WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SPIRIT-FILLED?
Imagine. You pull the door open a crack and peer into the church sanctuary. Near the back of the room, a young woman stands with her hands raised high and her eyes shut tight, singing with much enthusiasm. Closer to the front, an older lady sits in her seat singing quietly with her head bowed and her hands folded in a position of prayer. Who is more spiritual—more Spirit-filled? Or perhaps the truly spiritual person is the young man playing guitar and leading worship from the stage. No, probably not. Surely one of these two ladies is the picture of spirituality. After all, who would really think of a man as spiritual, unless it was, perhaps, the pastor?
Spiritual = Strange?
After all I have said in this book, it is time to ask the question, what does it mean to be spiritual? In popular culture, this usually indicates some sort of mystical experience or spooky encounter. If you meditate regularly, believe in ghosts, or feel you have an unusual connection to nature, you might be considered spiritual. It also seems to help if you like crystals and butterflies. Even within the church, many people think that the word spiritual must indicate something or someone a little strange. Depending on how much exposure people have had to the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, they might associate the word spiritual with people who claim to be inspired by the Spirit to bark like dogs, scream, or roll around on the floor. Such people exist—I’ve seen them! Whether inside the church or outside the church, it seems that spiritual sometimes just means “strange.”
Some people try to justify their conclusion that it is spiritual to act strange by pointing to the eccentric behavior of prophets in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah walked around naked (Isaiah 20:1–4)—some scholars say, wearing only an undergarment—and Ezekiel lay on his side for 430 days (Ezekiel 4:4–6). Some also point to Saul, who “changed into a different person” when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he prophesied (1 Samuel 10:6, 10). These examples, however, don’t prove that one should expect to act strangely if one is to be truly spiritual. First of all, Saul might have just “changed into a different person” in the sense that “God changed Saul’s heart” before he prophesied (v. 9). Furthermore, when you read about the prophets in the Old Testament, you don’t get the sense that the prophets were usually ecstatic and acting strangely. To illustrate the point, when Elijah had his standoff at Mount Carmel, it was the prophets of Baal who “danced around the altar they had made,” shouted, slashed themselves with swords, and engaged in “frantic prophesying,” while they endeavored to get Baal to send fire on their sacrifice (1 Kings 18:26–29). By contrast, when Elijah called on God to send fire on his sacrifice, he merely “stepped forward and prayed” (v. 36). Strange or out-of-the-ordinary things might happen when people experience the Spirit—like speaking in tongues, dreams, or visions (Joel 2:28)—but such experiences are not the primary indicator of spirituality.
Biblical Spirituality
In the Bible, the word spiritual isn’t a generic word used to refer to the nonphysical world or to a “religious” person. Rather, spiritual means specifically something that is related to the work of the Holy Spirit.1 For example, the Bible refers to people who make up the church as “a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5) since the Spirit dwells in the church (1 Corinthians 3:16), salvation is a “spiritual blessing” (Romans 15:27) because a person is born again by the Holy Spirit (John 3:6–8), and one can sing “spiritual songs” as they are “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18–19 ESV). Again, spiritual simply means having to do with the work of the Holy Spirit.
This definition of spiritual implies that to be Spirit-filled is not the same as being emotional. Certainly, the Spirit may be experienced in a way that stirs the emotions and leads a person to exclaim, “God is really among you!” (1 Corinthians 14:25). Nevertheless, when the Bible mentions experiencing the Spirit, it rarely discusses what the experience was like or the emotions it might have aroused. Instead, the focus is placed on the life-changing results of the experience.
Biblical spirituality refers first and foremost to the ways in which the Spirit shapes us to become more like Jesus Christ. After the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism, Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1), even “without limit” (John 3:34). As a result, Jesus cast out demons “by the Spirit of God” (Matthew 12:28), and he engaged in all kinds of ministry “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). All Jesus was and did when he walked on earth, then, indicates what it means to be spiritual.
