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I have always wondered when God's Holy Spirit enters you. Whether it is when you are born-again or later on. I have wondered this because, how could His Spirit be in me if a lot of the time I don't have the disipline to control myself? Where is He and His strength in those times? Especially as a man? Please give advice and personal experience and examples if possible.

This came to mind,

John 3:1-11 1 Now a certain man, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, 2 came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” 5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus replied, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things? 11 I tell you the solemn truth, we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. Context (NET)

Think of of it this way, you are being saved, you are saved, and you will be saved. I don't have anytime this morning off to work I go, but I believe, it is the heart that is the focus point, change it and you will know without doubt. "the heart of the probelm, is the problem of the heart".

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Kola,

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Your topic spurred some research into this question. This is what I came up with as an answer.

The Holy Spirit brings life where there is death. The Holy Spirit brings peace that we are children of God and revelation of God. He tells us about the Glory of God. He interprets the Word that we read and hear. He gives us courage to act. He gives us spiritual gifts where we are able to stand against spiritual forces of darkness.

Ephesians 3:14-19 Paul says "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love,18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

So being filled with the Spirit is a command. It is a continuous ongoing command. And we are to respond to that command. If you belong to Jesus then you should want to not quench the Spirit but strive after seeking holiness and righteousness.

Should we expect similar experiences of being filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit today just as the church experienced the Holy Spirit did in Acts? Yes!

When does the Holy Spirit enter us?

There are two main positions on this answer:

1) The Pentecostal view - Every Christian receives the Holy Spirit in an experiential event. We are born again and then sometime later you are baptized in the Holy Spirit. When we are born again we do have the Holy Spirit but at a very low level. Then later you receive the Holy Spirit in one baptism event and only after that time are we able to have the full empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

2) Non-Pentecostal evangelicals - Every believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit at the point you become a believer. It's not necessarily a huge momentous event. Then at times we sometimes He pours out his Spirit in points of revivals of the person's heart.

Both views fall short. And both views are correct.

When Jesus left the earth He said that He would send a helper and at the day of Pentecost the body of Christ is filled with the Holy Spirit. In that moment the whole body of Christ is filled with the Spirit and from then on the Spirit dwells in the heart of every believer at the point that they receive Christ as Lord. Therefor the day of Pentecost is unique and unrepeatable.

But before Pentecost there were multiple times, like Peter, where the Holy Spirit was in a person.

So both views are right in a way.

The non-Pentecostal evangelicals are right that when we become a Christian we become the body of Christ and then the Holy Spirit enters us. But as we get regenerated we become more and more holy. And the more holy we become the more the Holy Spirit comes. We need to seek after more and more of God.

The Pentecostals are correct in that we should be seeking events in our life where the Spirit is poured out.

Keep seeking the Father, Son and the Spirit and marvel at how He shows up in your life and your desire to sin becomes less and less!

Also, to answer your other questions:

John 14:17 "Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you."

Don't think about the Spirit in your body where He is there or He is not there. The Spirit is God. Think of the Spirit dwelling with us just as Jesus was with the disciples. He is God and was there with His disciples and slept next to them, shared the same bread bowl (even with Judas Iscariot), prayed with them. But the disciples were sinning many times with Jesus, the God man, in their presence. How could Jesus be so close to sin? Well, He was, and I think that the Spirit can be there with us as well while we sin.

The Spirit can be compared to a fire. The closer you get to the fire the more effects you feel of the fire; it's brighter, warmer, more "mystical". If you were to take a stick and put the stick close enough to the fire or in the fire, it would start to take on the characteristics of the fire. It would glow like the fire, be warm like the fire, it would then become a little fire.

When we are sinning we are running from the Spirit and putting distance between us and His presence. In my opinion we can't get far enough from Him where you will not be in His presence and will then not be a child of God. You may be far away from Him but you will always be His child but you will not be near Him.

When we break the first commandment and put other gods before Him then we have something in the way of us and Him. If we are looking at Him, like Peter did when they were walking on water, then we take our eyes off Him and put our eyes onto our idols (like Peter's fears and control), we get a little further from Him and the Spirit.



The Spirit is there with you but you have taken your eyes off Him and onto the other thing that you are starting to worship.


First, let me say that we are constantly worshiping something. For example, let's say we are at a restaurant with our wife on a date. We may be caring for our wife by truly listening to her intensly, looking at her with love and empathy as she shares her day with you and not offering your opinion but just listening with Godly love. This is worship! You are worshiping God by loving your wife and caring for her.

Then in one moment, on the big screen TV above her head and to the right, a commercial gets your attention. A scene is blasted on the screen portraying 3-4 young attractive couples sitting beside a hot tub in bathing suits drinking Millar Lite. If you are like me a whole bunch of thoughts come into my mind; "Wow, God really put that woman together very well. That dude sitting next to her reminds me of myself... 20 years ago. They sure are having fun in the mountains of Colorado and here we are sitting at Applebees."

We may not be worshiping the woman, jealousy, low self-esteem but you've taken your thoughts off God. The Spirit is saying "Hey! Look at your wife! No, don't keep looking! Stop. Ok. Stop. Oh, one more look?" He is there, prompting you. If you are able to come back to your wife and keep listening to her then congratulations, you have just listened to the Spirit and obeyed. Good job. The Spirit just helped you.

The Spirit loves us. He is there and gives you provides ways of escape. 1 Corinthians 10:13 "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

Mensbattleplan:

Hey, you know, I am so sick of the TV that when my wife and I go to a restaurant and that thing is turned on, I try to sit so I'm facing away from it....

