How Do I Know If the Holy Spirit Is in Me?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | How do I know if the Holy Spirit is in me?
00:00:08.000 | Very few questions are more important to ask, and all of us face this
00:00:12.000 | question at some point. And it's a question asked even by pastors
00:00:16.000 | too, like this one. "Dear Pastor John, greetings in the name of the Lord
00:00:20.000 | Jesus Christ. I am a pastor in Dubai. Can you tell me
00:00:24.000 | how can I know for sure if I have the Holy Spirit inside of me?
00:00:28.000 | I got saved at 8 and am now 33. I still
00:00:32.000 | haven't experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in my life, not
00:00:36.000 | demonstrably. I would really appreciate it if you could explain to me how to be
00:00:40.000 | filled with the Holy Spirit. What does this look like?"
00:00:44.000 | Let's begin with a clarification. Our
00:00:48.000 | friend is asking two very distinct
00:00:52.000 | questions. And it's not clear to me
00:00:56.000 | that he knows that he's asking two very distinct questions.
00:01:00.000 | So my first concern is to
00:01:04.000 | make sure that he understands biblically that these are two very
00:01:08.000 | distinct questions. His first question is, "How can I know for
00:01:12.000 | sure if I have the Holy Spirit
00:01:16.000 | in me?" Second question, "How can
00:01:20.000 | I be filled with the Holy Spirit?"
00:01:24.000 | Now, it is possible to be in a season of true
00:01:28.000 | Christian life and not be filled
00:01:32.000 | with the Holy Spirit. And that's what I'm not sure he understands.
00:01:36.000 | But it is not possible to be a Christian
00:01:40.000 | at all if one does not have the Holy
00:01:44.000 | Spirit dwelling within us. To be a Christian
00:01:48.000 | is to have the Spirit of Christ.
00:01:52.000 | Romans 5, 9-11, "You are
00:01:56.000 | not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If
00:02:00.000 | in fact the Spirit of God dwells in
00:02:04.000 | you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of
00:02:08.000 | Christ does not belong to him."
00:02:12.000 | So no one is a Christian if he does not have the Holy
00:02:16.000 | Spirit. Then in Ephesians 5.18, Paul
00:02:20.000 | says to Christians who have the Holy Spirit—
00:02:24.000 | and we know that, by the way, because in chapter 1 he said, "You,"
00:02:28.000 | my readers, "you were sealed with the promised Holy
00:02:32.000 | Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance
00:02:36.000 | till we acquire possession of it to the praise of
00:02:40.000 | his glory." Then he says in chapter 5.18, "Do
00:02:44.000 | not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. But you
00:02:48.000 | Christians who are sealed with the Spirit and have the Spirit, be
00:02:52.000 | filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and
00:02:56.000 | hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody to the Lord with your heart,
00:03:00.000 | giving thanks always in everything, for everything
00:03:04.000 | to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus." In other words,
00:03:08.000 | being filled with the Spirit is a
00:03:12.000 | level or a quality
00:03:16.000 | of Spirit empowering that sometimes
00:03:20.000 | is more and sometimes is less. For example,
00:03:24.000 | in Acts 4.31, it says that the Christians
00:03:28.000 | had gathered for prayer, and when they had prayed, the
00:03:32.000 | place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and
00:03:36.000 | they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and
00:03:40.000 | spoke the Word of God with boldness. So
00:03:44.000 | one of the effects of this extraordinary,
00:03:48.000 | precious, sweet, powerful, unusual
00:03:52.000 | experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit
00:03:56.000 | is that we are more ready and free and bold in our
00:04:00.000 | witness to Christ. Or, in Ephesians 5, more
00:04:04.000 | ready, more free, more overflowing with psalms and hymns
00:04:08.000 | and spiritual songs and giving thanks to God. So
00:04:12.000 | having the Holy Spirit marks one off as a
00:04:16.000 | Christian. You can't be a Christian if you don't have the Spirit.
00:04:20.000 | There are no Christians who don't have the Holy Spirit.
00:04:24.000 | Being filled with the Holy Spirit is what all believers should seek
00:04:28.000 | to experience for the sake of the wonderful, Christ-exalting
00:04:32.000 | freedom and boldness and power that
00:04:36.000 | it brings. So how do you know
00:04:40.000 | if you have the Holy Spirit, he asks,
00:04:44.000 | that you are, in fact, a Christian, I'm saying, that you
00:04:48.000 | have been born again? Now, to answer this question
00:04:52.000 | biblically, it is really important to know
00:04:56.000 | the condition you were in
00:05:00.000 | before you were converted. Unless you know
00:05:04.000 | from the Bible—not primarily from experience, I'm not even
00:05:08.000 | worried about people like me who can't remember when they were converted.
00:05:12.000 | I mean, make that plain. I'm saying we must learn
00:05:16.000 | the condition we were in before we were converted
00:05:20.000 | from the Bible, not from our mother's memory or our
00:05:24.000 | memory or anybody's testimony about how bad we were, but from
00:05:28.000 | the Bible. From the Bible, we learn
00:05:32.000 | what our condition is. Many people,
00:05:36.000 | thousands of people, have been badly taught
00:05:40.000 | about the condition they were in prior to conversion,
00:05:44.000 | and the biblical answer is this. We were
00:05:48.000 | spiritually dead, Ephesians 2:4.
