Wrapped in Trinitarian Love

If ever there was a time for believers to understand this dimension of new covenant living, it is now. The United States is filled with the disastrous results of turning to its own way. The drug scene as it stands today is the in-vogue way of seeking meaning and inner harmony, while others get rich servicing the willing.

Burnout among executives, at least in part, is coming face-to-face with the sickening realization that our dream of success, and maybe it realization, is only a minuscule drop in the vast emptiness within man that only God can fill.

Spiritual burnout is the realization that the emptiness within the human heart cannot be filled with the religious rituals, church activity, and endless promises to be a better Christian. That hole within us can only be filled by the Spirit of God.

We can thank God for the collapse of all creature-focused and, therefore, sinful alternatives, that have been substituted for God Himself. Thank God when life fragments and is seen to be empty; it is then that we repent and find reality in Christ.

If you as a believer feel disillusioned and empty, it may be that the Spirit has brought you to painfully discover that whatever created thing, or person, you have set up as an idol, to be the integration point of your life, is not enough. It is time to repent, turn from it and be filled with the Spirit.

But how? What steps must a person take to live in Holy Spirit fullness? What is it anyway?

The Greek tenses explain it a little better than our regular English translations. It is better rendered, “Allow yourself in every moment, as your habitual lifestyle, to be under the love control of the Holy Spirit.”

We cannot achieve this by an act of our will, but we can yield to Him by faith and let Him energize us at the heart of our being. We are purchased in our bodies with the blood of Jesus, and the Spirit wills to literally take up residence in every area of our being and bring us into wholeness. The Holy Spirit is the integrating God who is with us.

Out of the many false ways that man has substituted to achieve inner harmony, it is interesting that Paul should compare being filled with the Spirit to being drunk! The false way brings synthetic happiness; the Spirit brings joy even in the face of apparent despair. The Spirit brings real strength and inner ability from God; a drunk only has an illusionary strength to handle life. The Spirit brings supernatural peace that passes understanding, as opposed to a sedation of the senses which produces a phoney peace. Paul is not calling them to go to a special meeting to get high, but to live totally, every moment, stimulated from within by the Spirit as being the meaning of human existence.

The Holy Spirit is not the icing on the cake of salvation. He is the finale of redemption, the person of the Godhead who dwells within us, causing us to move into integrated living and a full expression of our humanness. The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost even as Jesus came at Bethlehem. He is God, now on earth in these days of the New Covenant, the One who makes the salvation of Jesus purchased a reality in the mundane of everyday life.

He is the One who convicted us of our sin and need of Christ, and opened our eyes when we heard the Gospel. He came in the new birth and, in so doing, brought us into relationship with the Father and the Son (John 14:16-23; Ephesians 3:17). The first act of a believer, according to the New Testament, is to welcome the Spirit to come and fill to the full every part of the blood-bought temple. He comes with wisdom and insights, empowerings, enablings, and giftings … and ever day thereafter He comes to us in a multitude of new relationships with Himself.

You cannot avoid the Holy Spirit. He is the Christian life!

Then what do we do when we find that there is some area where we are bent away from God … an area where we seek fulfillment and harmony independently of Him? And how can we practically put this truth into practice?

(to be continued)