Character
One of the first things that comes to mind when Christians think about Jesus is his morally perfect character. When Jesus overcame the Devil’s temptation, he entered the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1), and forty days later he emerged from the wilderness “in the power of the Spirit” (v. 14). As a result, Jesus “committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22). Likewise, the Spirit helps us today to overcome temptation and sin in our own lives.
The Spirit once helped me when I was frustrated with one of my children. Our city was covered with snow, so my family and I decided we would go sledding. We all pulled on our snow pants, mittens, and winter jackets, and piled into our minivan to drive across town. When we arrived at the biggest hill in our prairie city, I parked the van at the top. And as we were climbing out with our sleds, one of my daughters said the seven words every parent dreads hearing when their child is all bundled up for winter weather: “I have to go to the bathroom.” Of course, there were no bathrooms at the sledding hill or anywhere else within walking distance. “No,” I told her. “We just got here . . . And I told you to go to the bathroom before we left the house.” She explained that she had gone to the bathroom at home, but that she needed to go again.
I figured we weren’t going to have any fun if she was complaining the whole time about needing to go to the bathroom, so I told my wife to stay at the hill with our other children while I drove my daughter to a bathroom. At the time, my wife thought I was being nice, but I grumbled the whole way to the convenience store, and I kept grumbling once we got inside. Then, as I was leaning against the wall outside the bathroom, the Spirit helped me recognize the anger in my heart and convicted me “concerning sin and righteousness” (John 16:8 NASB). And the Spirit didn’t just leave me aware of my sin, either. In that moment it was as though the Spirit also gave me a “new heart” (Ezekiel 36:26). I had a choice to live “according to the flesh” or “in accordance with the Spirit” (Romans 8:5), and the Spirit helped me respond to my daughter with patience and gentleness. Our drive back to the sledding hill was a lot more pleasant.
On this occasion the “fruit of the Spirit” became evident in my life. We can choose to give in to temptation and engage in “sexual immorality . . . hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition . . . envy, drunkenness . . . and the like” (Galatians 5:19–21). But the Spirit works to instill “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (vv. 22–23 NLT). When we exhibit self-control and are kind to someone who stabbed us in the back, we are following the lead of the Spirit. When we are patient with our spouse, even though they are driving us crazy, we show signs of being Spirit-filled. And when we are gentle with those who sin against us, we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit and holiness in our character.
Whenever I talk about character, holiness, and avoiding sin, some people automatically get concerned that I’m being legalistic. Legalism usually refers to rules people, rather than God, set in order to gain God’s approval, as though we are saved by our actions rather than grace. While God certainly does have ethical expectations for us, legalism is problematic because it promotes slavery to law rather than freedom from sin. Another problem with legalism is that rules don’t change us—the Spirit does. When we are shaped by the Spirit, we don’t do what is right only because those who live according to their sinful nature “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21). Instead, as the Spirit is poured out upon us like water to cleanse our hearts, the Spirit moves us from having a sense of duty to do what is right, to having delight in obeying God (Psalm 119). Overall, when we exhibit holiness, or the character of Christ, and avoid sin, we are the kind of person that the Bible calls spiritual (Galatians 6:1 NASB).
Proclaiming the Gospel
The Spirit not only enabled Jesus to remain sinless, but the Spirit also empowered Jesus for his ministry. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, who “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21), Jesus said he received the Spirit “to proclaim” good news (Luke 4:18). Jesus told the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). As a result, the book of Acts records numerous instances when believers “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). Another aspect of spirituality, then, is that we are inspired, led, and empowered by the Spirit to share the good news about Jesus Christ by ministering to our family and neighbors, to those in our workplaces, and to others around us.
When I was a teenager, my aunt owned a little white Geo Metro. I lived with her for a couple of summers so I could work in the city, and I occasionally borrowed her car. I could drive her car, and I could get it around, but it was difficult to get her car to go where I wanted it to go because it had manual steering. I especially had to yank on the steering wheel when I was trying to park. By contrast, I now own a long, green minivan that is two or three times as big as that little Geo Metro. But I can get it around easily because it has power in a way the Geo Metro didn’t. In fact, I could probably park my minivan using my pinky finger. I don’t have to struggle with the steering wheel because I’ve got power steering. Likewise, the Holy Spirit empowers us to be more effective in our ministry. By contrast, trying to do ministry without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit is like trying to drive a car without power steering.
