The Holy Spirit #2 - Who is the Holy Spirit? (Part 2)
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Ephesians 5:18–21, showing that being filled with the Holy Spirit isn't a one-time gas-tank fill-up but an ongoing, repeatable experience marked by spiritual encouragement, worship, gratitude, and deference. Learn what it looks like to raise your sail so God's Spirit can fill you again.
Summary and Application
When people are asked what first drew them to faith, the answers tend to circle around a few themes: hope for the future, relief in grace, or a sense of God's presence in the middle of ordinary life. In week two of Orchard Hill's series on the Holy Spirit, Kurt turned to Ephesians 5:18–21 to ask a harder follow-up question: what happens when that sense of God's presence fades? The text he preached from doesn't describe the Spirit's fullness as a one-time transaction. It describes it as a command — repeated, addressed to the whole church, and meant for every believer.
Kurt started by drawing a line that matters: the baptism of the Spirit — what happens once, at conversion, according to 1 Corinthians 12's "one baptism" — is different from the filling of the Spirit, which Ephesians 5:18 presents as an ongoing, repeatable experience. Quoting John Stott's Baptism and Fullness, Kurt unpacked the grammar behind "be filled": it's a command, addressed to the whole community, written in the passive voice ("let the Spirit fill you"), and in the present tense — meaning continuous action, not a single event. That combination shapes everything that follows.
Rather than a gas can you fill once and run down to empty, Kurt offered a different image, drawn from John 3:8's picture of the Spirit as wind: a sailboat. You can't manufacture wind, but you can raise your sail and position yourself to catch it. Ephesians 5:19–21 names four ways to do exactly that.
Spiritual Encouragement
"Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:19) means that when the Spirit is at work, believers naturally want to talk about the things of God — and to let others speak into their lives too. Kurt tied this to Colossians 3:16, "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly," pointing to Orchard Hill's small groups as one place this plays out: people doing life together have room to speak the Word into each other in ways a weekend service alone can't replicate.
Worship
Singing and making melody "in your heart" (Ephesians 5:19) is less about the performance up front and more about what's happening within. Kurt was candid about his own struggle to stay engaged through three services most weekends, and he pointed to a moment at Orchard Hill's men's breakfast, where 78-year-old former Steeler Mel Blount read Psalm 103 and testified that walking with the Lord over decades reveals real, tangible "benefits." The point: worship reveals what we actually love, and sometimes we have to choose engagement before we feel it.
Giving Thanks
Ephesians 5:20 calls for "always giving thanks to God the Father for everything." Kurt connected this to Colossians 3:15–17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:18's "give thanks in all circumstances" — not thanksgiving for every circumstance, but thanksgiving in the middle of it. Complaining, he said, quietly declares that God hasn't done enough. Gratitude, even for one small thing in a hard season, is itself a way of raising the sail.
Submitting – Deference
The final participle, "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21), grammatically governs the household instructions that follow in verse 22 and beyond. Kurt described deference as an ongoing yield sign — setting aside your own agenda for someone else's good — and admitted that of the four postures, this is the least comfortable to hear framed as spiritual rather than merely interpersonal.
Taken together, these four aren't a checklist for feeling spiritual — they're both the evidence and the pathway of the Spirit's fullness. Some weeks you'll feel the wind before you raise the sail. Other weeks, raising the sail is the only way you'll feel it.
Where do you sense the Spirit's fullness most naturally in your life right now — and where do you find yourself trying to row harder instead of raising your sail?
