November 7

Read: Acts 4:29-31

And when they had prayed… they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).

Filled With The Holy Spirit

What kind of spiritual experience came to these people when on this occasion they were “filled with the Holy Ghost”? They were the same persons who a little earlier were: baptized with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. The answer to our question is given by Dr. J. B. Chapman when he says: “We believe in one baptism but many fillings.”

After we have been sanctified wholly we should expect and cultivate repeated experiences in which God’s Holy Spirit fills our consciousness in unusual measure. It is the nature of all conscious life to ebb and flow. Hunger comes and goes. Joy erases sorrow. Weariness of the evening gives place to strength in the morning. The lifelong love of a devoted husband and wife is most often a quiet, but deeply satisfying, song singing in the heart. But the tempo of that love also rises to all-absorbing hours of consciousness of each other. We should not expect our lifelong awareness of God’s Spirit to be otherwise.

We cannot command these movings of the Holy Spirit, but we can provide the channels for His coming. It was when these Spirit-baptized Christians prayed that the place was shaken. In this time of special communion they were again filled to overflowing with the love of God. And this new infilling gave a new urgency to their Christian service. It was this inflow of the Spirit of God that sent sanctified disciples out to speak the word of God with boldness.

It is for just such a new infilling of the Holy Spirit that we yearn when the sanctified Christian prays:

Spirit of the living God, Fall fresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, Fall fresh on me.

— Daniel Iverson