How to Continue in the Fullness of the Spirit By Paris Reidhead*
Will you turn please to Ephesians, 5th Chapter, and the 3rd Chapter. Our Theme, HOW TO CONTINUE IN THE FULLNESS OF THE
SPIRIT. And our Text, verses 18, 19 and 20. I shall read the Text and then go back to consider briefly questions we have held
before us the two preceding Sunday evenings, and endeavor to relate them to the Theme of this Evening.
Paul was given to using contrasts, and here is one - one of the strongest in the New Testament: “And be not drunk with wine,
wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the Name of our Lord
Jesus Christ.”
The latter part of that 18th verse is best translated, if you exactly adhere to the tense of the Greek. “Be ye being filled with the
Spirit.” Now obviously this in no way circumvents the necessity of being filled with the Spirit the first time. If you have not been
filled with the Spirit, then you must be in order to be filled with the Spirit. The point that confuses so many Christians today is,
that they feel that because they were born of the Spirit this automatically means they were filled with the Spirit. But such is
not the case. And I have no intention nor time to repeat what I have been giving in the previous nights in detail, but let me
point out that we did use a pattern. The pattern was that of the Lord’s dealing, with God the Father’s dealing with the Son. And
our Lord Jesus said, “As the Father sent Me, so send I you.” Christ was born of the Spirit, conceived by the Holy Ghost, that is,
indwelt by the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But He was not ready for His ministry until His Divine human Spirit was clothed
upon with the Holy Spirit.
Now I pointed out that one of the arguments that is used against a crisis of being filled with the Spirit is this. Now you can hear
it. I think it is probably the strongest an argument that I know against such teachings, as I am endeavoring to give you. Since no
man is a Christian unless he has been born of God, and since to be born of God is to be born of the Spirit, and since to be born
of the Spirit is to have the Spirit, as you read, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His,” -- then, since the Spirit
comes to bring life at regeneration, that you have Him. A Person (God the Spirit is a Person) - a person cannot come in parts.
(Romans 8:9b) It therefore remains that you have all there was to get of God when you were saved. It just remains for Him to
get more of you. Now this sufficed for at least fourteen years of my life to keep me in hunger. It was amazing I used to get up
and preach, and say, “Dear friend, if anybody ever talks to you about something after regeneration, do not listen to them. If
you were born again, you got all there was to get of God. It is just for Him to get more of you.” Well I preached this way, and
then I would go home and get down on my bed and cry out, “Oh God, do for me what you did for D. L. Moody1.” My heart, you
see, was better oriented in this than my mind was. My mind had been confused by some of the analogies that had been put
into it, whereas my heart still retained its hunger and still came to the Lord in deep longing for everything that God purposed
for me.
Well this argument, that was so strong, gave way the moment that I saw what happened to Christ, - that when John saw the
Holy Spirit come upon Christ, the Spirit of God was in Christ. You see this is not difficult, because the Holy Spirit is God, infinite,
omnipresent God. And all of the analogies that you would make from human to Divine are in error. You might say, “Well when
you come to my house you are there. I have all there is to get of you.” But you see, you are reasoning from the natural to the
Divine, from the human to God, and it won’t work. Your analogies break down. Because, I turn to you and say, “Yes the Spirit of
God is in her, and in him.” Well how can that be? Well He is a Person. As a Person, He is in each, and yet with no division of His
essence or His Being. And we come then to the fact that God is omnipresent. And all of our analogies that we use to describe
the working of God are erroneous. They do not hold up, when we come to the Scripture. There was an anointing of Christ. He
said, the Spirit of the Lord is epi, upon, Me. He has anointed Me. He did not say, the Spirit is in Me. For the Spirit had been in
1 Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899) An American evangelist and publisher who founded Moody Church
Him from the moment of His birth. In Him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He said correctly and exactly, The Spirit is
upon Me. This was an epi, an upon relationship.
Now making this application to your case, what would it be? I have said since we began this consideration, that at no time will I
allow myself to think that God has to work the way I am describing, because we have in the Scripture the fact that at the house
of Cornelius, as far as we can see, these people were filled with the Spirit at the same time they were saved. And if you feel
that you were filled with the Spirit at the same time you were saved, I shall not argue with you. And you can cite the Scripture,
and I will have to say, “Yes, if you are satisfied I am satisfied.” But for most people, this is not the case. And it only occurred the
once in the Scripture. The pattern more nearly applicable to most of us is that which you find in reference to the people at
Samaria, where Philip preached to them and they believed in Christ and were baptized in water baptism, and Peter and John
came down and prayed for them, laid hands on them, prayed for them, and they were filled with the Spirit. This was the case
in Paul’s experience, when Ananias came, praying for him and he was filled with the Spirit. Now, for most Christians I would
have to say this, that when they come to Christ they come with their need. And for most of us, our need was the removal of
the great mountain of guilt that separated us from God. Therefore, when we came to the Lord Jesus we came to One who had
died for us to pay the penalty of our sin, and to save us from that penalty, and from Hell. And we received Christ as Lord and as
Saviour, and we received everything we believed for.
