We began by reading Ephesians 5:1-18

Ephesians 5:15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit,

Many quit going to church and being involved because they get tired of the weight. When they are conscience of God, they are conscience of their mistakes and the weight of sin. And they get tired of trying not to sin and feeling that heaviness.

Our resolution is the indwelling and fullness of the Spirit.   Without the Spirit of God we see ourselves being shaped into the form of the world around us.  With His Spirit we are built into His image.

The original Greek language there is “Present imperative” – a command that you keep on doing. It is not just something that you do, but something that you keep pursuing because this moment is present and then the next moment is present and then three months from now is present.

Keep on being filled with the Spirit…

Let’s talk about 5 Reasons The Bible reveals to be filled and keep filled.

1. God’s completes His purpose for you by His power in you.

Jesus calls us to receive the Holy Spirit in John 14.  He uses the word: Comforter-  we often think this is only when we are sad or won out we need him, however, the primary definition of comforter is:  “God comes beside us, to work in us, in ways that will bring through us, things that wouldn’t be otherwise.”

There is not anyone in this room that is sufficient to bear the burden of life or our calling in and of him or herself.

Not only does God bring His Spirit to help us with the task at hand, but that task at hand opens us up new possibilities of giftings.

The Holy Ghost empowered me to teach today. In return, the teaching is doing it’s own work in your heart. The work has its own life and power.  In other words, the first miracle is that a shy little boy is up here leading and teaching. The second miracle is that the teaching and leadership will produce in your life.

Not enough in us + humility + God’s sufficiency = multiplied layers of miracles.

We discover gifts and giftings that are unique to us through his Spirit. There is endless need and there is endless creativity available in Him.

2. God replicates His life in each of us.

More than any single thing is that we receive the heart of Christ.   His heart is that we would have the same power source that he had in his ministry.  His power source was that he aboded in the Holy Spirit.  As a human being God calls us to walk in the same resource.  He wants us to continue His work!  Jesus could only be in one place at one time when he was on the earth.

However, now with the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in each believer, he is in the flesh all over the world.  As members of his body, we are able to extend his reach.  I’m here to remind or instruct you that God wants to fill you with His Spirit so that you can represent him on this earth.  Someone broken hearted and crushed because of a diagnosis, divorce, financial disaster will cross your path this week. And Jesus is wanting to be there in the fullness of his person, presence and power. To do what Jesus would do.  It takes his Spirit to do that!

The Fullness of God’s Spirit is sent to us so that the Fullness of Jesus could be in our world today.

We don’t come to worship today just to fulfill tradition or for casual inspiration.  We come for a refilling. Yet, we need fresh flow on a daily basis.  Jesus wants to be everyplace where you are going to be this week!

3. We have a passion to reach the lost and a compassion to love people to life.

“Be filled” is linked to each phrase that proceeds in verses 15-18.  Walk in wisdom, redeem the time, resist that which intrudes, understand what the Lord wants you to do.  What is it that God wants?  “For God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

The love of God constrains us because I have drawn this conclusion.  If Jesus died for everyone, then everyone must be dead and lost without his life.

4. Our Spiritual language births praise and prayer that lifts Jesus, breaks evil bonds, and builds up believers.

We are going to dedicate a whole message on this topic a few weeks.

This is how Bible Scholar Jack Hayford said it a few years back, “When we talk about the Spiritual language, the outpouring the Holy Ghost with its attendant phenomenal grace of the Spiritual language that transcends our earthly tongue we are not dealing with a sectarian, bigoted notion that tongues makes you a superior saint.  It doesn’t.  God never gave Spiritual language as a badge of some achievement.  He gave it as an ability for prayer. Prayer beyond ourselves. Praise beyond ourselves. But there is something about my regular prayer in the Spirit that has a “dynamism” that I have no way to assess other than the fact that obedience to God’s ways just work.”

Being filled with the Spirit and being refilled in the Spirit is not just praying in the Spirit, though that is a part.

When we pray in the Spirit:

• Ephesians 6 you tear down strongholds of darkness. Dark Forces are driven back.
• We are building ourselves up!  Something dynamic is happening that will make me be able to stand!

The breaking of evil bonds. The capacity of prayer and praise.  Jesus is exalted in my life.  The signs in the early books of Acts of Spiritual prayer all pointed to God.  We can tell these people are magnifying God.  Their countenance. Their worship.

At the birth of the new church, it needed at its inception it needed capacity in prayer and praise to make the penetration needed in the broken world

5. God overflows our emptiness and expels the evil of our world.

Things around us rush in and crush.  Haunting temptation.  The empty of our capacity…I don’t have what it takes to overcome.

Things crush, break open, breakdown.  Things empty out of me.  Life is difficult.  HOWEVER, there is a filling.  A refilling.  That is instituted by God to bring your spirit health back.  This world is deadly and vicious.  God does not expect our raw faith and trust in Him to overcome the world.  Our faith is not enough to refill ourselves.  Our faith and trust in Him makes us right with him in salvation, however, it also makes us eligible for His indwelling presence to regenerate us on a regular basis.

The Spirit rising up in us will press back on this evil.

Some of you today need to be baptized today.  You need a refilling of the power of God to wash over you and to erupt out of you.

Some of you have yet to receive the fullness of God’s Spirit.  It is not that you do not love and trust God, but haven’t yet placed faith in the power of the Holy Ghost baptism.