Of the four postures Kurt named — spiritual encouragement, worship, gratitude, and deference — which would be hardest for you to practice this week, and what would it look like to try anyway?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "How Can I Be Filled? What Hinders?" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Ephesians 5:18–21, September 12–13, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Who is the Holy Spirit (Part 2)" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Ephesians 5:18–21, September 12–13, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Baptism and Fullness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today (1st Ed. 1964; 2nd Ed. 1975) by John Stott
God in You: Realizing the Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Life (2000) by David Jeremiah
When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy (2004) by John Piper
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Let's pray together. God, as we're gathered today, as we pray most weekends, we just ask that You would speak to each of us. God, I ask that my words would reflect Your Word in content, in tone, and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
If you are a person of faith, what drew you initially to have faith? There could be a lot of answers, but I would guess that many of them would be along these lines: there's a future, there's a hope, there's eternity, there's a time when God will restore everything that's broken, healing will be seen, and there will be restoration in this world. Or maybe you would say, "I love the idea of God's grace, because I know I've made some missteps in this life, I've made a mess of some things, and so I just love the idea of a God of grace." Or maybe you're somebody who says, "I love the idea of God being with me in the day-to-day of this world, in everything I have going on."
In fact, I would guess that if you're not a person of faith, you're here saying either those things seem unbelievable to you, or you've said, "I've kind of tried it and I haven't really experienced God." Well, we are in a series simply called The Holy Spirit. We're spending six weeks looking at and trying to understand the work and the person of the Holy Spirit. Our campus pastors kicked off last weekend and did a great job explaining a little about the work and the person of the Holy Spirit.
Here's a quick summary if you weren't around last weekend. John 14:16 says, "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you." Some translations, instead of the word "advocate," use "comforter," "counselor," or "helper." When a number of English translations use different words for the same term, it usually means either that the word is really hard to translate, or it carries a range of nuance that can't be captured in a single English word. The Greek word here is paraclete, and it means all of those things: helper, advocate, counselor.
This word, in many ways, carries the idea of a defense counsel. It's saying the Spirit of God acts as your lawyer, your defense counselor, your helper in life. Then it says, "to be with you forever." So the Spirit of God will be with you forever as your advocate.
And just to make sure there's no confusion, verse 17 defines Him further: "the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." So here's the incredible promise of God about the Holy Spirit: the Spirit permanently enters everyone who believes, works for them as their advocate, and resides in them, giving them comfort and power to handle the affairs of life.
Now, here's my guess: some of you would say, "Yes, that drew me, and I've had that experience." And some of you would say, "It's been a while since I've felt that kind of power and presence of God." Because of that, it may seem a little remote, a little almost too good to be true. In order to understand this passage, Ephesians 5:18–21, "be filled with the Holy Spirit," we need to understand some terms.
So for a moment I'm going to go into the weeds, but this will help us understand and set the stage for what we're doing today. The terms I'm speaking about are the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you've been around church at all, you've heard these phrases. Sooner or later someone will ask you, if you haven't heard this before, "Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit?" What they usually mean is, "Have you had the experience of the Holy Spirit coming upon you?"
The idea some people get from reading the book of Acts is that you come to faith, and then after faith you have a subsequent experience, which is the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, usually accompanied by tongues or some kind of supernatural experience. We're not going to spend a lot of time on that today, but it's important at the outset for me to say: the way I understand it, the way Orchard Hill understands it, is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit happens one time for every follower of Jesus Christ upon their conversion, and it's independent from the other things we see in Acts.
We could go through all of that if you're interested — there are a couple of great books on this. John Stott has a book called Baptism and Fullness, where he explains all of this really well. David Jeremiah has a book called God, I Give You My Heart... actually, God in You, where he goes into all the background very well. But the reason this matters is that 1 Corinthians 12 says there is one faith, one baptism — meaning if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you already have the Holy Spirit; you're not waiting for the experience. But being filled with the Holy Spirit, as we see here in Ephesians 5, is described as a repeated experience.
That is, the experience — the moment of experiencing or sensing the Spirit of God inside of us. Here's how John Stott writes about this in his book Baptism and Fullness. He says the phrase "be filled" in Ephesians 5 has a lot of grammatical nuance that's important to understand.
First, it's in the imperative mood. To be filled is not a tentative suggestion, a mild recommendation, or a polite piece of advice. It's a command that comes to us from Christ with all the authority of one of God's chosen apostles. In other words, God commands each follower of Jesus to be filled with the Spirit. This isn't optional for a few especially spiritual people — it's for everybody.
