Be filled with the Holy Spirit!

[AI translation] As you know, we had a whole week of evangelism in our church last week. From evening to evening we have heard the teaching about how miserable the life of a believer is without the Holy Spirit, how much we try to make up for what the Holy Spirit would give us freely with all kinds of substitutes: what unheard-of strength He would have in us if He had it; how wonderfully and wisely He would lead our lives; how many gifts and fruits He would enrich and bless our whole life! How necessary and desirable, then, would be a true Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit among us! And now, as the conclusion of the whole series, comes the great divine exhortation, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" May your whole being be filled with the Holy Spirit! Is that possible?! On command? It's as if we were standing at a gushing spring with a pitcher in our hand and someone was commanding us: "Fill that pitcher with water! Is this how to be filled with the Holy Spirit?! Look: if God calls us to do it so strongly, there must be an opportunity! God never desires anything that He has not made it possible for us to do! So he is saying to us, to us who are here now: "Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" What does this mean and how does it happen? That is what I want to talk about now.I know that the concept of the Holy Spirit is rather vague, even confused, even in the minds of believers. Let me try to illustrate the whole Pentecostal event with an analogy. Think now of the equipment of a hydroelectric power station: huge dams holding back hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of water. In that volume of water, a tremendous force is being held back. In such a reservoir there is an incredible accumulation of energy, enough to light up thousands of electric lights, to run trains over great distances, to set huge machines in motion. But all this is only possible when the sluices open and the retained water flows down into the turbines, which set the great dynamos in motion, and thus generate the enormous electric current that can then be converted into power, heat, light and sent through the appropriate wiring to the most remote farmhouse or the tiny attic room in the big city. So, in the time between that first Christmas and Easter and Holy Thursday, there was a huge accumulation of heavenly energy: the fullness of God's redeeming grace. The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus are the great divine events through which something new and powerful was brought into this world! An amount of energy sufficient to conquer all sin, to radically recreate a human life, and even to destroy the power of death! This unimaginable heavenly energy accumulated in a vast spiritual reservoir between the birth of Jesus and his ascension. Then came Pentecost, which means that the floodgates were opened! And now the Holy Spirit is the electric current transformed from the accumulated energy, which, reaching every house, factory, workshop, brings power, warmth, light! Between Christmas and Easter the great work of redemption of the world took place, and Pentecost mediates between the great divine powerhouse and the individual human life - the Holy Spirit carries, pours out the energy of redemption into houses, churches, human hearts!
The Holy Spirit is therefore the same God who, as Creator, reigns over all, who, as Saviour, has come among us in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth. I could say that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, the spiritual reality of Jesus, as a personal effect, the personally communicable life-force of God who reveals himself in Jesus. Well then, be filled with this Holy Spirit, says our Word! So with the Spirit of Jesus, with the effects, blessings, energies of his Spirit! "Be filled with the Holy Spirit!"
So here we are talking about something maximum. The highest degree of relationship between man and God. Because in this relationship there are degrees. The first and lowest degree is when the mysterious realization dawns on the soul of man: there is a God! Whether it be through a gripping sermon, or through some twist of fate, the soul is touched by a premonition that there must be Someone, a Lord, a God of awesome power, who is above us! On Whom all depends! This too is faith, but it is only the beginning of faith! And it's also from the Holy Spirit! It wasn't a premonition that touched me, that made me think, that made me shudder, but the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus touched me!
A decisive difference from this general belief in God is the following degree. It is when one realizes in the person of Jesus that the mysterious God has bent down to him, embraces his life with a great, forgiving love and encourages his soul with the hope of eternal life. It is then, too, the Spirit of Jesus who puts man to work, as it were, confronting him with the living reality of God the Saviour! But there is more! The filling with the Holy Spirit! The same precious, mysterious divine Spirit, Who touched you, Who put you to work, is now moving, like a new landlord, into the apartment you bought for yourself!
So, once again: in the first degree we know that there is a God, and that is a big thing! In the second degree, through the person of Jesus, we come to know that God is with us, and that is a much greater thing! But there is also a higher degree, that God is in us! - A deeper and more intimate communion between the mighty God and the small man is unimaginable! God in us, Jesus in us! It is an unimaginable reality! Not like a memory that lives on in the soul; not like a dear face whose features are so engraved in the heart that I can see it any time with my eyes closed; not like a thought or an idea that has taken hold of me and become my blood - but really and personally, Jesus Himself, with His good, pure, loving Spirit, lives and lives from within! He counsels and comforts, sends to serve and equips for mission, fights and conquers, reigns and serves within, in heart, in soul, in body! Such a relationship between people is impossible, no matter how much one person loves another. They will always remain two different selves, and these two different selves can never merge. Such a union is only possible between Jesus and a believer in Him! A mysterious and incomprehensible thing, but it is possible! The ancients say so: "unió mistica cum Christo" - mystical union, union with Christ! God in Jesus has put his heart out for us. Perhaps you have heard something of this precious heart beating for you. Well, God wants more than that, He wants this divine heart to beat in you, to have the pulse of Jesus' life beating in you! In our members, in our brain cells, in our blood, in our eyes, in our words, in our actions! He wants the whole heavenly energy of Jesus' death and resurrection to be kindled in us as light; to work in us as power; to radiate from us as blessed warmth, the warmth of love! That is why on Pentecost he opened the floodgates and poured out the Spirit of Jesus into the world!
