The will of God is found within the holy scriptures and no one needs to panic when it comes to knowing God's will. The will of God is something that he wants us to do for his glory and ours and as such must not be hidden from us. The will of God is supposed to be found by every believer. Why? Because it's revealed in the bible. And later on we will hear that those who do not know the will of God are said to be "foolish".

Today we continue with the will of God as we search for them through the bible. The one we will discuss today will be that of the infilling of the holy ghost. I have intentionally arranged them in order of how it happens in reality. Yesterday we talked about salvation and Today we move on to infilling of the holy ghost, which seems to be the next in line and also continue with sanctification.

1. It's the will of God that you be filled with the holy ghost.

This is our first point and I want us to see this mentioned in the bible. Let's turn our bibles to Pauls epistle to the Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 17. Reading downwards he said

Ephesians 5:17-20 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord [is]. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

From the preceding verses we see that the apostle asked them to not be unwise;foolish; ignorant. I learnt that the original means something like a+wise. Which is that the "a" in front negates the word afterwards. We encounter this in most of the words employed in science. So therefore do not be unthinking people but that know the will of God. It's in the bible. Black and white and you must know it. It's not hidden. It's not like the day of the Lords return which is hidden from us. The Lord is never going to ask us to know about that. But this is different. It's his will that we come to knowledge of what his will is. Therefore he is in a way saying that anyone who lacks the knowledge of the will of God is ignorant.

I could have stopped talking about the infilling of the holy ghost because the above explanation seems clear. But I want us all to consider the rest of the verses and see how that connects to the infilling of the holy ghost. He continued. "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;". This is sadly one of the most misinterpreted verses in the new testament. Most people form a lot of erroneous teachings from it. But we must be rest assured that the bible always explains itself. The whole idea here is that the infilling of the holy ghost can be likened to someone who has been intoxicated with wine. And from my studies about hypnotics and sedatives , which alcohol is one of them, have the ability to take control of the body. What I mean is that a fully drunk person does not have control over his her body and the wine uses that person to do what he or she might not have done in their right minds.

Similarly, what he is saying is that we should allow ourselves to be filled with the holy ghost in a controlling way. That's that our steps,judgements, actions and whatever we do be influenced by the holy ghost. We should give way for the holy ghost to lead us. There's another way to take this. Some studies also reveal that these Ephesians , because of their pagan background they had a certain belief that if they are drunk with wine, they get easy access to deity. They believed that being filled with wine gives them a clear entrance into the spiritual realm and hence had a misunderstanding of what Paul was telling them. So in a nutshell, he was telling them to stop using drunkenness as a tool to contact the God but that they should be controlled by the Spirit inwardly.
We can find other verses where the word filled is used to mean the act of taking control. John 16;6. Luke 6;11. Luke 4;28. Luke 5 ;26

But what does it mean to be controlled by the holy ghost? Well he continued to add "but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;". So these things mentioned are the fruits of being filled with the holy ghost. Speaking in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Thanking the name of God for saving you and granting you his spirit. Thanking him for the manifold blessings he has bestowed on you by grace. To clarify this, let's consider a parallel in colossians 3 verse 16. He said

Colossians 3:16-17 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, [do] all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

Now we can draw a perfect conclusion from the two passages and that is that to be filled with the holy ghost is also to be filled with the word of God. Why? Because they all have the same results. Being filled with the holy ghost cannot be divorced from being filled with the word of God. The holy ghost perfectly agrees with the word of God. Show me a person who has the word and I will show you a person with the holy ghost. Let's learn the word. It's what the Spirit will dwell on and expand for our understanding.

This is where we will end by God's grace. Let's all meet here next time to continue with knowing the will of God. God bless you.


Image source