00:05:52.000 | We were unable to receive the things of the Spirit,
00:05:56.000 | 1 Corinthians 2:14. We were in what Paul calls
00:06:00.000 | "the mind of the fletch which is not able to submit
00:06:04.000 | to God or please God," Romans 8:7. We did not have
00:06:08.000 | the power to change our wills or our hearts or our minds
00:06:12.000 | or our affections. We were bent entirely away
00:06:16.000 | from God. How, then, did we receive
00:06:20.000 | the Holy Spirit? It was a miracle. It was sovereign
00:06:24.000 | grace, God's grace sovereignly applied
00:06:28.000 | to us in our helplessness. "The wind blows where it wills,"
00:06:32.000 | Jesus says, "and you don't know where it comes from or where it's going.
00:06:36.000 | And such are all who are born of the Spirit," John 3:8. A miracle
00:06:40.000 | happened. The Spirit opened your eyes, Acts 16:14.
00:06:44.000 | God shone in your heart omnipotently
00:06:48.000 | to cause you to see the light of the gospel of the beauty and the glory
00:06:52.000 | of Christ, 2 Corinthians 4:6. He imparted
00:06:56.000 | life. He gave you life so that you would no longer be dead, no longer
00:07:00.000 | blind, no longer hostile to God, no longer unable to please God,
00:07:04.000 | no longer rebellious, no longer viewing the cross
00:07:08.000 | as foolishness. Instead, you saw the glory
00:07:12.000 | of Christ in the gospel. You saw it as more beautiful, more
00:07:16.000 | desirable than the things of this world. You were alive
00:07:20.000 | by the Spirit of God. God was real and precious and beautiful.
00:07:24.000 | You were no longer blind. You saw the cross
00:07:28.000 | and Christ in His way and His Word as more attractive than the promises
00:07:32.000 | of sin. Instead of hostility to God,
00:07:36.000 | you loved Him and you wanted to please Him. Instead of doubt and suspicion
00:07:40.000 | and hardness, you saw His promises as true and you trusted
00:07:44.000 | in them, banked on those promises. Christ became your
00:07:48.000 | treasure. That's how you know you're alive.
00:07:52.000 | That's how you know you're converted. That's how you know you have faith.
00:07:56.000 | That's how you know that the Holy Spirit is within you.
00:08:00.000 | None of that would be happening if the miracle
00:08:04.000 | of God's Spirit were not at work in you.
00:08:08.000 | But you wouldn't know that unless you had
00:08:12.000 | been taught from the Bible how
00:08:16.000 | dead you were, how utterly impossible all of this beautiful
00:08:20.000 | transformation is apart from the sovereign work of the Spirit. Luke 18
00:08:24.000 | and 27. If you have been taught that you were the
00:08:28.000 | decisive cause—let me say this again now because this is incredibly
00:08:32.000 | widespread and destructive—if you have been taught
00:08:36.000 | that you were the decisive cause of
00:08:40.000 | all of that, then you won't be amazed at your change.
00:08:44.000 | You will see it as decisively your work
00:08:48.000 | and therefore no real evidence that you are born again,
00:08:52.000 | the Spirit is within you. That's one of the great tragedies
00:08:56.000 | for those who deny the sovereignty of God in salvation.
00:09:00.000 | Ask yourself this. Are you amazed
00:09:04.000 | at the sovereign grace of God that you wake up
00:09:08.000 | every morning as a believer in Christ? Are you amazed?
00:09:12.000 | True saving faith is the
00:09:16.000 | number one evidence that you are born again.
00:09:20.000 | 1 John 5, 1. Everyone who believes
00:09:24.000 | that Jesus is the Christ has been
00:09:28.000 | born of God. That means born of the Spirit and
00:09:32.000 | possessing the Spirit. So Tony, I think we need to stop here.
00:09:36.000 | I know he asked how do you get filled. I haven't said anything about
00:09:40.000 | that, but I think we need to stop here because his other question,
00:09:44.000 | "How can I be filled with the Spirit?" is just too big to
00:09:48.000 | tack on here at the end. I think what we've touched on
00:09:52.000 | here is really the nub of the issue. What
00:09:56.000 | is the discernible work of the Spirit in our lives?
00:10:00.000 | What is the central biblical answer?
00:10:04.000 | It is he raised us from the dead
00:10:08.000 | and made Christ our supreme treasure.
00:10:12.000 | Amen. Yes, we do need to stop here. We still have so much more to say.
00:10:16.000 | Actually, we have said quite a bit more and taken up the filling question
00:10:20.000 | elsewhere. See episode 972, "Am I quenching
00:10:24.000 | the Holy Spirit?" That's episode 972. And see also
00:10:28.000 | episode 1359, "What is baptism of the Holy Spirit?"
00:10:32.000 | Episode 1359. Both are related. 1359
00:10:36.000 | and 972 are related to this episode. We'll continue this
00:10:40.000 | conversation forward that we started here. Find both of those episodes at
00:10:44.000 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:48.000 | Well, thanks for listening. If you haven't done so yet, you can get the latest episodes by
00:10:52.000 | subscribing to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app in Spotify or by
00:10:56.000 | subscribing to DG's YouTube channel. And to submit a question
00:11:00.000 | of your own to us, go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:06.000 | Well, how is the gospel connected to God's absolute
00:11:10.000 | sovereignty? Are they connected? They are connected, inseparably
00:11:14.000 | so. And millions of people in the United States and around the globe
00:11:18.000 | over the past few decades have been waking up to this incredible connection.
00:11:22.000 | As Pastor John will explain next time. Don't miss this episode coming up.
00:11:26.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:11:30.000 | [end]
00:11:32.000 | [end]
00:11:34.000 | [end]
00:11:36.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]