Pentecost means that God is here. The God whom we have come to know in Jesus is here in the power of His Holy Spirit, He wants to carry us, He wants us to be in His mysterious being and He wants us to be in Him! That is why he says to be filled with the Holy Spirit! So, there can be a state in a believer's life where his whole life, or the fullness of his life, is filled, dominated, occupied by the divine Spirit of Jesus! It is as if he were saying: keep that pitcher under the fountain! Not just to rinse it out and clean the inside, but so that now you can continue to pour from the pitcher... Be filled with the Holy Spirit! This is Pentecost!
But if this is why it was Pentecost, how is it possible that so little of its effect is felt? Why then is there so much cold and darkness, and even in the lives of believers so much weariness, powerlessness, and stagnation? Well, it is quite certain that it is not the divine power station that has run out of energy, but something in us that is defective. It must be something like the Holy Spirit, as it was with Noah's dove, which returned to the ark with an empty beak after the first release because it could not find a place to settle... Because let us remember one thing: God does not waste His Spirit! He does not give this most precious thing to just anyone! Nor is high voltage electricity to be treated carelessly, such high energy can always be dangerous! Even with the heavenly electricity, what a sense of responsibility is necessary to live and walk!... It is not enough to sing devoutly on a Pentecost feast, "Come, Lord God, Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with life..."
The Holy Spirit will come, He would come, but only if we have the prerequisite on our part. Two such conditions are necessary. One is to be ready for Him to take full dominion over us. The divine Spirit of Jesus does not come as a guest to anyone, nor does He share a heart with anyone as a lodger or a co-tenant! He wants to take full possession of everything: he wants to fill every detail of our personality and our life with himself, more and more! One receives the Holy Spirit when one gives Him room, a place of preeminence, the whole area of one's life to Him, to His work. God does not give fire from heaven on the altar until the sacrifice is on the altar! And that sacrifice is nothing less than our own self! As long as it is not there on the altar as a "sacrifice of SELF" to God, I wait in vain for the fire from heaven. Where there is sacrifice, there is fire! Where there is devotion, where there is a willingness to change completely: there is also the power and the fire of the Holy Spirit! This is one of the prerequisites. So, what Paul says in one place: 'Dedicate yourselves to a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God' - I know very well how difficult this is! To surrender the place where the great Self is enthroned, to surrender it to Jesus! Nor can it be done all at once and not always with the same intensity. But the point is that to the extent that the Self descends, the Christ grows in me! Be filled with the Holy Spirit! What is not yet under His dominion, let us surrender to Him! Even more! More and more fully!
Another prerequisite: be ready to be used as He wills! God does not give His Spirit for inner enjoyment, for spiritual pleasure, but always for concrete tasks, for service. The Holy Spirit now wants to present Jesus to the world through us, He wants Jesus to be represented in us, through us, so that His blessed life, His love and goodness in helping people, can be seen and felt everywhere we go and live... At the first Pentecost, the apostles began to speak in a different language. This other language is precisely the language of love, which opens the heart of the other person, which brings people together again, which bridges the gaps between them, which creates communion. It is a language of joy, of peace, of forgiveness, of trust, something new and different from the language we know ourselves! For a long time I thought that to be filled with the Holy Spirit, one had to be an apostle. But it is the other way round: one must be filled with the Holy Spirit to be an apostle! And here, among us: he who is ready to give himself as an instrument to the Spirit of Jesus is an apostle - because this word means: sent! Are we ready to live as God's ambassadors among men? This is the second condition!
Brethren! It is Pentecost! Not because it is on the calendar, but because the Holy Spirit of God is here! It is still Pentecost since the first Pentecost! That is why God says: "Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" If we could ask for it now with a willingness to change the reign in us and give of ourselves in service, we would certainly not ask in vain! Let us try, then, for once, to truly open ourselves to Him in this sincere, yearning supplication:
Living Spirit of God, come, blessed be Thou upon me,
Let thy eternal flame pass through my heart and mouth!
Untie me, send me away, fill me with fire!
Living Spirit of God, come and bless me!
(Canticle 463, verse 1)
Amen.
Date: 6 June 1965 Pentecost.