Miracles
In addition to ministering by proclaiming the good news, Jesus was empowered by the Spirit to do miracles. He said he was anointed with the Spirit to proclaim “recovery of sight for the blind” (Luke 4:18) and that he drove “out demons by the Spirit of God” (Matthew 12:28 NLT). The Gospels are full of stories about Jesus doing miracles, from raising the dead to multiplying food. When Jesus told his disciples they would be “clothed with power from on high” when they received the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49), this also included their ability to do miracles like Jesus. As a result, after Pentecost, “everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles” (Acts 2:43). This empowerment from the Spirit wasn’t only for the apostles, though. We find others doing miracles, too, like Stephen, who was “a man full of God’s grace and power” and who “performed amazing miracles and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8 NLT).
The Spirit still empowers Christians to do miracles today. We don’t receive this ability so we can look spiritual. Rather, this is another way the Spirit empowers us to witness (Acts 1:8). In the same way “many people saw the signs [Jesus] was performing and believed in his name” (John 2:23), as Christians perform miracles “through the power of the Spirit of God,” the miracles are “signs” pointing people to the truth of the gospel message (Romans 15:19). Therefore, in the first century, when “the apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people . . . , more and more men and women believed in the Lord” (Acts 5:12, 14).
One pastor I know recalls the Spirit doing miracles as he preached the gospel in a rural French community. The church he planted there worshipped in a modest twenty-by-sixty-foot storefront that didn’t even have a bathroom. One evening a short, stocky, forty-year-old farmer named Marcel arrived at their church with a lump on his right hand. He walked to the middle of the room and sat on one of the old wooden theater seats the church used as pews. At the end of the service, the pastor stood in front of the congregation and prayed for anyone who needed healing. Still sitting in his seat, Marcel looked down at his hand, and his jaw dropped—the lump was gone. The next time he and the pastor were together, Marcel reported what had happened. Although Marcel had only attended the church a few times in the past, after he was healed, he started inviting other families to the church, and he started hosting Bible studies in his home. God continued to use the pastor to perform miracles in his church as a means of confirming the truth he was preaching. As a result, after a few months the congregation outgrew the location where they were meeting, and they found a larger space to rent for their services.
While some people find the idea of the Spirit empowering them to perform miracles exciting, others find this a little depressing because they don’t see it present in their own lives. On one hand, I think we can relieve ourselves of the pressure of expecting to do miracles frequently, given that only some people have the gifts of miracles and healing (1 Corinthians 12:29–30). On the other hand, even though not everyone has the same gifts, this doesn’t mean the Spirit can’t use us in these areas. As I indicated in a previous chapter, not everyone has the gift of encouragement, but the Spirit can use anyone to encourage others. Likewise, the Spirit can work through anyone to heal another person. But if we never pray for people to be healed, we have no reason to expect that the Spirit will use us to see people healed.
Justice and Care
Jesus was empowered by the Spirit for everything he did in his ministry, and this included his concern for justice and caring for the oppressed. The Old Testament prophets expected that “the Spirit of the LORD” would “rest” on the Messiah, that the Messiah would act with righteousness and justice as he gave “decisions for the poor of the earth” (Isaiah 11:1–4) and that he would “comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:1–2). As the fulfillment of these prophecies, Jesus was anointed with the Spirit to minister “to the poor” and “to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18). As a result, Jesus is known for reaching out to the Samaritans (a group despised by Jewish people in the first century), the poor, those the religious people condemned as “sinners,” and others who were oppressed. Following the Spirit-inspired example of Christ, when the first Christians were “filled with the Holy Spirit, . . . God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:31, 33–34). Likewise, the Spirit causes Christians today to be concerned about social justice issues. By the empowerment of the Spirit, many advocate for and minister to oppressed people in our own contexts, whether they are racially, physically, or even religiously oppressed.
