Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Yesterday we spoke of the need for being filled with God's Holy Spirit in order to empower us for successful Christian living. The first key for how to be filled was "Present Your Life to Jesus Christ." Today we mention four more keys and start with the second key. 

2. Obey God on every issue. The second step to being filled with God's Spirit is obedience; that is, obedience to every command and direction of God as found in his Word, the Bible. His Word says, "We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, who is given to those who obey him."⁵

We need to realize that, like the laws of the land, all of God's laws are for our benefit, protection and well-being. They are not to keep us bound in rigid, false-religion legalism. Thus it is imperative to search the Scriptures daily to learn what is essential for living in harmony with all that God's Word teaches.

Realize, too, that disobedience to God's laws is sin and this grieves the Holy Spirit which, in turn, breaks communion and fellowship with God.⁶ Thus all sin needs to be confessed and forgiveness received from God, which God always gives to those who confess their sins to him.⁷ Should you fall down, get up immediately, confess, ask God for forgiveness, and go on.⁸

3. Want sincerely to be filled. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst [strongly desire] for righteousness, for they will be filled."⁹ This principle also applies to being filled with God's Holy Spirit. As Jesus also stated, "'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.^"10

And as Jesus said to the lame man lying by the pool of Bethesda who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, "Do you want to get well?"¹¹  He didn't say, "Do you wish to get well?" He said, "Do you want to get well?" So we, too, to be filled with God's Spirit need to want this with all of our heart and be willing to meet the requirements that God says are needed to be filled.

4. Entreat God for His filling. Entreat simply means to ask. Jesus said, "If you then, though 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!"¹² And again, "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.^"13

We can ask God with confidence because we know that it is his will for every Christian to be filled with the Holy Spirit. In fact, God has commanded it saying, "... be filled with the Spirit.^"14 Therefore "ask and you will receive."

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me always to depend on your Holy Spirit for guidance and direction in my daily living, and to empower me to be an effective Christian witness. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

5. Acts 5:32 (NIV).
6. See Ephesians 4:30 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19.
7. 1 John 1:9.
8. See Proverbs 24:16.
9. Matthew 5:6.
10. John 7:37-39 (NIV).
11. John 5:6 (NIV).
12. Luke 11:13 (NIV).
13. 1 John 5:14-15 (NIV).
14. Ephesians 5:18 (NIV).

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