As a young mother with a newborn and two year old I decided to plant a garden. Having the faith, that if I watered them, God would grow the vegetables! I worked hard but it was not going well. The ground was hard and I could not break it up. My uncle offered to bring a tiller and till the dirt for me. A garden tiller is designed to break up hard, compact soil into loose, broken-up dirt that can then be used for planting. Once the soil was tilled, it was ready for me to plant vegetable seeds. The hard compact soil that was once hardened was now broken up. Isn't that a lot like us?
Matthew 13: 23, "But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” I took a Holy Spirit workshop a few years ago and learned so much! The biggest thing I learned was how much I do not know and how much I do not use the Holy Spirit. How do we move into that power?
When we said yes to Jesus, our inheritance was already available to us. The Holy Spirit has been stirring our hearts for a while! He has been tilling the soil! The power of the Holy Spirit won't "happen" to us. It is already IN us waiting to be unleashed! We need to ask the Holy Spirit to touch us with our next step for the Kingdom's purpose. We need to ask Him to break barriers and open our hearts. Ask Him to come do what only He can do!
Ephesians 3: 16-20, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,"
God’s power is available to us through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. We can not live on our own strength and power. The Holy Spirit's power enables us to live differently. We have someone helping us "who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine!"
Ephesians 1: 17-20, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms..." When the Holy Spirit was invited into our heart - we got a new heart which enabled us to renew our minds to the Truths found in Scripture. Romans 12: 2, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." As we learn and live these truths, the Holy Spirit lives more fully through us. God wants us to experience this power so we can realize the fullness of His love. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that motivates us to glorify God with our life.
To be filled with the Holy Spirit we must be emptied of ourselves. We should be seeking, asking, hungering and thirsting for the fullness of His presence in our lives! Have you asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit? God promised us in Luke 11: 13, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Believe that promise and be filled with the Holy Spirit!