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Read the Bible prayerfully.For a wealth of sound theology, go to John 3:16.
(My wife and I are very much in love, by the way.)
I don't like extremes of temperature. I don't like extremes among preachers. People maybe think I'm extreme.But never mind about me
A true Christian is different, and the world will notice the difference.Even your tattoo, if it's faith related, it's different!

I want to clarify that the Spirit dwells with us like I mention above. But He is in us as well. He controls us. But He will not enter into us while we are sinning.

We first need to:
1) Repent - The Spirit will not contol us if we are selfsufficient. He won't come into a dirty house.
2) Surrender - Romans 6:13 "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness."
3) Believe - Colossians 2:6 "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him."

The Spirit indwells if we are indeed born again (John 3).

_________________
Read the Bible prayerfully.For a wealth of sound theology, go to John 3:16.
(My wife and I are very much in love, by the way.)
I don't like extremes of temperature. I don't like extremes among preachers. People maybe think I'm extreme.But never mind about me
A true Christian is different, and the world will notice the difference.Even your tattoo, if it's faith related, it's different!

yep! Removing the distractions can make the difference.

Sometimes I feel like Lot living in Sodom. But it's just an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Part of it is the noise that those machines make: yap, yap, yap; talk shows that talk, talk, talk.

Better if they played 'The Sound of Silence'.....

_________________
Read the Bible prayerfully.For a wealth of sound theology, go to John 3:16.
(My wife and I are very much in love, by the way.)
I don't like extremes of temperature. I don't like extremes among preachers. People maybe think I'm extreme.But never mind about me
A true Christian is different, and the world will notice the difference.Even your tattoo, if it's faith related, it's different!

The indwelling Holy Spirit does not take away your free will, but allows you to do what you really want to do. The Holy Spirit is not there to “keep you from doing wrong” death is better for that, but the Holy Spirit really a ball of energy and can help you do good stuff all the time 24/7 to the point you just do not have time to sin. You have to make a free will choice on what good stuff you would like to see done in the next few minutes and that is what the Holy Spirit will do through you if you allow Him (don’t quench the Spirit).

I understand the area of the last post, through the prism of passages such as Ephesians chapter 2.

_________________
Read the Bible prayerfully.For a wealth of sound theology, go to John 3:16.
(My wife and I are very much in love, by the way.)
I don't like extremes of temperature. I don't like extremes among preachers. People maybe think I'm extreme.But never mind about me
A true Christian is different, and the world will notice the difference.Even your tattoo, if it's faith related, it's different!

I find this request is a very very serious matter. I also have struggled with it as long as I am a Christian. I don't know if you believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit (I do), but in my church it has been taught for ages and it has also been said that as soon as I receive "it" (in better words: HIM) His presence would totally change my life. I understood that in a way that as soon as I would receive the Holy Spirit, He would totally change my character and soul and everything within one second and after that I would only be holy and perfect and go out to the lost and save them forevermore ...

That was such a wrong understanding. Nothing of this is true. After I had received the Holy Spirit, I was still the same imperfect (sometimes really terribly imperfect) being as I had been before, with the difference that I had experience Him now whom I had not experienced before.

(Excuse my bad English, please, I am German, but I try my best.)

Only many years later - I got saved when I was 19 and am 50 now - I began to understand that I had to do something on my own part. I had to sow the Word of God into my heart. And the Word of God would slowly, very slowly, with many setbacks, change my behaviour and by this my life.

"He sent his Word and healed them, and He rescued them from their ditches ..." Psalm 107:20 (a German translation which I translate into English from my memory, since my English Bible is two rooms further, and I'm too lazy to fetch it )

Diligent work on the Bible, its stories, sayings and verses, over years and decades will change a man slowly, very slowly, but constantly, although there can be setbacks and times of frustration. The Lord then draws his disciple back and leads him into His Word again.

Christian faith is totally different from our worldly instant pressing-on-the-button-and-it-happens philosophy.

This is what I can add here.

frenzy

Hi Frenzy, and welcome to the forums! I think you have said it very well. And I find your English quite good -- better than that of many whose first language is English.

I'd like to add a couple of clarifying comments just in case someone might be confused by some things said earlier in this discussion. Orthodox Christian belief is that the Holy Spirit indwells all believers -- those who trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who love him and seek to do his will. Pentecostal Christians see the "baptism" with the Holy Spirit as an additional anointing of the Spirit by which believers are enabled to operate in the supernatural power of God. But while we may be "filled" with the Holy Spirit repeatedly, he lives in us continuously. He does not come and go. For it is through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that we are joined to and made one with the Father and the Son, and our union with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is not an on-again-off-again union. Amazingly, we have been invited into the godhead to be one with them just as the Father and the Son are one.

John 17:20-23 20 “I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, 21 that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 22 The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one – 23 I in them and you in me – that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me. Context (NET)

John 14:23 23 Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. Context (NET)

John 14:15-17
"If you love me, you will obey my commandments. Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you." [emphasis mine]

The other point I want to clarify is that the Holy Spirit motivates us, guides us, teaches us, and convicts us of sin, but he does NOT control us. Even when we are moving in the power of the Spirit (exercising spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healing, miracles, etc.), he does not control us, as Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 14:26-32, where he concludes, "Indeed, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is not characterized by disorder but by peace." WE must CHOOSE to walk according to the spirit and not according to the flesh, for both natures are present in us -- the spiritual (which is born of God and cannot sin) and the carnal (which we inherited from Adam and always wants to sin). Thus we are commanded to put to death the works of "the flesh" and to live our lives according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:12-14 12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh 13 (for if you live according to the flesh, you will die), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. Context (NET)

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Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!

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