An exerpt taken from http://theoutreachsingapore.blogspot.com/

As an analogy, let's take puberty. Without puberty, you were still a human being: you had 2 eyes, a nose, a mouth, you were able to move, talk, disobey and annoy your parents. :D So let's take the Christian that has not yet been filled with the Spirit. He is a child of God, loves Jesus, reads the Word, prays, and does what he can to follow Christ. That's all good and true. But with puberty, kids change. Voices deepen, characteristics that make people attractive appear, intellectual thought is stimulated and deepened, the development of the emotions rapidly increases pace (through mood changes and listening to music); the social aspect develops, where there is a stronger need to belong and find identity more than before; and in general, a deeper appreciation (or even struggle) of life as a human being. Same it is with the infilling of the Holy Spirit: when the Holy Spirit fills a person, the person changes. Suddenly all the words of Scripture "come to life". Suddenly God, and his presence, become very very real to you. Your spiritual "muscles" start to develop: you begin to tear down the works of the enemy, you find new ways of helping others in God, and even your spiritual "voice" starts to deepen, so to speak: you have a newfound sense of authority over the sin and struggles in your life and are able to command demons and strongholds to exit your life. Your knowledge of the Scriptures is stimulated--whereby God himself reveals the words of the Scripture to you in a more accelerated fashion than before. It's not that you've never had this before: it's just that you have never grown THAT fast. Your love for the church and the people of God deepens. And, above all, you develop an insatiable taste for the experience of God as he is: other-worldly, wholly other, "how unsearchable his ways and thoughts"--previously unsearchable, but now for once you have had a glimpse of his glory and his personhood and there is no looking back. Like Moses, for the first time you saw His glory: only that instead of just seeing the back, you have the promise of seeing more and more of the Front. Unlike Isaiah, who said "Woe is Me!" and had to have his lips cleansed, you stare brazen at His glory, all your shame covered by the blood of the Lamb, to see the Father's loving face in the fullness of its brightness and splendour. And then you realise, probably for the first time in your life, what it truly means to experience Him in you: such an intimacy, such an interwovenness, not theoretical but experiential, not limited but freely given to all who will partake of him. And yet that initial infilling is not the be-all and the end-all. As He fills you more and more, your sense of identity is even more interwoven in Him; your experience of Him grows that much stronger and powerful. You begin to realise the truly supernatural nature of your God, and that you have merely touched the iceberg in terms of knowing who He really is. Knowing Him becomes the lifetime quest, to know the unknowable, to search the unsearchable, the One who Is and Is to Come.

"And the things of the earth
Will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace."

And this, is merely to be filled with the Spirit, not yet even to be "full of the Spirit".

This is a good time to stop. And a good time to pray. =)

Written by

Daniel Ng


Amen to that! That's what I call growth!