True life of the Believer!

     “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.”

Ezekiel 36:26 (NLT)

I would like to begin this devotion with a question!  Do you know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Before I begin, I would like to explain how these devotionals came about.  Several years ago the Holy Spirit was leading me to take a sabbatical from the church. I discussed this with Pastor Don on a Wednesday evening and he gave me his blessings. The following Monday I fell, broke my arm and had surgery that required a shoulder replacement with prosthesis. One year later I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Now this was not the wrath of God for disobedience, it was His purpose in getting my undivided attention to teach me many things that I will be sharing with you.

All of this took place and God began to strip away things in my life that was not pleasing to Him. Do you have any of those?  It seems we fail to recognize these things until God has our full attention.  He then fills our heart with a thirst to know Him, truly know Him! Before this can happen though, we must surrender our very all to His control and to yield our hearts completely. Then and only then can the Holy Spirit living within us begin His work in our sanctification. The free will still exist, we can accept or reject it!

However, with much study of God’s Word and the reading of many books that He placed in my hands did I begin to comprehend slightly what He was going to teach me,  My heart and spirit was brought into many hours of prayer and meditation, remember, we must ”pray without ceasing.” This is truly what happened; my heart was consumed with prayer.

But, to answer the question I started with, do you know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Your answer would be, of course, when I asked Jesus to come into my heart, the Holy Spirit was given at the same time.  This is very true, but oh, this spring of Living Water is so very deep, we cannot begin to explore this in only one devotion but will continue to share and I invite you, please come and taste that the water is good. My prayer is that we be filled with the wisdom to know God’s will and purpose for our lives through this study!