By John A. Huffman Jr.
Frankly, my responsibility at this time is not to spend my time complimenting our young people, talking about infant baptism, or speaking about fatherhood. Instead, it is to preach from the Bible.
Today marks the end of our three-week series titled The Three-Fold Secret of the Holy Spirit.
In the first message, we talked about the Holy Spirit's coming into the individual's life. The criteria for having the Spirit are repentance for sin and personal faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. These also are the two conditions of becoming a Christian. If you are genuinely sorry for your sins and have placed your trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, you are both a Christian and one in whom the Holy Spirit resides.
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In the second message, we talked about being filled with the Holy Spirit. We noted that it is possible to seal off areas of your life from His presence. We welcome Him into the living room and dining room. They are all spruced up for His presence. However, we seal off other more intimate rooms of our lives, not allowing Him free rein. The result is that we do not know Him in His fullness. His fullness comes from a complete surrender of life. The greatest tragedy of eternity is that of a "lost soul." The next greatest tragedy is that of a "lost life." You can be a Christian, born again by the power of Jesus Christ. Yet you can waste your life, never realizing the spiritual potential that is yours.
After church last Sunday, four women from the same covenant group came up to me at the door of the church. They were quite puzzled. One of them said, "I thought that everyone had the Holy Spirit in their life if they were a Christian. That's why, whenever I have the need, I claim the power of the Holy Spirit in prayer. Is there anything wrong with that?"
No, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what she said. The Holy Spirit is in the life of everyone who has repented of sin and put their trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. The point is, though, that not all of us have the fullness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Certainly every one of us is entitled to pray, empowered by the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about something more, that surrendering not only of our sins, but ourselves to Jesus Christ, throwing wide open every door to every room and every closet in our lives.
It is possible to surrender your life totally to the will of God. You can say "No!" to the self-life. This does not mean that you will be free from struggle. You will still have it. However, you will not purposely seal off areas of your life from the control of the Holy Spirit.
Once you have discovered the indwelling and the infilling of His Spirit, you will yearn to know His continuing fullness.
Perhaps you have discovered the fact of His indwelling and His fullness. For you, this deeper experience of His fullness has been a come-and-go affair. You sense His fullness at times, then it drifts away, and your life is left powerless. There is no permanence to this fullness.
