Filled with the Spirit

Luke notes the events that guided Jesus’ life just after His baptism. He says, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness” – Lk. 4:1 (ESV). Jesus was about to begin the work He had agreed to carryout. In preparation for this, the Holy Spirit who had settled on Him guided Him to a place where He would experience some of His most close times with the Father and His most stressful temptations. There are two themes in this story that indicate the workings of the empowering Holy Spirit. Jesus was led into the wilderness and experienced physical weakness, but He was also full of the Holy Spirit to help guide His way. Jesus becomes our model to imitate, while having the strength of the Holy Spirit, the answers to Satan’s question were those that arose from Jesus’s own understanding and commitment to the Father. He was not a puppet for the Holy Spirit; He used the strength given by the Holy Spirit to carry out His own decisions. When we face challenges in our lives, we need to remember His example because we are not puppets of the Holy Spirit; although the Holy Spirit will provide some guiding thoughts and realizations from time to time, the final decisions for our words and actions are our own responsibilities. These final decisions can be closer to those God would have us make when we ask for His help. The Holy Spirit will guide us along our unique individual spiritual journey at the rate we each need in order to become the person Jesus wants us to be. As we focus our hearts on Jesus and immerse ourselves in His teachings, the Holy Spirit will transform our lives, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,[a] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” – 2 Cor. 3:18 (ESV).