It’s quite easy for believers to misunderstand the filling of the Holy Spirit in their lives, which isn’t really a serious problem as long as their intent is right. That misunderstanding stems hugely from the belief that it’s possible for them to be infused with more or greater measure of the Holy Spirit in the sense that they could get more of Him. 

The whole idea of being filled by the Spirit of God as commanded in God’s Word is in complete reverse from what many believe. In this publication, we’ll clear up some of the misunderstandings many have had when it concerns that issue.  

It’s All About Allowing The Spirit of God to Fill us

Before going any further, let’s look at these two passages below:

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!” (Luke 11:13)

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).

When receiving the Holy Spirit in your life after salvation, you receive the whole person in your human spirit, not part of Him. In other words, all true believers in Christ have received the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it means that you have that massive or all-powerful being taking residence into your spirit. To put it into perspective, His divine presence into which His infinite power dwells is all accumulated into your regenerated spirit. And that divine presence is radiating intensely in your spirit. 

But in order for that indwelling presence to spread and start permeating other vital areas of your life, it has to travel from your spirit first, then to your soul, which is the very element by which you make decisions, and from the soul to the body, which is the very element by which you manifest, materialize, or accomplish those decisions.

Therefore, as you start surrendering your life to Him by being consciously aware of His divine presence, power, and Christ’s given mission in your life, you’re allowing Him to get more of you. You’re allowing His presence to become pervasive in every aspect of your life. As you can see, being filled with the Holy Spirit is predicated wholly on allowing Him to fill us with Himself in the sense that His fullness can take over our entire life.

The more you submit yourself moment by moment to Him, the more you’re keeping yourself constantly filled, and the more you’re allowing Him to mold and transform you into the person God wants you to be for His glory. 

If you want to grow spiritually, bear fruits, and become mature into God, the Holy Spirit is your energy to spiritual growth.

Resisting Him Could be Problematic

But the reality of being filled with the Spirit can also be reversed. If you’re resisting Him in certain critical areas of your life, or you’re acting as if He wasn’t even there, you’re pushing back against His filling, leading, and presence. You’re literally making His presence to become unnecessary in your life.

Beloved, it can be very painful and grieving to Him when treating Him that way as a very sensitive, protective, and caring being and someone upon whom our spiritual walk with the Lord should be based (Ephesians 4:30). Someone who fully knows that there’s no way you and I can live up a life pleasing to God apart from His filling.

He is all-capable of empowering us to accomplish greater things we could have ever imagined. He wants to fulfill in our lives what He has been commissioned to fulfill. But by resisting Him, we’ve caused Him to stay idle, which goes against His duty and nature. We utterly shut the door of our spiritual lives on Him.

Oftentimes, we are just running into our daily businesses by leaving Him behind without even acknowledging His presence while we should have been led by Him.

Bear in mind, the Holy Spirit is given to lead us not to follow us. Secondly, He’s given to fill or take control of us not to be pushed into a corner so that we can have our own way. He knows exactly His mission that He was sent by Christ to fulfill in our lives. He comes to make Jesus, our Savior and Lord to become real in our lives by enabling us to know Him much better.

He comes to unleash mightily in our lives the very blessings found in Christ’s atonement. And He comes to enable us to glorify Jesus by leading a life reflective of whom He is.

In short, He comes to empower us to do what we would have never been able to do within our human power and will, which is leading a holy and righteous life.

He longs to fulfill His mission, but we simply need to allow Him to do His job through us by subjecting ourselves totally to His leading.

Simple Signs That You’re Filled By The Spirit of God

Being filled means that you become so consumed and endued by the presence of the Spirit of God in your life to the extent that you willfully choose to allow every emotion, thought, and act of the will to be under His direction.

You no longer take pleasure in purposely feeding sinful thoughts in your mind due to the keen sensitivity and fear of God the Holy Spirit has enabled you to develop.

You don’t let sinful thoughts run loose in your thinking like carnal people would normally do as a result of your constant awareness of God’s presence in your life.

Moreover, you become so conscious of sin, confession, and repentance to the degree that anything sinful creeping in your mind has set off an alarm due to your strong hunger for holiness and righteousness. In this case, being filled starts first with how you think in relation to how much you’ve allowed God’s Spirit to transform you.

Why? Because you have the ability with your mind to either turn on or off the flow of the Holy Spirit presence and power in your life. Let’s look at that following verse below to get an idea of what being filled is all about.

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so (Romans 8:7).

A person who is living according to the flesh is hostile to God in his thinking, attitude, and behavior due to rebellion. Such person has a rebellious sentiment raging within toward God’s law. On the other hand, being filled with the Spirit which perfectly fits with the process of walking in the Spirit is the exact opposite of living in the flesh.

Therefore, one of the precursors that will substantiate the fact that you’re filled is your ongoing willingness to refrain from sinful thoughts and behaviors by allowing the Word of God to dominate every aspect of your life.

Conclusion

In short, being filled by the Holy Spirit is to allow the truth of the Word reigning in your regenerated spirit to influence how you behave by mortifying the flesh, the very embodiment of your physical body. You allow the spirit man, the regenerated part of your being through which God’s Spirit dwells to overpower the carnal man.