A number of years ago, I read a letter to the editor in a Pentecostal magazine. The author declared that he wanted the magazine to publish more “research on the activity of the Holy Spirit.” It seemed that this person had a limited view of the ways the Spirit works, though, because he clarified that he wanted to read more stories “of God’s miraculous power at work” in the church. I was curious what this person might have been reacting to, so I leafed through the previous issue of the magazine and found a story about a church that had purchased a strip club across the road and turned it into a community center to reach out to the oppressed in their community. I thought, That right there is the activity of the Holy Spirit. This church exhibited signs of spirituality as they cared for the oppressed around them, just like Jesus, who is the epitome of spirituality.
Devotion
Another sign of being Spirit-filled is an increasing sense of devotion as we express our faith in God. Just as Jesus prayed, “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36), when we receive the Spirit we become children of God and the Spirit enables us, too, to cry “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). We “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:18), and when we come to the point where we do not even know what to pray, “the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26 NASB).
Along with prayer, after the first Christians received the Spirit at Pentecost, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, [and] to the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42). Similarly, when I was a teenager and began to experience more of the work of the Spirit in my life, my growing sense of passion for and devotion to God was probably the most noticeable change in my life. Like the first Christians whose devotion led them to daily “meet together in the temple courts” (v. 46), I was eager to regularly gather at church with other Christians to worship God. Not only that, but I also went to as many church camps as I could—I volunteered at kids camp as a counsellor, and I attended youth and family camp. And at the end of a camp service, you could pretty much always find me in prayer at the altar. Even when I wasn’t in a church service, I was devoted to encountering God in Scripture, and my parents would often find me asleep in my bed with my reading lamp still on because I fell asleep reading the Bible, not because it was boring, but because it was getting late. And the Spirit not only guided me “into all the truth” (John 16:13), but the Spirit drove me there. Jesus said the Spirit “will glorify” him (John 16:14), and that is exactly what happened as my desire for and devotion to God grew and I grew in my spirituality.
Christian Community
Being Spirit-filled concerns more than just personal experiences of the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit leads us to engage in Christian community. The Spirit who compels us to preach and serve in the world at large also draws us together. When we became believers, “we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). And as I indicated in the previous chapter, we receive spiritual gifts “so that the church may be built up” (1 Corinthians 14:26).
The Spirit we received encourages us to remain in community with other Christians. We were never meant to live out our faith in isolation. And taking in the occasional Christian TV show or podcast is not sufficient. After Jesus poured out the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the newly Spirit-filled Christians “continued to meet together in the temple courts.” And “they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:46).
We see aspects of the value of Christian community in the last chapter of Romans. Here Paul commended Phoebe who, he said, “has been helpful to many, and especially to me” (Romans 16:2 NLT). And he sent “greetings to Priscilla and Aquila,” his “co-workers in the ministry of Christ Jesus” (v. 3). They had “once risked their lives for” him (v. 4), Paul said, and they hosted church meetings in their home (v. 5). Paul also reminded the Romans of Mary, “who worked very hard for” their benefit (v. 6), and he sent his greetings to Andronicus and Junia, who had been in prison with Paul v. 7). Among others Paul also mentioned Ampliatus, his “dear friend in the Lord” (v. 8), and Rufus’s mother, who had “been a mother to” Paul (v. 13). In my own life, I have felt the love of Christian community as the Spirit has led people in my church to “rejoice with those who rejoice”—for example, after the birth of a child—and to “mourn with those who mourn”—like after a loved one has passed away (Romans 12:15). All I have described in this paragraph is part of what it means to experience the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
Although the “family of God” (the church) may have squabbles, like any family, we need to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). This means we love one another as we serve one another, forgive one another, bear with one another, encourage one another, care for one another, and honor one another. By contrast, if we provoke and envy one another and cause disunity in the church, we are not being led by the Spirit. We need to protect the church because the church continues to be a people who are “being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). As a result, the Bible refers to the church (the people, not buildings) as “God’s temple,” and we are warned that “if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person” (1 Corinthians 3:17). We show signs of spirituality, then, as we remain in community with other Christians and contribute to the unity of the church.
