Spirit Filled Domination

You see, it’s the simple act of saving faith that gives you the Holy Spirit. He becomes the river of living water, and he takes up permanent residence in our lives. And you can never lose that. The Spirit is a permanent resident in the life of the believer. And that’s why, now listen, that’s why, of all the commands in the New Testament, and there are myriads of them, of all the commands in the New Testament, listen to this, there is never a command to be baptized with the Spirit. Never. Never. There are seven references to the baptism of the Spirit in the New Testament.

Not one of them is in the imperative mood, not one of them is a command. You are never commanded to be baptized by the Spirit, because the baptism with the Spirit is when you’re placed in the body of Christ. And that happens at the moment you’re saved. Second, you are never commanded anywhere in the New Testament to be indwelt by the Spirit. Never. That is also a promise already guaranteed. You’re never commanded to be sealed by the Spirit or kept secure. That is also a gift of God. Ephesians 1, you’ve already been sealed, you’ve already been baptized, you’ve already been indwelt.

Those are given as commands. The command is this, Ephesians 5, 18b. What? Filled with the Spirit. That’s different. Not indwelt, baptized, or sealed, but filled. You say, well, what does it mean? Well, in the first place, it’s the very opposite of the pagan kind of activity and the pagan ecstasy. But the verb means this. Let me give you the verb rendering in its literal sense, and then I’ll show you how it works out. It means to, the literal present tense says be, it’s a passive, be being kept filled with the Spirit.

And the idea of be being kept is a constant. Be being kept. You don’t say, oh, I’m filled with the Spirit. That does it. I’m in for the rest of my life. Be being kept filled moment by moment by moment by moment, see? Day by day by day by day by day. It’s not a once for all. It’s not a zapper here and a zapper there and a zapper there next year. It’s moment by moment by moment by moment, see? Be being kept continuously filled. It’s passive. That is, something fills you. You don’t fill yourself.

You receive the action. And it is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God who fills you. Present tense. Be constantly in the present tense, being kept continuously filled by the Spirit of God. You may be baptized into the body. You may be indwelt by the Spirit. You may be sealed by the Spirit until the day of redemption. But you know something? You can live your Christian life in defeat. If you don’t know what it is to experience moment by moment, the be being kept continuously filled by the Spirit of God experience.

It expresses the idea of a moment by moment continual work. It’s not some second thing that’s good for the rest of your life. My being filled with the Spirit five minutes ago isn’t any good for this moment. None. My being filled with the Spirit tomorrow isn’t any good for today. It’s moment by moment by moment. Now, when you think of filling, you think of a glass, you know, and you fill it or a box and you stick something in it or a container and you dump something in it. But that’s not the idea.

Let me give you three concepts to hang on to. The word pleru is used of a wind filling a sail and billowing the sail out and moving the ship along. You know, when we say that the sails are filled with wind and that’s in Paul’s mind for a beginning thought, to be carried along, to be carried along. Beautiful thought. To be moved along, to have the thrust of your life and the energy of your life and the pressure of your life be the power of the Spirit of God. In other words, you don’t move in your own energy.

You don’t move in your own flesh. You don’t move with your own ideas. You don’t move into your own ideals. You don’t generate your own will. You are blown along under the wind of the Spirit of God. You are carried along the path that He will go. It’s in a very real sense, almost like those who wrote the Scripture, who were born along by the Spirit of God. It’s as if you are nothing but a stick in a creek. Have you ever watched a stick? When you were a little boy, you drop a stick in a creek and then run down and watch it come down.

You’re carried along by the Spirit of God. You’re blown along like a sailboat in the wind. That’s one thought. To be filled with the Spirit is to be carried along from day to day, from moment to moment, from enterprise to enterprise, from thought to thought, from word to word, from deed to deed, by the power of the energy of the Spirit of God. So it has the idea of pressure, of pressure of carrying you along in God’s will. There’s a second one, and that’s the idea of permeation. Pleiru is sometimes used for something which permeates, and I think a good illustration of that is salt.

Salt permeates. In fact, it permeates so well that if you put enough of it on something, it will preserve it, won’t it? But when you want to eat something, and you put all that salt on it, it gives it flavour. It permeates the whole thing so that the whole thing is flavoured. I used to use the illustration also of a fizzy, and if you’ve read my little book called Found, God’s Will, you’ve read about the fizzy principle. Fizzies were kind of a flavoured Alka-Seltzer, a little thing about the size of an Alka-Seltzer.

Only they made them in grape and orange and root beer and cherry and all of that, you know? And you’d get a little deal of those things, and you’d drop them in a glass of water, and they’d pshoo, you know, like an Alka-Seltzer does, and they’d fill it up, and it was permeation, you know? You put a grape fizzy in there, and the whole glass of water tastes like grape juice, and what it did was flavour the water, and pleiru is used in that sense. There’s the sense in which the Spirit of God wants to flavour your life so that you taste like the Spirit of God, and so that when anybody gets next to you, the flavour of your life is that of God, so that being with you is like being with God, you see? So it’s the idea of pressure to move you along, and it’s the idea of permeation, so that, you know, when somebody gets around you, they think maybe they’ve been with Jesus, because he flavours your life.

But the dominant thought here, in my mind, as compared with the Gospel record particularly, the dominant use of pleiru is to speak of control, to speak of total control. That’s kind of the idea. You’ve got the idea of moving along, you’ve got the idea of permeation, but the control idea is the key. Let me see if I can illustrate it to you. Whenever in the Gospel record, the writer wants to talk about somebody who just is dominated by an emotion, he will use the word pleiru, which is used here. In other words, in John 16.6 it says, they were filled with sorrow.

In other words, sorrow to such a degree that it can’t be balanced off by happiness, and they’re just totally sorrowful. Now let me give you an illustration to help you understand this. Most of the time, we can kind of balance things in our life, can’t we? Take the concept of sorrow. Okay, we’ve got sorrow over here on the scale, and happiness over here, right? And we go through life, and a little bit of sorrow, and then we think of something happy. See? Or, well, it’s not going too well at home. I think I’ll go to the office.

See? It’s better. No, it’s not going too well at the office. I think I’ll go home. See? We balance this thing off. You know, we talk about sad things. We don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s talk about something happy. See? But every once in a while, we can’t keep that balance. You know, the person we love the most dies. Foom. See? All of a sudden, the scale is all the way down on the sorrowful side, and nothing anybody says, and nothing anybody does, can take away the sorrow. Filled. And that’s when that word would be used.

It’s totally dominating. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of spirit-filled domination. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].