Walking with God and living the Christian life can be easy if you do the hardest thing first. Corrie Ten Boom said, “Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”  To be filled with the Spirit requires the hardest thing I  have to do and that is emptying myself of me.

Jesus said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  Luke 9:23. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is not getting more of the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit getting more of you. Every day, I must say to God, I am laying myself on the altar today as a living sacrifice so that in everything it is not my will, but your will be done. Then I have to fill my life with the things of the Spirit. I do this through reading God’s word, through prayer, through worship, through stewardship, through service, through sharing my faith, and through fasting.