“The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of living water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:14)
Being filled with the Spirit is more than experiencing his touch upon your life. It is far more profound than that. As temples of the living God, we are already indwelt by his divine presence. Imagine, the God of the universe dwells in you! Once you know that and learn the secret of drawing on in his presence within, you can begin to experience the release of the Spirit of God in your life.
There are springs of living water within your soul and these waters have a tendency to bubble up to the surface. It is the gift of God to us. We never do anything to deserve his presence or to experience his life-giving streams. They are supernaturally and wonderfully available to any believer.
But can this flow be blocked? I?m sure that it can. How does that happen? And what is the key to the release of the Spirit in your life? Some would point to our patterns of behaviour. Surely if we do not walk in obedience, then the Spirit?s flow is stemmed. But the problem is that we need the Spirit of God in order to do anything good. Righteousness is not the natural state of the human heart ? apart from the grace of God. We need the Spirit?s power to walk in the ways of the Lord. We simply cannot do it alone.
Others would say that we need a change of heart, we need to repent before God will work in our lives. Walking in repentance and faith is an absolute must for any believer but, once again, we need the Holy Spirit. Without him, we cannot turn from our sin, without him we cannot truly trust God for anything. The natural state of our hearts is self-reliance, not God-reliance. Still others say that we must do more ? pray more, give more, read the Bible more, fast more, and so on. Only then will God bless us with his Spirit.
All these things have their place, of course, but they are not the key to the release of God?s Spirit in your life. The crucial thing to remember if you want to experience more of God is this: The deeper you go with God the more the Spirit is released into your life.
The more you try to get close to God in your own strength, the more defeated and desperate you will become. But the more you abandon yourself to the energy and the flow of the Holy Spirit already present and at work in you, the more of his life-giving presence and power you will experience. That is one of the most significant principles of the spiritual life.