Biblical and Personal
This blog is to help us all think about the incredible ministry of The Holy Spirit as we approach Pentecost. There will be many questions and thoughts we all will have to process more fully but I offer these as a starter for our thoughts and experience with The Holy Spirit.
The Path To Pentecost is both a fact of Biblical truth and personal experience. Jesus baptizes us in the Spirit as much as he takes away the sin of the world as Lamb of God. Each of these are Biblical truths and personal truths. What I mean by personal is that this is not just something to believe but to appropriate personally by faith and experience.
In fact, I would suggest that it is the person of The Holy Spirit that makes Biblical truths and values personal. He is the personal presence of God to make effectual the Biblical truths in the life of a believer (from conviction of sin, to insight of Jesus and His work, to filling of The Spirit). This is the ministry of The Holy Spirit @ Pentecost. No longer is God and His gifts something to be believed only but to have some measure of experience because of The Holy Spirit's work.
Yesterday I suggested that the language of being filled with The Spirit (Eph. 5:18) has to do with influence or the experience of something filling our lives and affecting our lives. Being filled with The Spirit is that of being under the influence of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). And isn't it interesting that this understanding of being filled or under the influence of The Holy Spirit is placed in direct contrast with being under the influence or effects of wine in Ephesians 5:18!!!
Would it be appropriate to translate "filled" with the idea of being under the influence? What if we understood that the experience with the Holy Spirit is a matter of being under The Spirit's influence each day? Is it not that those who experienced the 1st Pentecost that their lives were characterized by being under the influence of The Holy Spirit?
REFLECT: Think about filling of the Holy Spirit as being under the influence of The Spirit. What would your life look like if you lived "under the influence" of The Holy Spirit?