WE STILL WANT TO BOSS OUR OWN LIVES

“Quench not the Spirit” (1 THESSALONIANS 5:19)

Doesn’t everybody desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit?” I have been asked, and the answer is “No.”

 

I suppose many people desire to be full but not many desire to be filled. I want to responsibly declare that before you can be filled with the Spirit, you must desire to be—and some people do not desire to be filled.

 

We ought to be very plain in our teaching that Satan has tried to block every effort of Christ’s Church to receive from the Father her divine and blood-bought patrimony that the Holy Spirit should fill His Church and that He should fill individuals who make up His Church.

 

It is plain in the Scriptures that the gentle and good Holy Spirit wants to fill us and possess us if we are Christians. This Spirit is like Jesus—pure, gentle, sane, wise and loving.

 

He wants to possess you so that you are no longer in command of the little vessel in which you sail. You may be a passenger on board, or one of the crew, but you definitely are not in charge. The Spirit of God is now in command of the vessel.

 

The reason we object to it being that way is because we were born of Adam’s corrupted flesh. We want to boss our own lives. That is why we ask: Are you sure that you want to be possessed by the blessed Spirit of the Father and of the Son? Are you ready and willing for your personality to be taken over by someone who is like this?

 

 W. Tozer