March 7th, how can I be filled with the Spirit?

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction,

that through the endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures,

we might have hope, Romans 15, 4.

How can we be filled with the Holy Spirit?

How can we experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our church

and ourselves that fills us with indomitable joy and frees us and empowers us

to love those around us in ways so authentic that they are one to Christ?

Answer, meditate day and night upon the incomparable hope-giving promises of God.

As Romans 15, 4 shows us, that's the way Paul kept his heart full of hope and joy and love.

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction,

that through the endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures,

we might have hope.

The full assurance of hope comes from meditating on the promises of God's Word,

and this does not contradict the sentence nine verses later that says that the Holy Spirit gives us hope.

Romans 15, 13.

This is because the Holy Spirit is the divine author of Scripture.

His Word is the means of His work.

It is no contradiction that the way He fills us with hope is by filling us with His own Word of promise.

Hope is not some vague emotion that comes out of nowhere like a stomach ache.

Hope is the confidence that the stupendous future promise to us by the Word of the Spirit is going to really come true.

Therefore, the way to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with His Word.

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