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; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Eph. 5 vv. 18-21.

Be filled with the Spirit! This is a command to Spirit-filled believers. That may sound a little paradoxical but I hope all will become clear as we proceed with this study, which is the first of a series of studies on practical issues of the life of faith.

I think that this verse is at the heart of all such practical issues. Be filled with the Spirit! The way you should live, as far as the Lord is concerned and as the Scriptures show us we should live, is possible because you are Spirit-filled. If you are a Christian, you are born again of the Spirit of God and you may go on to know that glorious baptism in the Holy Spirit which the Lord has freely poured out. Because of that mighty gift, it is wonderfully possible for you to live the life that the Bible requires of you. So all the practical issues we shall be looking at are possible to the Spirit-filled believer, and to the one who goes on, day by day, being filled with the Spirit. The moment we stop receiving that filling which He provides, the moment we stop relying on that enabling of His precious Spirit in our lives, then we start getting into difficulties. But in Him, we are more than conquerors.

Please remember, as we think on these things, that the Spirit is the Holy Spirit. He is a Person, a Divine Person, God the Holy Spirit. We are not discussing some impersonal force but God. Now the Bible tells us that we are partakers of the Divine nature and this is because God dwells in us. What we have read above is a command - "Be filled with the Spirit!" That, in itself, is a practical issue. A command is to be obeyed. We must be responsive to that, in faith, in obedience and in allowing the Lord to fill us with Himself and with what He wants us to have. It is allowing the Lord to make us what He wants us to be.

What we shall look at in this study is not how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but how, being full of the Holy Spirit, you can allow Him to fill you. Now you may need to think about that idea. If we do allow the Holy Spirit to fill us, continually, we shall live right. If we get this right, the other twenty or so practical issues will present no problem. You will fail in the Christian life if you say, "I'm not like that, like the Bible says; I'm going to try to be like that." It seems to me that many Christians take that attitude.