Day 7: The All-Comprehensive Gift

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13)

 From Day 6 we know that ‘God gives only good gifts’. Here in Luke, Jesus tells us what are the very gift that He wants to gives to us: the Holy Spirit. The only one thing to be able to really live as a child of God as what we read on previous articles is to be filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts and the one He delights most in bestowing.

Andrew Murray reminds us, “In all our prayer let us remember the lesson the Savior teaches us: One thing we can be sure of is that the Father desires to have us filled with His Spirit, and He delights in giving Him to us.” His command for us is to ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ (Ephesians 5:18) Ask! ‘…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.’

Billy Graham writes, “When we are filled with the Spirit, it is not a question of there being more of Him, as though His work in us is quantitative. It is not how much of the Spirit we have, but how much the Spirit has of us… As we come to understand more and more of Christ’s leadership, we surrender and yield more to Him. So, in seeking the fullness of the Spirit, we receive and enjoy His filling and His fullness more and more.”

When you are filled with His Spirit, He will help you pray. You can take great comfort and confidence in the fact that God hears and understand your prayers and responds to them. The Holy Spirit prays for us with groaning that cannot be expressed in words. So often our soul longs to be understood, and yet we can’t find the words. There are many times when I don’t know what to pray for, words just can’t come out, ‘err… err… err… err…’ but the Holy Spirit understands the deepest longings of your heart and expresses them to God on your behalf.

There is only one God, and this one God exists as one essence in three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is relational in His essence and desires relationship with us. This may be very hard for those who think that God is so far away. No wonder some don’t believe in the power of prayer. When we pray, we pray to the Father, by the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ. This is the ultimate assurance when Jesus said, “Ask, and it shall be given to you.”

Let us pray:

O Father! Please give the fullness of your Spirit today. Amen. 

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