How can I be filled with the Spirit?

Weekend Talk 2 : STUDENT ALPHA: October 2009 How can I be filled with the Spirit? In the last talk we saw how early on in the book of Acts we see how the disciples were filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost They were actively seeking longing to be filled with the Spirit But it wasn t just Pentecost. There are a number of other occasions as we go on in the book of Acts where we see people experiencing the Spirit. In Acts 8 we read of a group who were not so much longing or thirsting for it but they were, at least, receptive Acts 8:14-17: When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.' They were quite open to receive, and clearly something dynamic was going on 1. Some were longing for the power of God, thirsting to be filled with the Spirit, to undergo this

dynamic change 2. There were some who were at the very least receptive 3. But also there were some who were hostile The Apostle Paul was a perfect example of one of those. We first meet him early on in Acts as Saul the Christian persecutor. Acts 9:1: Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there that belonged to the Way whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. Saul could not have been more hostile. Until something wonderful happened on the way to Damascus. He encountered the risen Jesus Christ. Jesus appeared to him, he was blinded by the glory of Christ and he was, unsurprisingly, converted Saul s life was utterly transformed. Verse 17: Ananias went round to his house, placed his hands on Saul and said, The Lord Jesus has sent me so that you may see again, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul s eyes, and he could see again. And we read on, the second part of verse 19: Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. Verse 20: At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. Here was the total transformation of someone who was hostile to Christ and to the Christian faith. Someone was transformed into a person who was actively preaching Christ. NB: FROM HOSTILE TO HOLY! Jamie tells a story here of someone from his Alpha group That man s life was utterly transformed by Jesus Christ and by the experience of the Spirit.

... some hostile And there are some who are simply uninformed Acts 19:1 6: Paul found some disciples and asked them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered, No, we haven t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. There are some people like that today. Maybe they ve been baptised, maybe they ve been confirmed, maybe they ve been churchgoers, but they say, 'We ve never even really heard about the Holy Spirit....When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues, and prophesied. So some were longing, some were receptive, some were hostile, some were uninformed. Let s look at one other passage in a little bit more detail. Acts Chapter 10. This particular group was a group of Gentiles. Acts 10: 44: While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Up to this point in the book of Acts, all the people were of Jewish origin. Now here is a group that are Gentiles. By a remarkable set of circumstances and by God speaking powerfully both to Cornelius and to Peter, Peter ended up at the house of Cornelius, who was a Gentile. He ended up preaching to them about Jesus. And as he was preaching this is what happened. What did they experience? 1. They experienced the power of the Holy Spirit We know that something very remarkable must have happened, because Peter was in the middle of a sermon and he had to stop preaching.

Now as you well know, preachers do not stop preaching unless something very dramatic happens! Can t shut them up for love nor money, but Peter had to stop, because God the Holy Spirit interrupted his sermon. Now, we don t know exactly what they experienced. Of course it s different for everyone. What they experienced back on the day of Pentecost was clearly a very powerful thing. The language used to describe it is that of a heavy tropical rainstorm. In other words, the power of the Spirit was totally flooding their very beings. There were physical manifestations on the day of Pentecost. They heard a gale. Not a real gale, but it resembled one...the Ruach, the wind, the life-giving breath of God, Sometimes, when the Spirit of God comes, people speak of being filled up like a balloon by the breath of God...it s as physical as that. Very often there s an amazing sense of peace. Sometimes you see people shaking. Sometimes people even fall over. You might be thinking: That is VERY ODD! Maybe it s helpful to think of it as a simple physical symbol of a deeper, spiritual work of God. I sometimes think that if we accept the fact that God s love can affect us spiritually, then it s not so odd to think that it may affect us physically too. They also saw something that resembled fire on the day of Pentecost something that seemed to be like tongues of fire. Often, people talk about experiencing something like fire in their bodies. Sometimes they talk about a physical heat. Fire symbolises the passion, the refining power, and the purity of God. Now I m not suggesting that you necessarily need to experience any of these things. The reason for mentioning them is because sometimes people do experience them, and if we haven t mentioned it beforehand they say, Why didn t you mention, why didn t you explain beforehand that we might feel these things. No surprises here. Don t want anyone saying, We didn t know whether it really was the

Holy Spirit. It is, and it s perfectly biblical, just enjoy the power of God s love! Of course, what matters is not the physical manifestations. They re not the important thing. Some people do experience powerful, physical manifestations of the Spirit, but others don t and it s no better to have experienced those things than not to have. God meets us where we are at. What matters is the inward experience in our hearts the experience of being a child of God, the experience of the love of the Father. The love of God is revealed to us supremely on the cross. If you want to know whether God loves you, the only place you have to look is the cross. The cross reveals to us that God loves us so much, he sent his only son to die for us. That is how much God loves you. If you want to understand the love of God, look at the cross. But in Ephesians, Paul prays that his readers will not only understand here in their minds the love of God, but that they might know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, that they might experience it, that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. And the love of God, that s God s love for us, is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Every single one of us needs to experience the love of God. Everyone needs love. JOKE: Jamie tells a joke here about an old couple who couldn t stop arguing... What the doctor was saying was this woman needs to experience love. All of us need to experience love, and supremely, we need to experience God s love. Without it we ll never find true meaning or peace. It s perhaps easy to believe that God loves the world, 1 John 3, verse 16, with a kind of wholesale love. But Paul wrote, The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. It s as personal, and as deep, and as real as that, and as the Holy Spirit comes and fills us, he gives us an experience of God s love for me. God s love for you.