But, in addition to that which we believed for, which was forgiveness, the Spirit of God came in regenerating Life. But you did
not have to take the Holy Spirit. You did not have to believe in the Holy Spirit. There was no exercise in your faith or mine. We
took Christ as Lord and as Saviour. And He came in regenerating Life.
Now, what we have is this. The Spirit of God presented Christ to us as sinners. Now it is the Son of God that speaks to us about
the Holy Spirit since we are saints. It was the Holy Spirit that said to us as sinners under the weight of our guilt, Jesus Christ
died for you. Receive Him as Lord and as Saviour. And when we did receive Him as Lord and as Saviour, the Spirit of God joined
Himself to us, but it was through no act of faith, no volitional choice, no exercise of will at all in our case. Our faith was directed
toward the Son, and as a byproduct of believing in the Son, we were regenerated by the Holy Ghost. It was not anything that
had to do with our faith, for most of us at least. Now it is the Lord Jesus that is saying to you and to me, to us as believers, I
want to live in you and dwell in you. I want to possess you. I want to live My Life through you, and I am asking you to take. Now
here comes this word receive in its active sense, which is the sense in which it is presented in the Scripture. Take the Holy
Spirit.
Now, I think we can make the application again as clearly as possible. Christ was born of the Spirit, indwelt by the fullness of
the Godhead bodily, but not ready for His ministry until His divine-human nature was clothed upon with the Holy Spirit. You
are born of the Spirit, or conceived by the Holy Ghost. Regenerated means, born again by the Spirit. And in that sense you have
Him as your regenerating Life, but you are not ready for your ministry until He who came to bring life and regeneration comes
upon to bring power, to possess, to flow, to fill you with Himself. As the Father sent Me, so send I you.
What is involved in this? You have got to see yourself for a moment to understand how you are going to continue filled with
the Spirit. You are a spirit, living in a body; the body is your house. And one day, you are going to leave it. In Job, Chapter 32,
and verse 8, I believe it is, the word is given in man: “and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.” The
inbreathing of the Almighty. There is a spirit in man. You are body, soul, and spirit. The part of you that leaves is the soul, the
spirit, when you die - that invisible part.
Now, your body as a sinner, as an unsaved person, and a natural man, was directed, and controlled, and empowered by your
spirit. When you leave, the body is there, all of its faculties, and functions, and powers are gone, however, though the
mechanics of it still remain. Those of us that have had loved ones leave us remember at that irrecoverable moment when we
have looked down into the still face of someone dear, and have had to say, He is gone, or, She is gone. What do we mean? We
mean, that the invisible part that animated is gone.
Now, with the natural person, the direction of the brain, the eyes, the ears, all of the direction of the life flows out of this
invisible part we call the spirit. When you are saved, when you are born again, God joins Himself to your spirit in quickening
Life, in regenerating Life, in forgiveness, in pardon, but, there is at that time a two-fold function or ministry of the Spirit of God
to you. First, He witnesses that the Blood has availed. You have been cleansed. And you can call Him, Abba Father. He is the
Spirit of witness. This is an automatic ministry that depends in no way upon what you do toward the Holy Spirit. The ministry
He performs in His regenerating work is witness. The second ministry that He performs is that that we have given to us here,
where it says, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”(Eph. 4:30) He now becomes the stimulus to our spirits in these two directions.
When we are wrong, when we say or do something that is wrong, when we sin, we are conscious that we have grieved God,
because the Holy Spirit within us is grieved. This is one of His ministries in this second area. And the second is, that He stirs us
with hunger and longing for all that the Lord Jesus died to make ours. And He becomes now the One who leads us on, and
draws us on, and quickens our heart with hunger. So if you are hungry for God tonight, it is not the natural consequence of
your superior intelligence, but it is the gracious work of God Himself creating in you a desire for Himself. Before you were
saved, you had no hunger for God. It is only since you have become a Christian.