Second, he says it's in the plural form. Just as the preceding verb, "do not get drunk with wine," both imperatives in Ephesians 5:18 — the prohibition and the command — are written to the whole Christian community. They are universal in their application.
Third, the phrase is in the passive voice: "let the Holy Spirit fill you." An important condition of enjoying His fullness is to yield to Him without reserve.
Fourth, the verb is in the present tense. In the Greek language, if the imperative is aorist, it refers to a single action; if it's in the present, it refers to a continuous action. Here's what this means: it's for everybody, it happens over and over again, and God commands it. This is where you get the experience of the presence of God within you.
Here's what else this means: if you've never felt the presence of the Spirit of God in you, there's a chance you haven't been baptized with the Spirit — that you've just kind of come around the edges of the Christian faith without ever actually acknowledging your sinfulness before God and turning toward Him with all your heart, saying, "God, I'm a sinner who needs the grace of Jesus Christ." But once you do, you may have times of great experience of the Spirit, and times when you don't. And that's tied to Ephesians 5:18 — being filled with the Spirit.
The verse says, "Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit." Do not get drunk with wine — also a command. This command, by the way, isn't just about wine; you could substitute other things. Wine was their drink at the time, so this is a command against impairment.
What happens when someone gets drunk is they lose control of their mouth, their words, their thinking, and their actions. So the command here is: don't ever let yourself get to the point where you're so under the influence that you say things, think things, or do things you wouldn't do otherwise. That's what this is saying, and it is a command. Here's again how John Stott writes about this:
He says we can agree that in both drunkenness and the fullness of the Spirit, two strong influences are at work in us — alcohol in the bloodstream, and the Holy Spirit in our hearts. But whereas excessive alcohol leads to unrestrained and irrational license, transforming the drunkard into an animal — and, yes, that's a strong word, but the text says, "do not get drunk on wine," which leads to debauchery. What is debauchery? It means unrestrained living. Have you ever been around someone who, when they're using or drinking, gets to a point where they're living in a way that makes you think, "I don't want to be around that person"? That's debauchery.
So he's saying: drunkenness transforms the drunkard into an animal, while the fullness of the Spirit leads to restrained and rational moral behavior, transforming the Christian into the image of Christ. So we have this contrast between the two commands.
Now I want to point out something else. This will feel a little technical for a moment, but stay with me — I think there's a payoff. In Ephesians 5:18–21, the command is "be filled with the Spirit." Don't get drunk on wine; be filled with the Spirit. Following that are five participles. In the original language, a participle flows from the main verb. In English, participles are usually "-ing" words.
So, for example, in Ephesians 5, after "don't get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit," it continues, "speaking to one another" — "speaking" is an "-ing" word. That's a participle. Then it says, "but sing and make melody in your heart" — those are actually participles too. You can see this more clearly than in the NIV — which is a great translation, this isn't a criticism of it — in the English Standard Version, the New American Standard, or the Legacy Standard, which translate these participles more consistently.
So it reads: don't get drunk on wine, be filled with the Spirit — by speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; by singing and making melody in your hearts to God; by giving thanks; and by submitting to one another out of reverence for the Lord (verse 21). Again, the NIV turns that last one into a separate command, which the NIV does sometimes just to make the text more readable — but in this instance, the participles matter.
Here's another example: in Matthew 28:18–20, a well-known passage, it says, "Go into all the world and make disciples," and then, "baptizing them, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded." Actually, "going" is also a participle. So going, baptizing, and teaching are the means by which you carry out the main command.
Now, here's where we get technical for a moment. Daniel Wallace, a renowned Greek scholar, believes that in Ephesians 5 these participles are not means but results. I actually think they're probably both. In Matthew 28, it's clearly a means — how do you make disciples? You go, you baptize, you teach. In Ephesians 5, I think, with Daniel Wallace's help, you could say it's both a means and a result.
