What The Bible Says: Holy-Spirit FillingSample

BIBLICAL PICTURES OF HOLY-SPIRIT FILLING, PART 1 (REFINEMENT)

One of the ways God reveals Himself to us in Scripture is through the use of vivid metaphors. Consider these images God Himself uses to convey the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives when we’re filled by Him:

The Holy Spirit as Dove

“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him” (Matthew 3:16). This is probably the most common and beautiful picture of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. The key word here is purity. In Leviticus, doves themselves were known for their attention to cleanliness and their constant cleaning and preening of their feathers, not able to be at rest with any amount of dirt or soil upon them. This is why doves were used for sacrificial purposes involving personal purity, such as after the birth of a child. So at the time of Jesus’ baptism, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit’s purity. No unbeliever has the Holy Spirit until he or she is cleansed by the purifying Holy Spirit in response to repentance and faith. It is only by faith in Jesus’ atoning death that the children of God are declared pure. The dove of God—the Holy Spirit—is that purity, and He wants to eradicate any feeling of shame and uncleanness in God’s sons and daughters.

The hunger for purity in you is provoked by the Holy Spirit’s presence. 

The Holy Spirit as Fire

When the Holy Spirit comes in Acts 2, the main way He’s described is fire. “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit . . . ” (Acts 2:1–4).

The key word here is related to purity, but different; it’s more like purifier. Where the dove speaks of the purity that the Holy Spirit represents, the fire is that purifying effect that the Holy Spirit desires to have upon us. The dove points to the end result; fire points to the process.

The Holy Spirit is sending us the message of our purity before a holy God. The Holy Spirit is our purity. But He’s not just a dove, He is also fire. He’s continually working to close the gap between who we are in God’s eyes and who we know ourselves to actually have been this week or this morning. 

The moment you recognize and admit this gap before God, you can be sure the Spirit is saying, “I’m not leaving you there!” Because He is a refining fire.

Job 23:10 says, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” The idea of the “trying” there is the refining fire that heats the raw gold until the impurities float and can be skimmed off as dross. Repeated “trying” yields increasingly purer gold. But there’s a lot of heat involved.

And this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Incredibly, the Holy Spirit is both purity and purifier; the standard and the strength; the standing and the stability. The Holy Spirit is all of it!

Invite the Holy Spirit to purify you, trusting in His sustaining goodness for the process, and ask Him to keep you steadfast in that place of purity to which we’re called as God’s daughters and sons.