Now we said repeatedly, and it is axiomatic with us, and part of the tools of our testimony, that there are three things that
characterize a child of God. A hatred for sin, a hunger for God, and a heart of compassion for the lost. And this too is the work
of the Spirit of God, giving you His grief when you sin. You have noticed how when God has been dealing with you, you have
said something that was wrong, or you have done something that was wrong, and immediately you were so unhappy, and so
disturbed, and peace was gone. You had to do something about it. What is this? What causes this distress? Your active
imagination or intellect? I think not. I think it is the Spirit of God grieved, and He is communicating this grief to you. And then
again, you find that you are hungry. Why is it that times you are hungry, and other times the hunger seems to pale a little, and
you lose your appetite for spiritual things? I think you will find that when you give yourself to contemplation of the Word, and
you think about the Scripture, this is the time of hunger. But you see, there are so many things that come to intrude and draw
away our attention, and so many activities, that in the state as a born again believer, being drawn on into maturity, you come
to expect this periods of intense hunger, but often a failing to press through. So the life becomes more or less of an up and
down experience. Have you ever heard, or felt or experienced anything like that? Now because we are in a special time of
emphasis, there is prayer, there is Bible reading, there is a witnessing; all of the activities of a Christian seem very lovely, and
precious, and meaningful. But then pretty soon we find that we are down at the bottom, in the valley again. And then we are
made aware of this, and we climb up to the top, and then we go down, and then we go up, and then we go down, and we go
up, and down. Have you had this type of experience? Well, I do not expect you to nod your head unless everyone does,
because it might give you away, but do not feel badly about it. You would like to. I know. We follow - we are made of the same
clay, and cut in the same bolt of goods as we have said, so I am not troubled about it. This up and down experience is
distressing to all of us. And what we would like to do is to come to a place where we are past this up and down matter; we are
moving on in an expanding and enlarging relationship with the Lord. So it is not promising God to pray and to read and witness,
and then falling into sin and grief, and then back again, and up and down. This is past, and we have entered into an enlarging,
expanding, fulfilling, satisfying relationship with the Lord. Well now, if you have a hunger for anything more than you have
tonight, if there is any desire in your heart tonight for God, then this hunger and this desire, was given to you by the Lord.
You see, God’s great problem is not to satisfy the hungry. But His problem is to create a market for what He wants to provide,
to get you to want what He wants. And because you, especially when we are younger, we have so many interests and drives
and so much energy, that many times only in certain periods of concentrated thought does God have a chance to bring our
hunger to the fore, and move us toward Him. Now if you are hungry for God, thank God for it, because God never gives anyone
a hunger to mock him. He does not bring you as a child of His up against the bakery window, and say, “Look what D. L. Moody
ate, look what Hannah Whitall Smith had, and look over there what Charles Finney2 had, and see what A. B. Simpson3 had, and
look at here what Andrew Murray4 saw. And there is where Reuben Torrey was.” And you come and press your nose like a
hungry child against the window, and you say, “Oh I wish I had lived a hundred years ago. My, it would have been wonderful to
have been alive when they were here.” God does not bring you up like that to show you what others have had and then send
2 Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) Leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States 3 Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843-1919) founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance 4 Andrew Murray (1828-1917) He has authored over 240 Books
you away hungry. This would be to mock Him, and you both. Never. If you have any desire for God tonight, it deep crying unto
deep. - God within you quickening in your heart a hunger for Himself.
Now if you will understand these are the two ministries He performs upon regeneration; As your conscience, stimulating,
directing, causing you to know right and wrong; witnessing to you that you are saved; and perhaps we should classify it as a
third, stirring within your heart a deep hunger for all the riches of grace that are there.
Now, there is a third, or another ministry, if we number it - fourth. There is another ministry, that He will perform upon
request. These ministries He performs without request. But there is another ministry that He only will perform upon request.
And again when I say, only of God, I know that tonight He is going to do something for someone that completely contradicts
what I am saying. And this is His wonderful privilege because He is the God of infinite variety, and I do not want you to think
that I am putting Deity into a straitjacket. I am simply trying to expound certain principles which may, I trust, be helpful in your
experience.