Here's what this means: being filled with the Spirit means that when you're filled with the Spirit, you will talk to people in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. You will sing and make melody in your heart. You will live with gratitude. You will submit to one another out of reverence for the Lord. But they're also a means — meaning that when you aren't feeling or experiencing the Spirit, you can choose to speak to people in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; choose to sing and make melody in your heart; choose to be grateful; choose to give deference — and that you will then experience the fullness of the Spirit.
This is good news in this way: it's kind of like a circle. When you don't experience the Spirit, you can say, "I'll try one of these things, and maybe I'll experience the Spirit." But when you do experience the Spirit, these things will be happening in your life — you'll have the experience of the comfort and presence of God, the power of God in your life, and the fruit of the Spirit flowing in you in one way or another.
Now, the other challenge I see is that when I think about being filled with something, my mind goes to a gas can. I don't know where yours goes — maybe you have a lawnmower. What do you do? You fill a gas can. When you fill it, it's full, and then you run it down until it's empty, then you fill it again and use the gas as you need it.
The problem is I don't think that's the best analogy for being filled with the Spirit. Here's why: in John 3:8, we're told that the Spirit is like the wind. Any analogy, if pressed too far, can be problematic, but the idea is that the wind blows where it wants — you don't see it directly, but you see its impact. That's the Spirit of God.
So what this suggests to me is more a picture of a sailboat, where you raise your sail, and when the wind catches it, it's unmistakable. What you can do is raise your sail and position yourself in the wind in such a way that you can say, "This is how I can experience the Spirit." It's a little different from filling a gas can.
The challenge, spiritually speaking, is that for a lot of us, when we don't feel like we're encountering God, instead of trying to raise our sail, we try to row harder — we try to get a rowboat. We say, "I've got to redouble my effort." Or we take the opposite approach: "I haven't experienced God in a while, so I'm just going to let go and let God" — acting like we're on a raft with no responsibility at all. We tend to do one of those two things, rather than asking how to raise our sail so the Spirit of God can fill us and we can experience the fullness of God once again in our lives.
So with that, let's look at these five participles and talk about the means and the result of being filled with the Spirit. I'm going to combine two of them — singing and making melody — so we'll look at four groupings, even though there are five participles.
The first I'll call spiritual encouragement. This is Ephesians 5:19 (I'll read the end of verse 18 as well): "Be filled with the Spirit... speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit" — some translations say "spiritual songs." This is saying that when you are filled with the Spirit, you will naturally want to speak about the things of God. You'll have a tendency to see and say things from a spiritual perspective. And when you don't sense God, if you put the Word of God into your mind and start to speak about it, you will start to sense the Spirit.
This is why small groups are so important here at Orchard Hill. We recognize that you can talk to people all over the place, but sometimes when you're sitting with others day in and day out, doing life together, you have a chance to speak into their life in a way you don't otherwise. And the idea here isn't just that you speak your own opinion, but that you're speaking and also open to others speaking to you — speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. The idea is that the content is rooted in the Word of God.
Colossians 3:16, a parallel to this passage, says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." The way the Word of God transforms your thinking, the way the Spirit of God works in you, is when you let the Word of God work in you over and over and over again. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you will love the Word of God. This is one of the reasons some people detach from church — the Spirit of God convicts them, and they think, "I don't want to be around a Bible study, I don't want to be around church things," because it creates dissonance in their heart. But when the Spirit of God is working in your life, you'll say, "I can't get enough of the Bible and of spiritual community."
Now, again, we won't always feel that — sometimes we have to choose it in order to experience it. It cuts both ways, similar to 1 Corinthians 13, often called the love chapter. You hear it read at weddings: love is kind, love is patient, love believes all things, endures all things. In the original language, that whole passage is verbs. You've probably heard someone say, "Love is a verb, love is a choice — so choose to love." That's true — it's true in that passage. But that passage isn't primarily about romantic love; it's actually right in the middle of three chapters of the Bible about spiritual gifts within the church.
