Surprised by Tozer #2 of 5:

Where the Spirit of the Lord is…

(Second Corinthians 3:17)

How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit was the original title, but now it’s repackaged in a collection entitled Life in the Spirit. Probably a better title sense Tozer disavows any how-tos:

I have been afraid that my listeners might have gotten the idea somewhere that I had a how-to-be-filed-with-the-Spirit-in-five-easy-lesson doctrine, which I could give you. If you have any such vague ideas as that, I can only stand before you and say, “I am sorry”; because it isn’t true; I can’t give you such a course. (p. 23)  

Yet, by the end of the chapter, Tozer surprises us by coming up with something close to a how-to list of four ways (I may suggest a fifth since four is not a good number) to be filled with the Holy Spirit:

            1)  Present your body to Him… from Romans 12:1-2. That’s the whole of you—you as you; problematic body and all. “Your mind, your personality, your spirit, your love, your ambitions, your all” (p.28).

            2)  Ask, and it will be given to you… as Jesus says in Luke 11:9-13. Asking assumes a certain longing for God the Spirit to abide in us—to penetrate into the center of our being.

            3) The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey Christ… is how Peter puts it in Acts 5:32. It’s not easy to follow Christ. Of ourselves, we can’t even come close. Only the unseen power of the Holy Spirit can empower us to be followers of Jesus.

            4) You receive the Holy Spirit by faith… as Paul reminds us in Galatians 3:1-2. That’s the way it is with God. We would like more obvious signs, like speaking in tongues for instance. But such things can be contrived. “Whatever is not of faith is not of God” the Apostle tells us elsewhere.

            5) The Holy Spirit’s brings us into fellowship with the Community of Saints, as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed. That’s my fifth, not Tozer’s—though I’m sure Tozer would be okay with it. He speaks well of the creeds. It’s a reminder that the Holy Spirit is given not simply to me or you as individuals, but to the church gathered—the community of saints. Without the Holy Spirit’s presence among us, church doesn’t work. When the Spirit of God hovers over God’s people, it’s a beautiful thing to see and to experience.