and Adventists should knock on the door, I am unable to understand how anyone who believed that (which) is written in the Bible could choose to spend their waking hours in any other endeavor.”
Here’s question to seek God’s face to answer, “Is my life Spirit defined or Spirit denied?”
Would someone honestly be able to look at your life and see the difference that Christ makes? (This doesn’t mean that you are perfect!). Would someone wonder if you had something (or in this case someone) that they did not? Come and seek the Lord. Seek His face.
Here is how I want to end the service. In front, we have a bucket of water and some communion cups. I want to encourage you to come forward and fill up one of these cups to symbolize your desire to be filled by the Spirit of God. Don’t just do it and sit it down. Look at it. Pray through it. Watch the water slosh back and forth. Watch how it conforms to the cup and vessel. Notice how easily the water can spill. When you are done praying, sit it on the table.
