Faith Is A Fact
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.
Hebrews 10:22
Disregard feelings. You’re not saved by feeling, and you may or may not feel the Spirit. Accept Him by faith as a fact. He lives within you right now to help you live the Christian life. He is living in you in order to magnify, glorify, and exalt Christ in you so that you can live a happy, victorious, radiant, Christ-honoring life.
The Bible commands, “Be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). If you are filled with Spirit, then you are going to produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23). To be filled with the Spirit is not optional. It is a command to be obeyed, a duty to be done.
How do you know that you are filled? And how can you be filled? Is it some emotional experience through which you must pass? Not necessarily. When you give all you know of yourself to all that you know of Him, then you can accept by faith that you are filled with the Spirit of God. That means that He can have all of you. Commitment actually is surrender—total, absolute, unconditional, irreversible surrender. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).
It is only the consecrated, Spirit-filled Christian who can have victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is the Holy Spirit who will do the fighting for you. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of darkness” (Ephesians 6:12). This is a spiritual warfare. You cannot fight against these three enemies with normal weapons. Only as we become channels and let the Holy Spirit do the fighting through us are we going to get complete victory. Don’t hold back anything from Christ. Let Him be completely the Lord and master of your life. He said, “Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am” (John 13:13).
Our Father and our God, I bring You my overflowing heart—wholly, humbly, completely. Fill me with Your Spirit so I may be victorious over the enemy, Satan. You are my Master, my Ruler. I will try to do whatever You ask of me. And with the constant help of Jesus my Savior, I can, and through Him I pray. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).