How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit

by A.W. Tozer

Matter is one mode of being; spirit is another mode of being as authentic as matter.

Matter bumps against other matter and stops; it cannot penetrate. Spirit can penetrate everything.

For instance, your body is made of matter, and yet your spirit has penetrated your body completely. Spirit can penetrate spirit. It can penetrate personality—

oh, if God’s people could only learn that spirit can penetrate personality, that your personality is not an impenetrable...

A mind can be penetrated by thought, and the air can be penetrated by light, and material things and mental things, and even spiritua...

and all that the Son is the Holy Ghost is, and all that the Father is the Holy Ghost is, and the Holy Ghost is in His Church.

I might say here that sometimes you are going farther when you are not going anywhere; you are moving faster when you are not moving at all; you are learning more when you think you have stopped learning.

In every instance the proofs which our Lord adduced to His own Messiahship were external to the individual. They are not inside of the man. He has to open the Book and read. That is external to the man.

The Holy Spirit came to carry the evidence of Christianity from the books of apologetics into the human heart, and that is exactly what He does.

The proof lies in an invisible, unseen but powerful energy that visits the human soul when the gospel is preached—the Holy Ghost!”

There is a filtering down, a getting down into the very cells of that human soul and the impression on that soul by the Holy Ghost that this is true.

Our Lord Jesus Christ advertised that He was going away to the Father and He was going to send back for His people a wonderful gift, and He said, “Stay right here until it comes, because it will be the difference between failure and success to you.”

The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for His people.

He is only the essence of Jesus imparted to believers.

you are convinced that in the blood of Jesus when He died on the cross there was included, as a purchase of that blood, your right to a full, Spirit-filled life—unless you are convinced of that, unless you are convinced that it isn’t an added, unusual, extra, deluxe something that you have to go to God and beg and beat your fists on the chair to get, I recommend this to you: I recommend that you don’t do anything about it yet except to meditate upon the Scriptures bearing on this truth.

Remember, fear is of the flesh and panic is of the devil. Never fear and never get panicky.

Are you sure that you want your personality to be taken over by One who will expect obedience to the written and living Word?

He will not permit you to indulge self-confidence. Self-love, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-admiration, self-aggrandizement and self-pity are under the interdiction of God Almighty, and He cannot send His mighty Spirit to possess the heart where these things are.

Again, I ask you if you desire to have your personality taken over by One who stands in sharp opposition to the world’s easy ways.

No tolerance of evil, no smiling at crooked jokes, no laughing off t...

The Spirit of God, if He takes over, will bring you into opposition to the world just as Jesus was brought into opposition to it. The world crucifi...

There was something in Him that rebuked them and they hated Him for it and...

The world hates the Holy Ghost as bad as they ever hated Jesus, the One ...

Are you sure, brother? You want His help, yes; you want a lot of His benefits, yes; but are you willing to go with Him in His opposition to the easygoing ways of the world? If you are not, you needn’t apply for anything more than...

But Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). And the crowd that wouldn’t turn away was the crowd that made history.

The crowd that wouldn’t turn back was the crowd that was there when the Holy Ghost came and filled all the place where they were sitting. The crowd that turned back never knew what it was all about.

There is a spiritual loneliness, an inner aloneness, an inner place where God brings the seeker, where he is as lonely as if there were not another member of the Church anywhere in the world. Ah, when you come there, there is a darkness of mind, an emptiness of heart, a loneliness of soul, but it is preliminary to the daybreak. O God, bring us, somehow, to the daybreak!

First, present your body to Him

Now the second thing is to ask (Luke 11:9–13),

God gives His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him.

The next thing is, have faith

I am talking about His coming and possessing the full body and mind and life and heart, taking the whole personality over, gently, but directly and bluntly, and making it His, so that we may become a habitation of God through the Spirit.

so that He may illuminate and bless and lift and purify and direct your life.

Be engrossed with and honor Jesus Christ. John said: “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39).

39).

Therefore, if you dedicate yourself to the glory of Jesus, the Holy Ghost will become the aggressor and will seek to know you and raise you and illumine you and fill you and bless you.

Honoring Jesus Christ is doing the things which Jesus told you to do, trusting Him as your All, following Him as your Shepherd, and obeying Him fully.

To glorify Jesus is the business of the Church, and to glorify Jesus is the work of the Holy Ghost.

The most menial task can become a priestly ministration when the Holy Ghost takes over and Christ becomes your all in all.