Spiritual ≠ Victory
Some people incorrectly think people who are really Spirit-filled will always experience victory. This belief is a cousin to the idea that if you have enough faith you will always experience health and wealth. Just as faith doesn’t guarantee a life free of disappointments and hardships, the Spirit-filled life is not a life free of disappointments and hardships. Jesus is the epitome of spirituality, but he never became an earthly king. Instead, “through the eternal Spirit [he] offered himself unblemished to God” so his death might give us life (Hebrews 9:14). In the Bible, “the one who is victorious” (Revelation 2:11) may suffer and face poverty (v. 9). Their victory is that they resist their culture’s anti-Christian values and are “faithful, even to the point of death” (v. 10). And their “victor’s crown” is eternal life, not achieving success in the eyes of the world around them (vv. 10–11).
The Spirit’s empowerment may at times lead to great successes, but it doesn’t guarantee them. Barnabas, for example, “was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith” and through his ministry “a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (Acts 11:22–24). By contrast, Stephen, who was also “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5 and 7:55), was stoned to death when he preached the gospel (7:58). Similarly, Peter and Paul both had their lives threatened and were imprisoned on account of Christ, but they continued to preach the gospel because they had power and boldness from the Holy Spirit. Today the Spirit continues to inspire people to stay committed to Christ in the face of adversity, even to the point of martyrdom.
Aside from the fact that those we minister to can “resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51) and, therefore, our Spirit-empowered ministry is not always well-received, we live in a fallen creation that is yet to “be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21). As a consequence, even though we “have the firstfruits of the Spirit,” we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23). However, as we long with hope, God does not abandon us, for “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (v. 26). As James Dunn observed, the Spirit is not only present “in the heights of spiritual rapture,” but also “in the depths of human inability to cope.”2 This means that if we find ourselves outside of some experiences of victory, this is not necessarily a sign of a lack of spirituality—in fact, at those times the Spirit might be particularly active in our lives.
Spiritual ≠ Perfect
The presence of the Spirit in our lives also doesn’t mean that we will be perfect and never make mistakes. Jesus is the only person who has ever been sinless. And so, the Spirit continues to work through imperfect people. In the Old Testament, I think of Gideon, who served as one of Israel’s Judges: “The Spirit of the LORD came on Gideon” and he rallied the Israelites to stand together in solidarity against the Midianites and Amalekites who had been oppressing them (Judges 6:34). In spite of this, Gideon was fearful and doubted God’s promise to save Israel (v. 27). So Gideon twice asked God to perform a miraculous sign to confirm God’s promise (vv. 36–40). And Samson, another one of Israel’s judges, had faults that are well known. Although the Spirit came powerfully upon him on numerous occasions (Judges 13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14), he dishonored his parents (14:2–6), he allowed Delilah to manipulate him (14:16; 16:15), and he was motivated by revenge (15:3, 11). To top it all off, he even slept with a prostitute (16:1). Even though the Spirit of God was at work in both Gideon and Samson, these men didn’t become exemplary or even ideal figures.3 Instead, like all of us, they remained imperfect, finite, mortal human beings. And yet, somehow, the New Testament affirms both Gideon and Samson as examples of faith (Hebrews 11:32).
Even as we move from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we find that believers still struggle between living “according the Spirit” and living “according to the flesh” (or “sinful nature”) (Romans 8:5–6). We see, for example, how Peter’s experience of the Spirit at Pentecost transformed him from someone who had denied three times that he knew Jesus to someone who stood in front of a crowd to preach the gospel (Acts 2:14–41). And yet Paul had to correct Peter (a Jew) because he refused to eat with Gentiles (non-Jews) (Galatians 2:11–14).