So it's about how you treat people at church. I don't think it's illegitimate to read it at weddings, since you should probably treat your spouse at least as well as you treat people at church — that works. But that said, while some people say love is a choice, in the Bible, love is also a noun, a feeling. It's both a verb and a noun. Why does that matter? Because sometimes you need the feeling in order to want to make the choice, and sometimes you need to make the choice in order to get the feeling. You understand that in human love, and the same is true with the Spirit.
Sometimes you say, "I'm choosing to put myself in a place where, figuratively speaking, that sail can be raised." Other times, you simply experience it. I was at the men's breakfast here yesterday. Mel Blount came and spoke — if you're younger, or not a Steelers fan, or not from here, you may not know who he is. He was one of the great Steelers of the 1970s, helped lead the team to championships, and he's 78 now, still a big man.
He was up front talking, and I was sitting in the back of the room thinking, "Okay, it's the men's breakfast." He started to talk, and read Psalm 103, which includes the phrase, "forget not all his benefits." This 78-year-old man stood in front of several hundred men and said, essentially, "I have walked with the Lord a long time, and I've seen Him give beautiful benefits — and if you will walk with the Lord, you will see it too."
My heart needed that in that moment. I didn't even know I did, because he's a couple of decades ahead of me in life, and sometimes you just need somebody who's gone a little further to say, "It is worth it — stay the course." You don't have to be at a men's breakfast, as a speaker or a participant, for this to happen — it happens all the time. But it's an indicator and a means of the Spirit of God at work.
Here's the second thing: worship. Singing and making melody — hear the "-ing" words — in your heart. Again, the NIV translates it as a command, "sing and make melody," but it's a participle dependent on the big command, "be filled with the Spirit." This is an indicator, or a means, that you are responding to the Spirit of God.
And here's what this means: your experience of worship is more an indication of the Holy Spirit within you than the performance in front of you. Let me say that again, just to make sure you get it: your experience of worship is more an indicator of the Holy Spirit within you than the performance in front of you.
I know how this works, because I do this too sometimes. You come to a place like this, or wherever, and think, "I hope I can sense God today." That's part of why you come to church — you want to experience God, you come for relationships, you come for various reasons. But then what happens is that while you're in the experience, you start to think, "Oh, they're doing that song again — I don't know if I can sing that song again." By the way, I come to three services every weekend, so when I say "they're doing that song again," they really are doing it again.
Or you think, "I like it better when this person leads than that person," or something like that. But worship isn't about what happens in front of you — it's about what the Spirit of God is doing within you. Sometimes you experience that because the Spirit is in you and you're just carried along. But sometimes it's a choice.
Now, you've made a choice today — you've attended. That's choice one, and that's fantastic. Beyond the choice to attend is the choice to engage — to say, "I'm here, God, and I'm going to worship in this moment," and then to engage passionately. Those are choices we make. To be fair, you and I cannot judge how someone else engages — passion looks different for different people. How we're wired matters, but sometimes you'll simply stand, bow your head, and listen to the words, and that might be the most passionate thing you can do. There's no external meter on passion, but there is an engagement we choose, and a passionate engagement.
I mentioned sitting over here during worship, coming in three times most weekends. What happens for me is I'll come in Saturday night and try to sing passionately with the songs — it's the first time through, and I'm getting my heart ready before I get up here to talk. Sunday morning, a lot of times I'll come in thinking, "That story didn't land so well, I should fix that from last night," or, "I had this conversation with somebody," or, "The bathrooms are a little dirty." I have to fight to get my head into the space, especially the third time, to say, "I'm engaging in this."
My point is that when you sense God, often it's through worship, through song — but it is also a choice you make to bring your heart to it. This is, by the way, why listening to worship music on your own, or just singing on your own, can be so worshipful — it isn't only corporate, it's personal.