That s a transforming experience. What matters is not the outward physical manifestations, what matters is the fruit of the experience, the changes it brings to our lives. When we have experienced the love of God, inevitably, that will bring changes to our lives. So that s the first thing: they experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, and that is a beautiful and lifechanging thing. It s only natural to want to express something about that. The Spirit helps us with that too, with expressions of thanks and praise and wonder. It happened at Pentecost: 2. They were released in praise (Acts 10:46), For they heard them speaking in tongues, and praising God. Spontaneous praise is the language of those who are thrilled and excited about something or someone, all around the world people get excited about all kinds of things. We re used to public displays of excitement, just perhaps not in church. But actually, when you think about it, why not?! Surely, if God does exist then he is worthy of our worship, if his love is real then that is something to get excited about! So our worship involves our minds, our hearts, everything: including our emotions. Not only is there nothing wrong with expressing emotions, you know, there s nothing wrong even with raising your hands in church it s perfectly all right. It might seem a little bit weird, but in fact that was the way in which the early Christians prayed. All people in antiquity prayed with their hands in the air. In 1 Timothy, it speaks about lifting up holy hands in prayer. There s absolutely nothing wrong with that that s the traditional form of prayer. I came across this, it was apparently a genuine advert from the American religious press. It s an advert for some deodorant called Aglow: The Holy Roll-on : Roger Van Norton of Calvary Chapel, California says: I was always hesitant to raise my arms in church, for fear that the person next to me wouldn t be as blessed by it as I would be. You might say the spirit was willing but the flesh was well, strong! Hey but now I use Aglow, and I can go the whole meeting, no problems!

Attention pastors: clergymen from across the country have confirmed significant increases in attendance since their congregations have been using Aglow, The Holy Roll-on! Ask about our special pew-holders and quantity discounts. And then at the bottom it just says: Aglow: The extra strength deodorant for the extra-active worshipper. Being filled with the Spirit brings us a release in praise, but we don t need to go over the top! So, 1. They experienced the Spirit, 2. They were released in praise, and 3. They received a new language. : For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Now what is THIS all about?! We saw in Acts, Chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost they received the gift of speaking in other languages. In the account at Ephesus, in Acts 19, again: they received the gift of tongues. That word tongues simply means a language that has not been learnt. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, 13 that it could be earthly, human languages, or it could be heavenly, angelic languages. Sometimes, even on an Alpha weekend, we ve found that people have received the gift of speaking in another tongue, another language, which is a human language. I used to be a worship leader standing there strumming my guitar for Jesus. On one particular Alpha weekend I was singing in the prayer time after this talk, and was leading the singing in tongues (it s beautiful to hear all the interlacing of the melodies and harmonies, all different sounds but still strangely beautiful), I didn t know it but there was a woman there from Italy called Stephania. She was there with her English speaking sister Elizabetta who was translating the talks for her. But Stephania spoke no English and by this stage of the weekend was feeling very lonely and more than a little confused. I, meanwhile, was singing, and these two words came into my head ti amo. They just stuck there and I began singing them over and over and over again. All I knew was that the sound of it was lovely, but to Stephania it meant so much more, because the words, Ti amo, in Italian, mean, I love you. I have to tell you, I do not speak Italian, and I was certainly not singing I love you to anyone in the congregation in ANY language What Stephania knew from that was that God saw her, and knew her, and loved her, and wanted to single her out in that moment to tell her how special she was to him..

It s probably worth saying that that is the only time that has happened to me. Tongues is mostly a very private thing Does a Christian need to speak in tongues? The answer is, no. Not all Christians speak in tongues. It s not the mark of being a Christian / being filled with the Spirit. It s not the most important gift. But in the New Testament it is the beginner s gift. It s often the first of the more obviously supernatural gifts that we receive. It takes time to see if you have the other gifts, but speaking in tongues is beautiful and instant and it builds our relationship with God. I said to my small group on the last course that with Alpha, what you see is what you get. It s a slice, a taster of church life, and the good news is that this tongues thing is as weird as it gets! I m just being honest! To our logical minds it IS weird! But it s also amazing, and it s perfectly biblical. But what exactly is it? 1 Corinthians, chapter 14: St. Paul writes, For those who speak in a tongue, do not speak to people, but to God....it s speaking to God: i.e., prayer.... Those who speak in a tongue edify themselves. So it builds up the individual Christian. Paul goes on to say that it transcends the limits of human language: For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. And all he means is that the mind is not having to go through the process of formulating those requests and expressions into the eloquent sentences of a human language. There is simply this sense of your heart directly connecting with God s in a number of ways:

