Sometimes when people have an encounter with Jesus and ask God to fill them with the Holy Spirit, they get hung up on the initial physical evidence of the baptism in the Spirit.  We’ll look at that evidence later on.  Today, though, let’s focus our attention on the spiritual evidence that the Holy Spirit is making an influence in our lives.  After all, the Holy Spirit is a spirit and His primary work is spiritual in nature, even though He does have physical evidence that He is present with us when we are baptized with His presence.

1 Corinthians 2:11-16 KJVS. [11] For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knows no man, but the Spirit of God. [12] Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. [13] Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. [14] But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. [15] But he that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. [16] For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

You can’t understand spiritual things until you have an encounter with Jesus.  Jesus, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, asked God to send the Holy Spirit so you could be given power to witness and to be guided into truth.  The Holy Spirit will also help you understand spiritual things.  If you can understand spiritual matters, then the Holy Spirit is working in your life, revealing them to you.

Ephesians 1:13-14 NLT. [13] And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. [14] The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

Ephesians 4:30 KJVS. [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.

The Holy Spirit places God’s identifying mark in us, and is proof to us that God makes us part of His family and will include us in the inheritance the righteous will receive with Jesus.  All who are sealed by the Holy Spirit have become the people of God and can consider themselves part of the family of God as His spiritual children.  

1 Corinthians 12:3 KJVS. [3] Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Spirit enables us to accept the Lordship of Jesus over our lives.  We won’t give our lives completely to Jesus until the Spirit moves on us to do that.  When we yield our lives to Jesus we are also yielding to the Holy Spirit and to the Father.

Galatians 5:22-23 KJVS. [22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, [23] Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

The Holy Spirit brings evidence that He is working in us to change us into an image, a reproduction, a reflection of Christ.  We cannot live in the fruits of the Holy Spirit unless we have the Holy Spirit influencing us.  The results of yielding to the Holy Spirit will include becoming more and more like Jesus as the Spirit pours His presence into our lives.

Ephesians 5:9,18 KJVS. [9] (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) [18] And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

Two weeks ago we asked God to fill us with His Holy Spirit.  This week allow me to encourage you to ask God to prove to you He has done that.  The Holy Spirit will produce spiritual results in your life.  Ask Jesus to reveal spiritual things to you through His Spirit.  Ask God to let the fruits of His Holy Spirit to completely envelope your life and flow in you and through you to others.  Ask God to give you the spiritual evidence that you are yielding to the Holy Spirit in your life.