Before You Are Filled

"If a man love me ... my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23)

Before we deal with the question of how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, there are some matters which first have to be settled. As believers you have to get them out of the way, and right here is where the difficulty arises. I have been afraid that my readers might have gotten the idea somewhere that I had a how-to-be-filled-with-the-Spirit-in-five-easy-lessons doctrine, which I could give you. If you have any such vague ideas as that I can only say, "I am sorry"; because it isn't true; I can't give you such a course.

There are some things, I say, that you have to get out of the way, settled. One of them is: Before you are filled with the Holy Spirit you must be sure that you can be filled.

So you have to be sure that it is for you. You must be sure that it is God's will for you; that is, that it is part of the total plan, that it [the gift of the Holy Spirit] is included and embraced within the work of Christ in redemption.

The Saviour in His Sermon on the Mount said: "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matthew 5:8). Can anyone believe that Christ would bless a class of people who do not or cannot exist?

~A. W. Tozer~