Chapter 3

THE FIZZIES PRINCIPLE

As believers—people in God’s family—if we do not know God’s will, what are we? Uninformed? No. Searching? No. We are being foolish.

“That’s pretty rough,” you say. “The Bible doesn’t talk like that.”

Oh? Try this. “Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:17).

Furthermore, the preceding verse tells us we have to get on with it; we don’t have much time. We are to be “making the most of [our] time, because the days are evil” (v. 16).

You say, “But I am looking for God’s will. Maybe I am foolish, but can I help that?”

Yes, you can help it. Otherwise, the Bible would not command you to “not be foolish.” The way to avoid being foolish is covered in the very next verse. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit” (v. 18).

First, if you want to know God’s will, you must be saved. Second, you must be Spirit-filled. That is the teaching of the Word of God.

Many Christians say, “I don’t understand why God hasn’t revealed whom I am to marry.” Others say, “Why doesn’t He show me what job I should take, what business deal I should enter into, what I ought to purchase, whether I ought to move to another home, or what I ought to do about some specific problem? Why doesn’t God do something for me and show me His will?” And all the time these people are not even Spirit-filled, which is clearly revealed as His will. Why should God show a person something if he or she is not even fulfilling that which God has already clearly stated as His will?

What does it mean to be Spirit-filled? Let me give you a short theology lesson. We will call it theology of the Spirit-filled life. When you were saved, the moment you received Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit came to live within you. There is no Christian who does not possess the Holy Spirit. “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Rom. 8:9; see also 1 Cor. 6:19; 12:12–13). Yet it is amazing how many Christians think they do not have the Holy Spirit.

I have sat in church and heard sincere people pray, “Oh God, send Your Spirit,” and I’ve thought, No, He is here. He is here! I have heard people pray, “God, give me more of Your Spirit,” as if He comes in doses.

The Holy Spirit is a person; He lives within you. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?” (1 Cor. 6:19). So many times we ask for what we already have! We pray for the Holy Spirit, and He is already here.

Have you ever analyzed your prayers?

You pray, “God, give me more love for so-and-so.” The Bible says the “love of God has been poured out within our hearts” (Rom. 5:5).

You say, “God, I need more grace.” God says that the grace He has already given you is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9).

You cry, “Oh Lord, I need more strength.” The Bible says you “can do all things” through Christ, who strengthens you (Phil. 4:13).

“Oh God, guide me,” you say. But He has already given you His all-sufficient Word to light your path (Ps. 119:105).

Complete in Him

When will Christians realize that they have everything? Peter wrote, “[God’s] divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). You do not lack anything! But so many emaciated Christians go around and say, “Well, I just don’t have the power to do this or that.”

The apostle Paul said to the Colossians, “In Him you have been made complete” (Col. 2:10). Complete! What are you looking for? What are you asking for? James told you what to ask for—“wisdom” (James 1:5)—and that is the sense to know what you already have and not to ask for it! By the same token, we do not need to ask for the Spirit; He is in us already.

Since we have the Spirit, we also have power, as Jesus told the apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). The word for power in the Greek is dunamis, from which we got our word dynamite. It is a type of power that is massive and explosive.

You may say, “Oh yeah? I’m not sure; I think I’m a dud. I don’t exhibit explosive power in my life; I don’t even fizzle that loudly.”

But the power is all there. What is so often not there is the release of that power. It is one thing to possess the Spirit; it is something else to be filled with the Spirit.

Fizzies are small tablets used to make soft drinks. They were wildly popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and they’ve recently tried to make a comeback. The tablets are basically like flavored Alka-Seltzers. Put one in a glass of water and its flavor is released. This concentrated, compact power pill is no good as long as it sits on the bottom of the glass. It has to release its energy to fill the glass, and then it turns the water into something new. If it is a grape Fizzie, you get a glass of grape drink. The flavor of the tablet determines the flavor of the water.

In a measure, that pictures how the Spirit of God operates in a human life. He is in the Christian all the time as a compact, concentrated, powerful, and personal force of divine energy. The question is, has He ever been able to release that power, to fill your life so that you can become what He is? A Christian not yielded to the Spirit does not manifest the Christ life. The Spirit of God has to permeate a life if that life is to radiate Him.

We cannot do anything apart from being filled with the Spirit.

I have a glove. If I say to the glove, “Play the piano,” what does the glove do? Nothing. The glove cannot play the piano. But if I put my hand in the glove and play the piano, what happens? Music! If I put my hand in the glove, the glove moves. The glove does not get pious and say, “Oh hand, show me the way to go.” It does not say anything; it just goes. Spirit-filled people do not mumble and stumble around trying to find out what God wants. They just go!