He waits for you to want to be guided. You see God has prepared wonderful things for them that love Him. He said, Eye cannot
see, and ear cannot hear, and the mind cannot receive what God has prepared for them that love Him. But God will reveal
them unto us by His Spirit. But this ministry is not one that He forces on us. He doesn’t make you. He waits to be wanted, He
waits to be asked. Here is a ministry that Paul gives to us in his first prayer in Ephesians where he writes to this church of born
again people, saints at Ephesus, faithful in Christ Jesus, and he says, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love
unto all saints. I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.” He said, I am not underestimating
what the Lord has done. That the God of our Lord Jesus, The Father of Glory, may give unto you the Spirit of Wisdom, and
Revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being opened. Now why did Paul say, I am praying that
you will recognize that the Holy Spirit will be unto you the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation? I believe it is just this simple. He
said to that church, I am praying that you will recognize, so that when you recognize you will pray, and the Spirit of God will be
released to do this for you. So when you find out that He is the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Christ,
when He is the One that is going to show you the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him, do you not feel that
it is your automatic, or at least your spiritual response to say, Lord, I am trusting Thee to open the eyes of my heart and show
me my heritage in Christ. You have given me a hunger; You have quickened my heart with desire. Now I am coming to Thee,
Lord, asking Thee, trusting Thee to lead me I as fast as I am able to go into that which You have prepared for me and for all
Your children.
What is this? Well it is two things. First, it is a recognition that Bible study, Bible reading, Bible searching is important, but that
the final benefit from Bible Study comes when the Author of the Book explains what it means. Have you ever heard a poet read
his own poeFtry? Well it is a great; it is a tremendous experience to have the poet read his poetry. You see worlds in it that
were never there before. Have you ever heard an author read a portion of his own book, the way he intended it to be read?
My, it is a thrilling thing if the book is valuable. Well, when the Holy Ghost begins to explain, He adds to all of your study. You
have searched the Scripture. You have analyzed it and divided it, and written it, and memorized it. And now you say, Lord as
good as this is, it is not enough. Open the eyes of my heart and show me what it means. And He now becomes the Spirit of
Wisdom and Revelation, unfolding the Scripture to you. Now this is the ministry you must ask of Him. It is not enough for me to
say, “Lord I have got to stand before these hungry people on Sunday; Open the Word to me.” How many times when we are
praying we say, Lord, anoint the speaker as he preaches, and we ought to do that. And I covet your prayers. But you know we
ought to turn right around and say, Lord anoint the hearers as they listen. Because it not only requires anointed speaking, but
it also requires anointed listening. I can give you ever so valuable truth, but if your mind is off wool gathering, and your heart is
perplexed about the rain out there -- Is my window open? I wonder if I put the timer on? Will that roast burn before I get
home? You can have -- the Lord Himself could be here, expounding the glorious truths and it would be profitless, because of
the fact that the mind was not disciplined.
Well discipline is important, but in addition to that there must be illumination. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit - to
illuminate the Word to you, to cause you to see it and to put under the feet of your faith the Rock of God’s Promise. And it is
only as the Spirit of God speaks that word into your heart. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word. You mean, when I read it,
you hear it; Therefore, you have faith? No. It is when He speaks that Word. Someone said to me tonight, I came from a certain
place, and as I came out I had a plug in my ear, and I heard, Go to church tonight. Well now this is the hearing voice. And oh
how precious it is in certain situations to have God speak the Word, and immediately the Rock comes under you in this
situation, and your faith is founded on the Word. You have heard it, not just with the hearing of the ear, but with the hearing
of the heart.
Now when it comes to the matter of being filled with the Spirit, you need this teaching ministry of the Holy Ghost, to put the
Word under you. I can tell you there is a relationship where you are to be filled with the fullness of God. I can read, as I shall in
a moment Ephesians, the 3rd Chapter. I can do my best to expound this to you. But you have got to recognize, that your faith
can not rest in my confidence. Your faith must rest in that Word which God hath spoken to your heart.
Now, in direction to you that are hungry to be filled with the Spirit, I would advocate to you that you search the Scripture. I
know when God was dealing with me, there was so much I did not understand, and so much that seemed confusing and
perplexing, that I began the habit that continues until the present. I got the biggest piece tablet of paper I could find, and I
bought the legal size paper in the Stationery Store. And then I began to put some headings down on the paper, the promises
concerning the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, promises John the Baptist made concerning the Holy Spirit, what Christ said
about the Holy Spirit before His crucifixion, what He said afterward, what is recorded here, what happened, what does the
Word of the Epistles teach -- page after page, and column after column was filled with Scripture verses. But you know it wasn’t
just writing, it was taking that and meditating upon it, and looking at it; and as I looked at it my objections began to vanish. The
Word of God began to fit together like a foundation, stone against stone, mortared by His Presence. And the first thing you
know you begin to find that under you is the Truth of God. It is not an emotion. It is not just a response to logic or exhortation,
but your faith no longer stands in the excellency of men’s speech or wisdom, but it stands on the Word of God. And it is the
Spirit of God that will do this. And I commend it to you as most valuable.
