One of my constant prayers has been for God to continuously fill me with the Holy Spirit. I have known that God is a loving Father who longs to pour out His Holy Spirit onto me far, far more than all my deepest desire for the Holy Spirit. If I being evil would never dream of withholding bread and meat from my children when they ask for it, God would even more never withhold the Holy Spirit from me when I seek for Him with the same longing.
But as I have been meditating on being filled again and again with the Holy Spirit, God showed me a clear proof that I truly yearn for the Holy Spirit. An increasing yearning for the Holy Spirit will correspond with an increasing yearning for the holiness of God to be reflected in my life.
So I cannot say that I long for the Holy Spirit if I am not ruthless to all other “spirits” that I find residing in myself (the spirit to hold grudges, the spirit to return evil with evil, the spirit to lust, the spirit to lose my temper, etc). And the secret enjoyment that I find from these other spirits prove to me (and God and the devil) that all my cries for the Holy Spirit are blind repetitions and mere lip-service to a theological truth.
A thirsty person longs for water, and a hungry person longs for food. But whether a person is really thirsty and hungry can be easily proved by how this person responds to oil, grease, sugar syrup, sand, dirt, and rocks. If people who claim to be hungry and thirsty constantly satisfy themselves with things that are NOT food/drink that satisfies them and quenches their thirst, this proves that they are not really thirsty and hungry. Those who are hungry and thirsty will grow in rejecting everything else that does not satisfy.
In the same way, when a person who claims to be thirsty/hungry for the Holy Spirit does not embody a clear and committed preference for holiness over the sordid pleasures of this world, it proves that their desires for the Holy Spirit is really a desire for the Feel-Good Spirit, the Power-to-have-an-easy-life Spirit, the Ability-to-heal-people Spirit, etc.
Acts 1:8 tells me that I will receive power when the Holy Spirit is given to me – so that I can be a witness of Jesus. But I must be crystal clear of what this POWER looks like, otherwise I can run after and look for the wrong things as proof of having the Holy Spirit.
So what does the power of the Holy Spirit look like? Is it the heart to give up all my possessions or the ability to work miracles or speak in other tongues or move mountains? No, 1 Corinthians 13 makes it clear that all these are meaningless without love.
The power of the Holy Spirit is the power of love. And let’s right away get ALL influences of Bollywood, Hollywood, and worldly-romantic novels thoroughly out of our concept of love. The power of love that I speak of is this: The power to be rooted and grounded in God’s everlasting love for us, and the power to love God with all of ourselves, and the power to love others even as Jesus loved us. This is the power that is available to me and that the eyes of my heart need to be opened to (Eph 1:18-19). So the growing love of the Father in us and a partaking of His divine nature as we experience and hold onto His magnificent promises (2 Peter 1:3-4) – that is this power of love. This is the TRUE power of the Holy Spirit.
But let me be clear right away: Even with all of this power available to me, there is still a cross that I must endure and surrender to. The cross on which my flesh and the world must die is something that is never promised to be pleasurable. Jesus Himself endured the cross, and that was not just the physical cross at age 33, but rather the cross on which is own will had to be crucified daily (Luke 9:23; John 6:38).
But it is the powerful love that the Holy Spirit brings which is the power that makes that cross bearable. The Holy Spirit will make that cross bearable because He puts the love of God in us, and our eyes are opened to the immense joy that is set before us as we choose to be with God.
This is a marvelous truth that we should grab a hold of: The immense joy that we is set before us is the same joy that Jesus had set before Him and that gave Him power to endure the cross.
And what was that joy? Fellowship with the Father and with one another.
Look, fellowship with the Father is primary. In the Father’s presence is the fullness of joy. So we know that the primary joy Jesus experienced as a result of enduring the cross every day of His earthly life was fellowship with the Father.
But we should remember that Jesus had that joy of fellowship with the Father even BEFORE He left the Father’s presence in the first place. So the joy set before Jesus while He was on earth was more than just regaining fellowship with the Father. It was also a fellowship with US that was on the other side of His life here on earth! He knew that if He would endure the cross of dying to His self-will every day (Mark 9:23), and then finally the one cross that none of us have to bear (separation from fellowship with the Father), He would pave a way for US TOO to have fellowship with Him and His Father. THIS made His joy full (John 15:11).
Jesus came down to this earth not just to save us from hell, but so that we too could share in the fellowship that He had with the Father. All who have the heart of Jesus Christ are co-workers in this ministry, and finds their joy in the same place. They too find their joy in their own personal fellowship with the Father and the Son, as well as in drawing others to share the fellowship that they themselves have.
http://jeevamozhikal.org/howcaniknowihavethatpowerofholyspirit-sandeep-poonen-2/
©Copyright-SandeepPoonen
http://jeevamozhikal.org/howcaniknowihavethatpowerofholyspirit-sandeep-poonen-2/
©Copyright-SandeepPoonen