People often ask, “How do I know my spiritual gift?” The best way is to live a Spirit-filled life, see what God does through you, look back in retrospect, and say, “Oh, that’s what I do when God has control of me. Apparently that is my gift.” There is no need to get analytical. The whole point is that we need the Spirit of God to be released in our lives. This is simply a matter of decisions. When you get up in the morning, you decide what you are going to wear. Next, you decide what you are going to eat for breakfast. And so it goes through the day—one decision after another. The Spirit-filled life yields every decision to the control of the Spirit.

Peter’s Experience

An illustration comes from the life of the apostle Peter. When Peter was near Jesus Christ, he had amazing power. Thus he loved to be where Jesus was. On one occasion the disciples were out on the Sea of Galilee (Matt. 14:22–33). Their boat was tossing in a storm, and they couldn’t get to Capernaum. (The winds very often turn the Sea of Galilee into a swirl, keeping a boat moving in a circle.)

Suddenly one of the men in the boat looked out and said, “Someone is walking on the water!” Sure enough, with robes flowing in the wind, here came Jesus, walking across the whitecaps.

Peter cried out, “Is that You, Lord?”

The Lord answered, “Yes, it is Me.”

Peter said, “Can I come out to You?”

You may wonder why Peter said that. Why didn’t he wait in the boat till Jesus got there? But that wouldn’t have been like Peter. He said to himself, “Jesus is over there. I am over here. That is not good. I must go over there.” It never entered his mind that normally he was not able to walk on water. That was not even a problem. When he saw Jesus, he had such a desire to be with Him that he went.

But when Peter got out on those tossing waves, he looked down and thought, What am I doing here? He began to sink, but the Lord lifted him back up.

The point is that when he was near Jesus, Peter could do the miraculous. He and Jesus walked back together on the water.

Sometime later Jesus was talking to His disciples and asked, “Who do people say that I am?”

They answered, “Oh, some people think You are Jeremiah; some people think You are Elijah; some people think You are one of the prophets.”

He said, “Who do you think I am?”

Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Then, I feel sure, he wondered, Where did that come from?

Jesus said, “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, Peter, but My Father who is in heaven did” (see Matt. 16:13–17).

Peter probably said, “I thought so. I surely didn’t know that.” You see, when Peter was near Jesus, he not only did the miraculous, but he also said the miraculous. Is it any wonder he wanted to be near Him?

When he was near Christ, Peter had miraculous courage. He was in the garden of Gethsemane when a whole band of soldiers—as many as five hundred—came to arrest Jesus. They came marching in with all their regalia. In front of them came the chief priests, and before the chief priests came the servants of the priests. Peter was standing with the Lord. Maybe his thoughts went something like this: They think they are going to take Jesus away. No, they won’t.

Since Peter did not ever want to be removed from the presence of Jesus, he took out a sword. He started with the first guy in line, who happened to be Malchus, the servant of the high priest. The Bible says Peter cut off Malchus’s ear, but if I know Peter, he was going for his whole head. Peter was ready to take on the whole Roman army. You see, when he was with Jesus, he had miraculous courage.

A little later Jesus went in to be tried, and Peter stood outside. He was removed from Jesus. What happened then to this powerful man—this man who could walk on water, speak with divine inspiration, exhibit miraculous courage? When he got separated from Jesus, he was a failure. On three occasions he denied Christ. Apart from Jesus, he was nothing.

Ready for Burial?

But the day came when Jesus was to ascend into heaven. You say, “Oh no. If Peter is a coward when he is one hundred feet away from Jesus, what are we going to do with him when Jesus goes away into heaven? We might as well bury him. He’s worthless!”

Yet, a short time after Christ’s ascension, Peter stood before the enemies of Christ and said, “Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words” (Acts 2:14). Wham! He took a text from Joel and away he went. He said they had killed the Prince of Life, desired a murderer to be released to them, and denied the Holy One. Then he proceeded to proclaim Christ fearlessly, firing the gospel out with both barrels. When did Peter get such courage?

The next time we read about Peter is in Acts 3. He and John went into the temple through the Gate Beautiful, where there was a man who had been lame for forty years. Peter said to him, “Look at us!” The man looked, and Peter said, “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!” (Acts 3:4–6). The lame man stood up and started leaping and jumping and praising God. Peter had not only said the miraculous, but he had done it too.

In the next chapter of Acts, Peter was persecuted. He exhibited a boldness that was remarkable, the same courage he displayed in the garden. You might say to yourself, “I don’t understand this. Peter had these traits only when Jesus was near. Yet, with Jesus back in heaven, Peter displayed these same great traits again. What was going on?” Acts 2:4 gives us the secret. Before Peter ever did any exploits, he was one of those who “were … filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4).

