TEEN TREE 
OF LIFE
THE HOLY SPIRIT
Part 4
June 10, 2018
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JOH1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31)
As we continue to learn about The Holy Spirit, we are going to look at His Praying Ministry. The Holy Spirit plays a key role in our prayer life. His Empowerment and Enablement are needed in order for the believer to have an effective prayer life. He plans an important part in our prayers because of His Supernatural Ability to bring our prayers to God The Father. The Holy Spirit’s Work on our behalf to help us in our prayer life is called His Intercession. Look at ROM 8:26: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words… EPH 6:17-18 tells us to pray this way: And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints… As we have learned, you must be filled with The Spirit when you pray or God will not hear your prayer.
Now let’s look at The Filling of The Holy Spirit which is the Operational Ministry of The Holy Spirit. It is used to empower and enable Church-Age believers to execute God’s Plan for their lives. The Filling of The Holy Spirit is also known as rebound. Rebound is when you name and acknowledge your sins to God The Father in His Son’s Name. Rebound is taught in 1JOH 1:9: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Interestingly, the Greek word for confess – OMOLOGŌMEN – means to agree! So you have to agree with God that you sinned by acknowledging it and you will be filled with The Spirit.
The main verse concerning the Filling of The Holy Spirit for the Church-Age is EPH 5:18: And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.
One of the first times rebound is mentioned with respect to believers being filled with The Holy Spirit is in ACTS 13:52: And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with The Holy Spirit.
The “filling” of The Holy Spirit is distinct in Scripture and is not the same as the indwelling of The Holy Spirit. The indwelling is permanent; the filling is not. This is clearly indicated by EPH 5:18, which clearly distinguishes between operating in sin – “being drunk with wine” (which is a waste of life”) and being filled with The Holy Spirit. The word “dissipation,” is the Greek noun ASOTIA – which means an unsaved, wastefulness, or abandoned or dissolute life. It refers to a disorderly or excessive lifestyle of dependence on the wrong solutions to life’s problems. It compares the life we lived prior to our Salvation with the unique life of the Church-Age, in which the believer is empowered by The Holy Spirit. In order to function in holiness, as God is Holy, we must be filled with The Holy Spirit.
The Filling Of The Holy Spirit gets gives us the power we lack, to execute the spiritual life. We know no Bible doctrine at Salvation and the Holy Spirit works within us to fill our soul with God’s Word.
The believer must be fully possessed by The Holy Spirit to execute God’s Plan. This kind of possession does not mean we lose all control of our thinking and faculties, but it means to be fully occupied by Him and His holiness and Righteousness. We cannot have one foot in sin and one in holiness. We must function 100% in holiness to execute God’s Plan for our lives. We must be fully influenced by the Teaching Ministry of The Holy Spirit and Bible Doctrine in order to have capacity for blessing.
We must allow The Holy Spirit to influence our thoughts and actions, by means of the Word of God resident in our soul. We must rebound often because it is the only means of having fellowship with God: But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people, the Father seeks to be His worshipers. (JOHN 4:23-24)
You must be filled with The Spirit in order for The Holy Spirit to produce a Christ-like nature inside you. It is the only means by which the believer can execute the Plan of God. Spirituality is the result of the filling of The Holy Spirit.
You may still be wondering why you need to be filled with The Holy Spirit. There are several reasons given in Scripture, including the fact that it is the only way you can have fellowship with God. But as far as The Spirit’s Ministry to the believer in the Church-Age is concerned, it is to produce what the Bible calls “The Fruit of the Spirit.” This is taught in GAL 5:22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness… We also call this producing Divine Good. This brings maximum glorification to God.
GAL 5:25 states: If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. So, we have physical and soul life from the moment of our birth by means of The Holy Spirit and we have spiritual life by means of The Holy Spirit from the day of our Salvation. Therefore, since we live by the Spirit, GAL 5:25 also encourages us to “walk” by the Spirit. This means to live our lives under the empowering and enabling ministry of God The Holy Spirit. When we do, we then produce “the fruit of the Spirit.”
This Ministry of The Holy Spirit is the third prong of the Trinity which leads us to produce Divine Good. This is taught in JOH 15:1-5: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
COL 1:10 speaks beautifully about Divine Good and pretty much sums up our Christian Walk: …so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…
The Filling of The Holy Spirit is the result of applying in faith what God’s Word tells us in 1JOH 1:5-10: This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. In this verse, we are told to confess our known sins to God The Father. This means that we first must recognize that we have sinned or have offended God in some way according to His Word. Then we confess those sins to God The Father in the name of The Lord Jesus Christ. We also call this “The Rebound Technique.” This is not just a ritualistic act; it is a change of mind/heart regarding the fact that we were operating in sin. We recognize, in humility, that we were wrong, and then approach the Throne of Grace in confidence and name those sins to God The Father. HEB 4:16 tells us to: draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
It’s important to note that when we name and acknowledge our sins to God that we are “cleansed from all unrighteousness.” This includes our known and unknown sins. All sins are forgiven, and you regain fellowship with God, and are filled with The Spirit. These unknown sins are the sins we have committed that we are either unaware that we committed, or those that we did not know we committed, because we have not yet learned enough doctrine to know all the different kinds of sins. So, through God’s Grace and based on the Work of Jesus Christ on the Cross who paid the penalty for our sins, we are forgiven of all the sins we committed, the known and unknown ones, since we last confessed our sins to the Father.
{to be continued}