1. It helps us praise more freely All of us are limited by human language. Do you ever get frustrated that you cannot express yourself? I try to write songs on my gee-tar, and uncliched lyrics are so hard to find! You want to praising the limitlessness of God s love and power, and through tongues your heart is expressed without the limitation of words. 2. It helps us pray under pressure In 1995 I went through the worst experience of my life: I split from girl I was convinced I was going to marry. I just didn t know how to pray. There was all this pain and confusion. How could I pray at a time like this? Had I got it wrong? Should I hold out in prayer? Should I give up? I didn t know what to do. The only refuge came in still being able to communicate with God by praying in tongues, that way my deepest emotions were expressed to God, and there was that sense that I was coming into line with his plan for me...two years went by before we got back together, and we ve now been married 11 years! (I am NOT saying that if you pray in tongues you get the girl...!) 3. it helps us pray for others Sometimes it s hard to pray for others, particularly if you haven t seen them for a long time. You know, the best prayer we can manage is: Lord bless them! But the gift of tongues can help us in praying for other people. Jackie Pullinger, if you recall, works with and helps the drug addicts, gangsters and prostitutes out in Hong Kong. She wrote this about how there was a transformation in her ministry as she began to use this gift: By the clock, I prayed 15 minutes a day in the language of the Spirit, and still felt nothing as I asked the Spirit to help me intercede for those he wanted to reach. It is interesting. It wasn t a feeling, it was something that she chose to do, it wasn t some trance that she fell into, it was simply a decision to pray. After about six weeks of this, I began to lead people to Jesus without trying. Gangsters fell on their knees, sobbing in the streets. Women were healed. Heroin addicts were miraculously set free. And I knew it all had nothing to do with

me. And the New Testament approves of this gift. But there are restrictions. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul is addressing the problem of excessive public use of the gift, and therefore he makes a distinction between using the gift in church, in public, and using it privately. So, in verse 18 of 1 Corinthians 14 he says, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all. Paul was not ashamed of speaking in tongues. But, in the Church, I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. The issue was in Corinth they went right over the top. They got over-excited about this supernatural gift and instead of having a sermon, someone would stand up and speak in tongues. Paul says Stop it! No-one understands you are saying! In private? Tongues? Go for it! In public? Be very careful! How do we receive the gift? Just ask him for the gift and then co-operate... simply start to praise God, to speak out in any language other than the languages we speak naturally. It s just one or two words at first (and you really feel like you re making it up! ) but over time the vocabulary grows, like with any language What s important is that our focus is on the Giver not the Gift. The gifts are one thing, but it s all about God and his love, that s the main thing. So, coming back to our main theme: would you like to be filled with the Spirit? Would you like that deep experience of the Father s love? How do you receive? In Luke Chapter 11, verses 9 to 11, we see Jesus talking in the context of the Holy Spirit, and he addresses three barriers to receiving.

The first one is doubt, verse 9. He says, So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. We need not doubt. Jesus says it over and over! Ask, seek, knock. Go on! You will receive, you will find, the door will be opened! The second barrier to receiving is fear. I might say, Okay, Lord, I m convinced I would receive, but I m not sure I want to. Am I going to have some awful experience? Jesus deals with these worries with a fish, a snake, an egg and a scorpion! Jesus said, Which of you fathers, if your children ask for a fish, will give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, will give them a scorpion? No human father is going to do that. If you then if you are evil (?!), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Finally, Jesus deals with a third barrier, inadequacy. Many people will say, Iook, If you knew what I was like inside, you wouldn t believe God would give me his Holy Spirit. We all feel like that: all of us know that deep down we are unworthy: SCARF story The wonderful news is that God gives. Not because of our worthiness, not because we deserve it,

not because we ve been Christians for years, not because we ve served him faithfully; none of those reasons. God gives the holy Spirit to those who ask him, To those who ask him. Ask, and you will receive. So shall we ask him? PRAY I want to pray a prayer tonight that makes it possible for anyone here to be sure that you re a Christian. It maybe somebody here says, All this talk about the Holy Spirit, and receiving the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit, do you know I m not even sure that I am a Christian. I want to make it possible for you to pray a prayer right now, so that you can be sure that from this moment on that you are a Christian. It s a very simple prayer, we prayed it earlier in the course, just asking for forgiveness, turning from things that we know are wrong, thanking Jesus for dying for us, and asking his Spirit to come and live within us. The Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, he s alive and he s here right now. And if you d like to pray this prayer, you can pray it in the quietness of your heart. Lord Jesus Christ, I m sorry for the past. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong, thank you that you love me so much, that you came to die on the cross for me, so that I could be forgiven, and set free. And I entrust you now with my life. I ask you to come into my life by your Spirit, to be my Saviour and my Lord. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen. Some of you might want to pray a prayer now, just simply asking God to come tonight and to fill you with his Holy Spirit / gift of tongues. Here s a prayer that you can pray. Lord I thank you that you say: Ask, and you will receive, and tonight I ask that you would come and fill me with your Holy Spirit. Jesus said, Ask and you will receive. Some of you may desire the gift of tongues, or some other gift. Why not ask for that now? Father I want to be able to pray and praise you in this way. Most of all, Lord, would you fill me with the Father s love? Thank you Lord, in Jesus name. Amen.