Let me draw a conclusion. When Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, he had the same power as when he was standing next to Jesus Christ! Now there’s something exciting! Do you know what the Spirit-filled life is? It is living every moment as though you are standing in the presence of Jesus Christ! Not too complicated, is it? Someone might think I am confusing the issue because the Holy Spirit and Christ are different. But by what name did Paul call the Holy Spirit? “The Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9). Jesus said that when He went away, He would send allos, “another,” Comforter (John 14:16 KJV). There are two words in the Greek for another: heteros and allos. Heteros means another of a different kind, but allos means another of exactly the same kind!

Here is my Bible. If I said to you, “Give me heteros biblos,” you could give me any book. If I said to you, “Give me allos biblos,” you would have to give me another Bible exactly like mine, with all my markings and cuts and cracks. This is allos. When Jesus said, “I am going to send you another Comforter,” He said allos, another exactly like Me. The Spirit-filled life is nothing more than living in the conscious presence of the indwelling Christ.

We tend to get so fogged up about the Spirit-filled life. Paul said we are simply to be filled with the Spirit rather than being drunk. We are to be under the control of the Spirit rather than under the influence of wine (Eph. 5:18).

How does the Spirit-filled life express itself? “In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father” (Eph. 5:19–20). Then Paul went all the way down the line, describing the lifestyle of Spirit-filled people. Wives will submit, husbands will love their wives, fathers will not provoke their children to wrath, children will obey, servants will work well, and masters will be fair. This is how Spirit-filled people are to live (Eph. 5:22–6:9).

Filled with the Word

The curious thing is that Colossians 3 has the same list: submission, speaking in psalms and spiritual songs, wives submitting, husbands loving, children obeying, parents not provoking, servants, masters. Only here Paul did not link such living to the filling of the Spirit. He said it is the result of letting “the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom” (Col. 3:16).

Do you see what the Spirit-filled life is? It is being saturated with the things of Christ—with His Word, His person.

You might say, “Well, you know I’d like that. I’d like to be saturated with Christ. How do I do that?”

The only way is to study the Book that discloses all He is!

You say, “I tried reading the Bible, but I didn’t get anything.”

Let me share how I study the Bible and how the Bible has come alive to me. I began in 1 John. One day I sat down and read all five chapters straight through. It took me twenty minutes. Reading one book straight through was terrific. (The books of the Bible weren’t written as an assortment of good little individual verses. They were written with flow and context.)

The next day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through again. The third day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through. The fourth day, straight through again. The fifth day, I sat down and read it again. I did this for thirty days. Do you know what happened at the end of the thirty days? I knew what was in 1 John.

Someone says to you, “Where in the Bible does it talk about confessing our sins?” You see a mental image of 1 John, first chapter, right-hand column, halfway down (depending on your Bible). Where does it say to love not the world? Second chapter, right-hand column, halfway down. Where does it talk about sin unto death? Chapter 5, last page. You know 1 John!

Next, I went to the gospel of John. I divided the gospel of John into three sections of seven chapters each. I read the first seven chapters for thirty days, the next seven for the next thirty days, and the last seven for thirty days. In ninety days I had read the entire gospel of John thirty times.

Where does it talk about the Good Shepherd? Chapter 10, right-hand column, starts in the middle, goes down, flip the page, go on down. Where does it talk about the vine and the branches? Chapter 15. Where does it talk about Jesus’ friends? Chapter 15, over in the next column and a little farther down. Where does it talk about Jesus’ arrest in the garden? John 18. The restoration of Peter? John 21. The woman at the well? John 4. The Bread of Life? John 6. Nicodemus? John 3. The wedding at Cana? John 2.

You might say, “My, are you smart!” No, I am not smart. I read it thirty times. Even I can get it then! Isaiah said to learn “order on order, line on line … a little here, a little there” (Isa. 28:10–13). Then you have hidden it in your heart. After a while you are no longer concordance challenged!

Planned Neglect

The more you study the Word of God, the more it saturates your mind and life. Someone is reported to have asked a concert violinist in New York’s Carnegie Hall how she became so skilled. She said that it was by “planned neglect.” She planned to neglect everything that was not related to her goal.

Some less important things in your life could stand some planned neglect so that you might give yourself to studying the Word of God. Do you know what would happen? The more you would study the Word of God, the more your mind would be saturated with it. It will be no problem then for you to think of Christ. You won’t be able to stop thinking of Him.

To be Spirit-filled is to live a Christ-conscious life, and there is no shortcut to that. You can’t go and get yourself super-dedicated to live a Christ-conscious life. The only way you can be saturated with the thoughts of Christ is to saturate yourself with the Book that is all about Him. And this is God’s will, that you not only be saved but that you also be filled with the Spirit.