I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Luke chapter one, but I'll not be referring to the

text for a few minutes, but you can have it ready when I get to it.

One recent book calls the Holy Spirit the shy member of the Trinity.

His ministry is to not put himself forward, but to put forward Jesus Christ and God the Father.

So being filled with the Spirit then would mean being filled with love for Christ

and the love of God in Christ.

When Jesus promised in John 1614

the coming of the Spirit, he said,

he will glorify me. He does not glorify himself. The spirit is shy. He is self-effacing.

When we look to the spirit, the spirit steps behind Jesus and pushes him out,

hide himself behind Jesus Christ.

And therefore, in seeking to be filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we have to go about

it indirectly. We must seek the fullness of the Spirit by seeking the wonder of Christ.

If we look away from Jesus and focus on the Holy Spirit, I think we will sink into a mire of subjective emotions

with very little objective content. The spirit does not reveal himself of the spirit is the fullness that we feel as we gaze

upon Christ. And the power of the Spirit is the power we feel in the presence of Christ.

And the joy of the spirit is the joy that flows to us when we believe the promises of Christ.

Many of us know what it's like to crouch down on the floor of our room and cry out for power and for joy and the lifting of oppression in the Holy Spirit,

O Holy Spirit come and nothing happens.

And the next day, as we meditately, upon the glory of Jesus Christ in His Word, we are swept into the

fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit does not want our attention. He wants Jesus to have it. Devote yourselves to seeing and feeling the grandeur of Christ and you will be so in tune with

the Spirit that he will empower you to that end.

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