Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. Eph. 5:18.

Having the fullness of the Spirit is never an end in itself. God never endues us with the power of the Spirit simply to satisfy us with some temporary euphoria. The Holy Spirit always witnesses to Christ, not to make His own impression on people's emotions. Many people seek for the exciting and the sensational by which they claim to be possessed by the Spirit. But it is no part of the Spirit's work to glorify us. His work is to glorify Christ. God will not let us use the Holy Spirit for emotional purposes. If we seek to appropriate Him magically, we shall not receive Him. He will not come to us.

We can be trusted with the Holy Spirit only to the degree that we let Him use us for the glory of God. We need to pray, "Father, glorify Thy name in every experience that comes to me." If we can honestly say, "Father, glorify Thy name; let Thy life and love shine through me," we are in a position to receive the fullness of the Spirit.

What greater thing can we do than to let Christ take all that happens to us and all that we are, and fill us with Himself? The fundamental issue is: Can we accept so great a loss as dying to self-sufficiency and self-will in order that the Spirit will wholly possess us? This is the Spirit-filled life. It is not necessary to expect the spectacular, the obvious, the exaltation of ourselves. Life by the Spirit may be just the opposite.

Do not think of this life as an unnatural, strange thing, or a unique thing. The strange thing is that we should live in the world without being filled with Christ.

Men talk about having the power of the Holy Spirit and seem to lift themselves up and say, "I am baptized with the Spirit. I have His fullness." I am not at all sure that it happens this way. There is one real and true strength in this universe, and that is God's strength. No Christian ever did any powerful thing yet that God did not do in and through him. We have the power of God only as we let ourselves be held in the hand of God. As the chisel is powerless if it tries to carve a statue by itself, so is the Christian who seeks power for himself.