Now there is another ministry of the Spirit of God. You know, for every priceless privilege, there is also preparation. For
instance, in marriage. This is a divinely chosen analogy. But here is the Eternal Bridegroom that wants to present Himself to His
Bride. Let me give you an analog from another quarter. A young woman has a young man come to her and he says, “You know
I have been with you. We have been friends. I love you, and I want to marry you.” She looks at him and says, “Well all right. I
guess I will marry you, but there are certain conditions. The first condition is, I do not like your name. Yours is awkward, long
name, and it has no standing in the community. You are a relative new comer. So I will marry you, but I want to keep my own
name.” Well he looks a little askance at the moment, but says, “Well all right. It is difficult, but we will see what we can do.”
And she says, “And furthermore, my father has a beautiful home, and I do not think you could afford anything equal to it. I
would like to marry you, but I am going to stay at home.” And then she looks and says, “And I would like to marry you you
know, but I do not want to do dishes and housework. I would much rather stay and keep my job.” And then she says, “And
furthermore, my grandmother gave me some money and I want you know I have plans for that. I will marry you, but I am not
going to give you that money.” And then she says, as it claps this whole ridiculous argument, she says, “And I want you to know
that I will marry you, but I have a lot of other friends that I like nearly as well as I do you, and I do not intend to give them up.”
Can you imagine anyone agreeing to marriage on those terms? Never! And so we say to the young woman that is about to be
married, I understand you have given up your name. It was not hard. I understand you have given up your home. Nor was that.
And you have given up your job, and you have given up all your possessions, and you have given up your friends. My, what a
price to for marriage. She looks at you and says, Price? I never thought of that as a price. You see, he is giving me himself. This
is not payment. This is just preparation. She has a right. You have a right. Everyone has a right to name, to reputation, to
possessions, rightly gained and earned, to friends. These things are not sinful. And yet the heavenly bridegroom comes to you,
and He says, “I am asking you to give up the right to your rights.” This is what we might call a deeper repentance, an extension
into the life.
Now I believe that the Lord wants to deal with these things before you are filled with the Spirit. I believe if you turn to
Ephesians 3, I think I can relate it chronologically, by that 16th verse: “That He would grant you to be strengthened with might
by His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may take up His lasting dwelling place.” And if you are in earnest about being filled
with the fullness of God, then as the man who found a field in which was a pearl of great price and gladly sold all that he had
that he might possess it, so you too are willing to make any preparation that the Lord may ask of you.
I hate to teach doctrine by an illustration, but I think it is appropriate now. Not to teach, but to illustrate. I think I have sought
to establish at least from this the point where this preparation is made. I have used this before and many of you have heard it,
but I trust it will not be tedious nor redundant. I think of that lady who was a teacher at one of our fine Colleges in the Mid-
West. A Roman Catholic lady, wonderfully saved, and yet deeply hungry for God. Some of you here would know her, if I would
mention her name. One year she read and studied, and the Word of God came alive to her, and she knew that there was a
relationship for the Lord which was hers that she had not entered. Instead of going to her friend’s home in the Southland, she
stayed at the College for Christmas, to furnish a little holiday fellowship for the children of missionaries who had no homes to
which they could go. But her prime purpose for staying was to seek the Lord. And she spent a great deal of time in mediation
and prayer. One noon after a night spent almost entirely in prayer and reading, she took a nap. And in her nap she dreamed
the Lord came into that little dormitory room. She saw a table; on it was a large bowl filled with colored objects. She heard Him
speak, though she did not see His face in the dream. She heard Him say, “You have asked me to fill you with Myself and this I
want to do. Just as soon as that bowl is empty, I will fill it with pure water. Just as soon as your heart is ready, I will fill you with
Myself.” And then she said, in her dream she went to the bowl, and here were these objects like Christmas ornaments with no
place to fasten them to the tree. Each one had on it a word. She said, she began to take them out quickly until she came to
four. One has a person in her life, the other was a possession. One was a privilege, and so on. Finally she said, “Lord I never
knew how important these were to me. I have been telling Thee in these extended periods of prayer that my all is on the Altar.
And yet now I see these things are here. And, Lord, I do not know which to take first. Help me.” And she cried out and the Lord
strengthened her, and she took one, and then another, and finally she got to the last one, and she said, “Lord I never realized
this was until now. Give me strength to put out my hand and touch it. Then give me strength to lift it. Now Lord give me
strength to let it go.” And she said with each prayer there was an inflow of strength. And as soon as she had let go of the last
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