When we look at these stories, we are reminded that when the Spirit works in and through us, it is a mark of God’s grace, not of our moral superiority. At times I am tempted to think that the Spirit can’t or won’t use me because of my imperfections. I confess that I also sometimes think this way about others. But when I remember the imperfect characters the Spirit used in the Bible, I am reminded that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Increasing Spirituality
The previous section implies that we can increasingly live a more spiritual or Spirit-filled life. On one hand, because we are born again by the Spirit (John 3:3, 8), we can correctly say that every Christian is a “spiritual person” (1 Corinthians 2:15 ESV). On the other hand, even though Paul was writing to believers, he said to the Corinthians, “I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1–2). Spiritual growth, then, is possible inasmuch as the presence of the Spirit can intensify in our lives as we grow as Christians.4 For example, while the disciples were able to engage in ministry before Pentecost and even saw people healed (Luke 9:1), at Pentecost they received more power from the Spirit (Acts 1:8) and became even more effective in their ministry. And the Spirit can always shape our character to be more like Christ. Indeed, we increase our spirituality as, by the Spirit, we “are being transformed into his image” (2 Corinthians 3:18). As this happens, we become more spiritual.
So, how do we become more spiritual? By the Spirit working in our lives. To some extent, then, being Spirit-filled is not something we can control, at least insofar as we can’t make the Spirit do anything. At the same time, the Spirit is like the wind blowing into a ship’s sail—when the Spirit blows in our lives, we can adjust our sails to harness the wind’s power. In other words, we can cooperate with and submit to the work of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit illustrates this well. On one hand, fruit doesn’t grow by itself—the Spirit is the one who instills in us “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23 NLT). On the other hand, we need to be “led by the Spirit” (v. 18 NIV) to see the fruit grow. This is true of all areas of spirituality. Like dancers, where the Spirit leads we must follow as we “keep in step with the Spirit” (v. 25). Sometimes we seem to initiate the dance by engaging in spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, fasting, and worship. At other times the Spirit invites us to join the dance by prompting us to respond to something God is telling us to do or not do. At times we dance with more elegance than other times; and, as a result, we all have some areas where we can still aim to increase our spirituality.
What Does It Mean to Be Spirit-filled?
Being Spirit-filled, or being spiritual, comes about as we submit to the work of the Spirit in our lives. Although the Spirit inspires worship, our spirituality isn’t dependent on how we worship—whether we prefer to be quiet and still, or loud and animated. As we think back to all I have said in this book, we see that spirituality can include having intense, even physically intense, responses to the Spirit. It can include the Spirit guiding us and speaking to us in various ways. It might involve speaking in tongues. And it might also include having great faith and witnessing people being healed. Being Spirit-filled might express itself in serving others through gifts the Spirit gives us. In this chapter, we’ve seen that spirituality can include unusual experiences, like dreams and visions. It also involves the Spirit shaping our character to be like Jesus’. And our spirituality includes being empowered by the Spirit to minister by proclaiming the gospel with our words, through miracles, and by caring for the oppressed. Finally, a rise in spirituality increases our devotion to both God and other Christians in the church community.
Some aspects of the Spirit-filled life are less visible than others. Therefore, we shouldn’t assume that if a person’s spirituality is particularly noticeable, that person is necessarily more spiritual than others. We can experience the Spirit in a variety of ways and, therefore, express our spirituality in different ways.
The experience of the Spirit is ultimately an experience of the love of God, for “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). As a result, being Spirit-filled ultimately means we become like Jesus by showing love toward God and others. Through this, we fulfill the greatest commandments and God’s very purpose for our lives. It does not matter if you act in a way that appears spiritual: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6).
Father, forgive us if we have had poor attitudes toward others we thought were not as spiritual as us, even if only because we had a limited view of how the Spirit works. Please help us realize where we have resisted the Holy Spirit. Make us open to all the ways you want to work in us by the Spirit and help us keep in step with the Spirit. May the presence and work of the Spirit increase within us each day.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
1. Before reading this chapter, how would you have defined what it means for a Christian to be “spiritual” or “Spirit-filled”? In what ways has your thinking developed?
2. What keeps some people from being open to the work of the Spirit in their lives?
3. Have you ever thought other people were less spiritual than you because they responded to the Spirit in different ways than you do?
4. How do you see the Spirit at work in your own life? Are there any areas where you still need to respond in obedience to the Spirit?
5. Who can you encourage this week by helping them see a way the Spirit is working through them?