There's a song right now that's been at the top of the charts — depending on how you measure the charts, which have changed. But evidently it's the longest-running number one song other than Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You," which is the all-time longest-running number one. There's some debate about this, but do you know what the song is? It's Ella Langley's "Choosing Texas." Anybody know it? A few of you.
Evidently Miranda Lambert and Ella Langley wrote this together. During a writing session, Miranda Lambert told a story about a time she was driving, a couple of years before, with a kangaroo — or a donkey, or something — in her car, and she got pulled over. When she handed her license to the officer, she heard him say to another officer, "She's from Texas, I can tell — she had a donkey in her car," or something like that. That became the hook for the song: "he's choosing Texas."
You might be wondering how this relates to the Holy Spirit — I'll come back to it. Here's what happened: she wrote the song about a woman in Tennessee who finds a cowboy. Things are going well, and they go back to Texas. And once they're there, he's choosing Texas — she can tell, because he's two-stepping around the room with some other Texas woman, and she's drinking alone at the bar.
That's the song, and I imagine it makes for a nice little dance song — I don't really dance, so I'll just assume that for those of you who do. But the point is that his heart was revealed when he got to the bar in Texas and said, in effect, "This is where I belong." There's something kind of universal in that, whether you've lived it or not — it's a good song.
When you come to worship, what you love is revealed. And if you come and stand aloof, what you're saying is, "Spirit of God, I'm just kind of here, hoping you hit me," instead of saying, "I'm engaging."
So we have: be filled with the Spirit by speaking to one another — spiritual encouragement; by singing and making melody — worship; and then by giving thanks. We see this again clearly in the participle language of Ephesians 5, at the beginning of verse 20: "Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
I mentioned earlier the parallel in Colossians 3. You can hear this same theme very clearly there. Let me read verses 15 through 17: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit." Sound a little familiar? Then it continues: "...singing to God with gratitude in your hearts." And verse 17: "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."
So three times here — what does it say? Giving thanks, with gratitude. Gratitude is part of spiritual life. This is why 1 Thessalonians 5:18 can say, "give thanks in all circumstances" — be thankful in everything, whatever is happening. That doesn't mean you're thankful for everything; it means you're thankful in everything. Thanksgiving, or praise, in this sense — gratitude — is a mark of the Holy Spirit's work within you.
Complaining is a spiritual problem, because a complaint essentially says, "God, You haven't done enough, You aren't enough," and it reveals that you don't trust God in the situation. Now, I'm not suggesting you have to thank God for everything. Some of us are facing incredible hardships right now, and it would be disingenuous to say, "God, I thank You for the hardship." But thanking God in the midst of it is an indicator, saying, "God, even though this thing is hard, there are other things in my life that are gifts, that are good."
As you allow yourself to feel and sense that, what you're doing is saying, "God, I'm not going to withhold enjoyment of what You've given me because of what I don't have in this moment." Again, this is a way the Spirit's work is indicated in us, and a way we put ourselves in a place where we can let the Spirit work within us. For some of us going through a hard time, what we may need to do, if we're tempted to complain or say, "God, this isn't right," is simply to focus and say, "God, here's what I'm going to be thankful for today," and choose something. By doing that, you're saying, "I'm raising my sail and letting God's Spirit come into me." And again, it's a kind of circle: the more you're thankful, the more thankful you will be, and the more thankful you are, the more you'll experience the presence of God.
There's one last participle, in verse 21. Again, the NIV starts it as a new section, a new command, but it's a participle dependent all the way back to verse 18 on being filled with the Spirit: "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." You can see that more clearly in some of the other translations. Interestingly, in verse 22, where it says, "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands," the word "submit" is supplied, because it's actually dependent on "be filled" from verse 18.
Be filled with the Spirit — and part of that is submitting to one another. Then the text picks it up and applies it: wives, do this toward your own husbands. But the general idea is that part of being filled with the Spirit is giving deference — submitting to other people in your life. That means you don't insist on your own preference, and you're willing to support someone else's agenda along the way. That's what it means to submit.
