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Remember that when the Holy Spirit came to live within you, he came in as a divine person. It is so easy to miss what Paul is saying. He does not say to ‘be filled’ by the Spirit but with the Spirit. “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with different tongues, as the Spirit was giving them the ability to speak out.” (Acts 2:4) “And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:31)

The Holy Spirit is not standing around waiting to enter us and meet our needs. He is already present within a Christ follower. That means we have all that we need to love, to be patient, to be kind…we have it all!

We can see this example: A young pastor’s wife is left alone during the week to take care of three children. As the week continues, she is faced with much toggling to take care of her children and do all her other duties. One day her patience wears thin. She prayed and asked God, “Give me more patience, more strength and more love.” Things did not change. A few days later she thought about the Holy Spirit and how he lived within her. She changed the way that she prayed. No longer did she pray for God to give her more, but she prayed, “Your patience, Your strength, Your love….” She chose to use what was already hers. God had already given her what she needed. Things changed. She was using the power within her to do what God needed her to do.

Too many times as Christ followers, we have the old mentality, “build it and they will come.” God has already built it. He already came. So, follow Jesus. It is exciting to realize that we are fully capable of living life to its fullest just by allowing the Holy Spirit to influence our lives.

It is like, we get saved but we still try to control what happens. We have a new vehicle that we want to drive, but without the power of the engine we can go nowhere. We try to drive that car without the gas. The gas is used to ignite the engine. The Holy Spirit desires just that – to ignite our engines for Jesus. He loves for us to be successful in godliness: in strength, in love, in patience, in kindness and more! This week let the Holy Spirit fuel your spiritual engine. It’s already paid for.

Yvette Perrin can be reached at theword2yvette@gmail.com.