More: How You Can Have More of the Spirit When You Already Have Everything in Christ

by Simon Ponsonby

The church is like that carp: mature, distinguished, and impressive. She has lived long, fought hard, eaten well. But she has left or been lured out of the deep waters. And here she is stuck in the mud and suffocating. Occasional momentary relief from the odd

spiritual watering cannot save her. Her only hope is to get back to deep water.

Many Christians have tragically departed from the deep waters of God’s life-giving Spirit and, like fish out of water, they are slowly suffocating.

stuck in the sand, gasping for life—whether it be false theology, poor discipleship, willful sin, or simply the exigencies of life in a broken world—God

What is required is not a stick (perhaps representing judgment, rebuke, punishment, or chastisement) to prod these troubled fish along, nor the odd sprinkling of water from a can (perhaps representing the occasional spiritual fix of a renewal meeting, conference, or ministry session) to give superficial relie...

hope also that it echoes something of God’s invitation, His longing heart beckoning us to Him.

This prayer, this pursuit, this rediscovered power, brought deliverance to the captives, salvation to the lost, and renewed hope and joy to the believers.

It also shook the nation, prophetically challenging the inexorable advance of a bloodless, Bible-less, God-less liberal Protestant theology.

we have what the first Christians had, why do we not do what they did? We must conclude that either God gave them more than He has given us, or we have failed to avail ourselves of what He has given us.

“baptism in the Spirit,”

simply do not believe it is a once-only

“second blessing” (another term I will not use). It is, rather, a constantly repeatable, deepening experience of God’s Spirit, who brings a greater revelation of the person and work of Christ, a blazing love for Christ, a greater and more effective empowering witness to Christ, and a transforming conformity to the character of Christ.

Bishop David Pytches famously said, “Yes, I believe in the second blessing—it comes after the first and before the third.”

Unless we are filled by the living waters of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus promised would flow out, not in (John 7:38), we will never be the blessing God intended us to be. We will never water and transform the dead and barren deserts around us into life, as we see with the river that flowed from the temple, turning the salty seawater fresh (Ezek. 47:8).

“There must be more than this: O Breath of God, come breathe within,”

This prayer in song continues by asking for a visitation and extension of the work of the Spirit, inflaming our devotion, transforming our characters, equipping our service with gifts and power, enlightening our minds, filling our hearts with love, delivering us from darkness, directing our paths, and entering us into intimate union with God.

We can point to John Wesley who, after years of fruitless gospel ministry and personal moral defeat, had his heart “strangely warmed” by God’s anointing at Aldersgate in May 1738.8

Perhaps they are selective in their reading of Scripture—biblically

Perhaps they themselves are deficient in their experience of the Spirit and make their inadequate experience the sole basis for what is sound.

them suspicious of experience, feelings, and emotions.

box, not realizing that the Spirit blows where He wills and breaks out of boxes.

request appeared unanswered,

So, out of pain and a sense of rejection, they became angry, resentful, and ultimately dismissive of things charismatic.

“In Christ we have everything, but manifestly we aren’t living in light of all we’ve received in Christ.”

We may taste now of the powers of the age to come (Heb. 6:4)—we may enter partially into God’s kingdom come.

It is all that, but it is more than that: It is the implication of that, the outworking of that. That is the start, not the finish.

This desire for more of God is a sign of spiritual health.

The mature want more.

we must recognize also that a Christian who no longer wants to know, grow, hear, see, touch, serve, love, and be changed by God is also in trouble, sick, and crippled.

believe that the desire for more of God is not only part of the essential DNA of the spiritual life, but also mirrors the natural desire of the heart of God.

Our relationship with God can seldom deepen without the

but that relationship is with God and not with the Bible.

There is both intellectual acknowledgment and emotional, spiritual engagement.

The more we receive of the Spirit, the more we will

know the Savior.

Rolle believed there were three levels of loving Christ—a mere love that obeys His commands, a love whose heart is constantly fixed on Jesus, and a love that sets you on fire and all who touch you

Then death will seem to you sweeter than honey, because then you are most certain to

We must learn to yearn for that renewing of the Holy Spirit, so that we might be renewed

“pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love …” (vv.

One of the genuine marks of any Holy Spirit renewal is to cause us to fall in love again with Christ. The Spirit blows on the dying embers of our passion and fans them to flame.

She lived a life ever after that was deeply consecrated and submitted to Jesus, and she was delivered from the depression that had dogged her for many years.

Perhaps this thirst is why we are so often lured away by the illusory offer of satisfaction from the shipwrecking Sirens of this world: career, success, wealth, possessions, sex, and so on.

Often that river of God’s Spirit is blocked up or diverted from flowing to and through our lives bringing renewal, life, growth, and harvest (Gen. 26:18f.). It is diverted by our

He had inflated it, but he had not completely filled it. One should not push an analogy too far, but suffice it to say that Christians, like balloons, come in all different shapes and sizes, with varying capacities for air—varying anointings, giftings, callings. We must resist the idea that everyone’s Spirit-filled life is the same—they are manifestly not, as we see from 1 Corinthians 12.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit elicits creative gifts, leadership gifts, wisdom, prophetic utterances, revelation of God’s purposes, praise, boldness and authority in speech, faith, power to perform signs and wonders, grace, personal healing, authority, attractive drawing people to Christ, conquering confrontation with the powers of darkness, and joy.

A Spirit-filled life does not preclude one from suffering; on the contrary, it may invite persecution, yet it also produces grace to forgive one’s persecutors.

but simply to say that they could have more—or that the Spirit could have more of them.

Paul prays for three things, mediated by the Spirit: a greater knowledge of God, a greater knowledge of what is ours in Christ, and a greater operation of the resurrection power. I’d like to look at these three things in greater detail.

Oh let not the hurry of business, which awaits me on the shore, prevent me hearing the still small voice of your Holy Spirit.

God speaks through creation (Rom. 1:18f.); conscience (2:14); the kerygma7 (10:14–17); and by the Spirit through dreams, visions, words of knowledge, prophecy, and tongues interpreted (Acts 2:1–21;