Here's why I find this fascinating. Up to this point, you might have said, "Okay, this makes a lot of sense — the Spirit of God is in our love for the Word, in worship, in gratitude. I can build these into my life and experience God." But this is saying that when you seek to promote your own agenda at the expense of somebody else's, that's a lack of submission, a lack of deference — and that is a spiritual issue. We don't love that, because it's a little uncomfortable. But that's what he's saying: this too is a work of the Spirit.
I was driving a couple of weeks ago and came to an intersection with a yield sign. The other driver had the yield sign, and we approached at almost exactly the same time. I thought, "They've got the yield sign," and I went ahead. They pulled out behind me, clearly annoyed, gesturing, "What are you doing? I had the yield sign." I went on my way, and honestly, I got a little annoyed that they got annoyed — I thought, "Why would you get so worked up over this? You had the yield sign."
About three or four days later, I came to the same intersection and took a closer look. I had the yield sign. I was the one who had pulled in front. That guy was probably right to be a little annoyed, because I had gone ahead when I shouldn't have. Here's what deference is: it's a yield sign that says, "I will, at times, appropriately put aside my agenda for the good of others." That is a spiritual work of the Holy Spirit. When we talk about raising our sail, that's what's going on.
Now notice something that's not in this list. You could make an argument from other Scriptures that there are additional things, but this is the primary New Testament text on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Notice: the means and the result are tied up in spiritual encouragement, worship, gratitude, and deference. What's not in this list? Some esoteric experience, tongues, something you'd feel you have to seek out. These are very ordinary things that are both the result of the Spirit and a means to the Spirit in our lives.
Now, the work of the Spirit is unmistakable, but it's a little like wind. When wind comes through, you know it has come through, but you don't see it. The same is true with the Holy Spirit — the presence of God isn't something you can always point to and say, "There it is, there it is." But you know it. And what this text is saying is: you'll know it when your love for the Word and spiritual community grows, when your worship grows, when your gratitude grows, and when you give yourself in appropriate deference to the people in your life.
John Piper wrote a book years ago called When I Don't Desire God. In it, he addresses the experience of knowing, theologically, who God is, but not having the desire for the things of God that you feel you could or should have. I find the fact that he even asks that question strangely encouraging. What he basically says — and I'll save you the price of the book — is something very similar to what I said about the sailboat, except he uses the analogy of electricity.
He says that when you turn a switch on, you don't cause the light to come on, or the electricity, or anything with it — all you did was put yourself in the place where the switch could connect. What you have to do when you don't desire God is keep putting yourself in a place where you know the Spirit of God works — until you catch the wind, so to speak.
Some of you are here today and you're saying, "I don't know that I've ever experienced the Spirit of God." Maybe today is your day to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit by saying, "God, I acknowledge my sin, and I need Jesus Christ as my Savior." According to 1 Corinthians 12, when you do that, you will have the Holy Spirit within you.
Some of us are here and maybe you'd say, "I've believed this, I've experienced God, but it's been a while since I've had a real hunger for the things of God." Maybe for you it's simply asking, "Where do I raise the sail again in my own life?"
Maybe some of us have lost our way. We've known the Spirit of God, but there have been times we've said, "I'm going my own way," and we've found ourselves in dark places we didn't want to be, and now we're asking, "God, how are You going to work in this?" But the beauty of this text is that it's a command. He simply says: you can come, and when you come, I'll show up. It may not be how you want or expect — you can't bottle it or predict it — but I will come, and you can experience My filling once again. The Spirit's filling, once again. And that teaches us a great deal about how to relate to God.
God, we ask today, as we're here, that You would help each of us to never grow weary of raising our sail to experience Your Spirit in His fullness in our lives. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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This transcript was cleaned up and lightly edited for readability (removing filler words and false starts, correcting grammar) with the assistance of AI. Every effort was made to preserve the speaker's original words, meaning, and intent as closely as possible. For the authoritative record, please refer to the original audio/video recording of the message.
