I'm not mechanically minded.  My brother Peter can fix a piece of machinery with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back.  He is a mechanical genius.  Whatever side of the brain that's on I didn't get it.  Somehow I missed it.  If you see me pulled off to the side of the 407 someday, if you see I've got my van stopped on the side of the road and the hood up and I'm bending over it like that - stop!    I am not fixing it.    I'm just praying over the thing.    But I do know how to read the gauges, especially that one gauge that only has 2 letters on it, "F" and "E".  If my van comes to a chug-a-chug-a stop and that gauge is on "E" I know I'm in big trouble.  I know you cannot run a car without fuel.    I also know that you cannot live the Christian life without spiritual fuel.  This morning I want us to discover the fuel of the Christian life.  I want us to study the source of power for the Christian life.  I am concerned for many of you, for your souls are running on empty.  You are experiencing defeat after defeat; you're down on yourself; you're down on your relationships.  Instead of overcoming the world as Christ promised, the world seems to be overcoming you.    You cannot run a car without fuel.  We cannot live the Christian life without fuel, and the fuel is the Holy Spirit.  For us to try to live the Christian life, for us to try to be Christ's church without the Holy Spirit, is like trying to get somewhere in your car without fuel.  They call it burn-out.  It simply means trying to operate on empty.  It will wear you out trying to push your car to work and back.    It will wear you out to try to produce the Christ-like character without the fuel of the Holy Spirit.  It will wear you out to try to serve like Christ without Christ's Spirit energizing you.  It will wear you out; you will be defeated again and again without the fullness of the Holy Spirit in you.    We learned last week that the Holy Spirit is called the advocate, or helper.  He has been given to us by Jesus Christ to enable us to live the Christian life.  Now here is some good news.  The good news is that every one of you here today, who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, now has the Holy Spirit living in you.  Every one of you.  Not one person was missed; not one person was skipped over.  If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ and call him Lord of your life then the Holy Spirit lives in you.  There is no need for you to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  You have been baptized by the Holy Spirit the moment you received Jesus Christ into your life.  In I Corinthians 12:13 we read that by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.  Notice to whom this statement is addressed - it is not made to the faithful Thessalonians, or the generous Philippians, or the spiritual Ephesians, but to the Corinthians.  It was made to a church that, if you visited once, you would never want to go back.  The atmosphere of the Corinthian church was filled with jealousy, bitterness, anger - they were taking each other to court; their worship was chaotic.  It was not a good scene.  Yet Paul says to them that by one Spirit [they] have been baptized.    So, regardless of our experience in the present, when we come to Christ in repentance and faith God gives his Spirit to us.  We are baptized with the Spirit.  Nowhere in the New Testament is there a command to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.  That is because we already received him when we came to Christ.    This does not mean, however, that we are all controlled by, or filled with, the Spirit.  Some of us here have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, have received his gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but are still living self-directed lives.  We are still trying to live the Christian life by sheer determination.    "I will be a better person."  No, you won't, because tomorrow you will fall into the same old sin.    "I will make this relationship work."  No, you won't.  Tomorrow you will mess it all up again.    Listen closely, you cannot overcome the world, the flesh and the devil; you cannot produce the Christ-like character in you by sheer determination.  It is not determination that we need, so much as dependence on the Holy Spirit.  We do not need more self-control, but more Spirit control.    That is why the gospel is so hard for us to accept in North America.  No, let's bring it home - in affluent Markham.  God continually calls us to be dependent on Him.  There is a sense that it was much better for the Israelites to be in the wilderness for forty years, because they were dependent on God, than to be in the Promised Land.  Why?  Because as soon as they stepped across the border, they discovered it was a land of milk and honey and they said, "Who needs God when we've got all this?"  They would soon learn that they needed God.    Don't make the same mistake.  We must be dependent upon God the Father for our life; we must be dependent upon God the Son for our eternal life; we must be dependent upon God the Holy Spirit for our Christian life.  We must live in dependence upon him.    So, we have all received the Holy Spirit, and we must seek to live in dependence upon him, under his control.  The question is not then, do we have all of the Holy Spirit, but rather, does the Holy Spirit have all of us, of you, of me?    This brings us to our text, Ephesians 5:18, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  Instead, be filled with the Spirit." (NIV)    What do we discover when we look at this text? It is a command    Well, you discover that this is a command.  This is not a suggestion from God, but a command. It is for every Christian    You also discover that this is for every Christian everywhere.  It is not just for the pastor, or those spiritual men, or those spiritual women, who seem to have time to study their Bibles and be spiritual, or those seniors who now have finished the important work of the world and can spend time with God.  This is a command for everyone, for Christians in the marketplace and Christian children, for Christian parents, for Christian seniors, for Christian singles.  Every Christian, every Christian, is to be filled with the Spirit.      A.W. Tozer writes:  "The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity.  It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for [all] his people." 1 The Spirit's filling is not automatic    We also discover that living under the Spirit's control is not automatic.  If the Spirit's control over my life were automatic there wouldn't need to be this command.  My friends, we have all of the Spirit that we need in us.  The question here is, does the Holy Spirit have all of me?  That's not automatic because of my pride, because of my wanting to live life the way I want to live life.  It's not automatic that the Spirit becomes sovereign in my life. The Spirit's filling is to be constant    And then we discover that it is to be constant.  This does not come out well in the English.  But the Greek verb is continual present tense.  It should read literally, "Keep on being filled with the Spirit."  In other words, this is a continual process; this is not a one-time occurrence.  Keep on being controlled by the Holy Spirit.    You may have eaten a big meal Saturday night, but that won't do you any good on Sunday or Monday.  The filling is depleted.  You may fill your gas tank on Friday, but that does you no good on Sunday morning because your teenager took your car on Saturday and emptied the tank.  The filling is depleted.  So with the Spirit.  No matter how full of the Spirit you may be when you leave this morning, it won't last you all week.    Now, I need to be careful here - because this is where the illustrations of the gas tank and hunger break down.  I'm not saying that the Spirit leaves you.  It's not that we become empty of the Holy Spirit - no, he has taken up settled and permanent residence in your life.  It is rather that his control is depleted by life's circumstances, by people around us, and by sin in our lives.  He is dethroned in our lives by all of these - we have all there is to have of the Holy Spirit, but his control can be depleted.  So it is to be continuous.    Now this leads us to the question, "What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?"    If you've stayed with me, you can answer that question.  To be filled with the Holy Spirit means to be controlled by the Spirit.  It means to enthrone the Holy Spirit in your life, in my life.  It means to recognize him as sovereign in your life.    Paul gives us a clear picture here of what it means to be controlled by the Spirit.  He uses a contrast saying, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  Instead, be filled with the [Holy] Spirit." (Ephesians 5:18) (NIV)    Even if you don't know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you know what it means for someone to be drunk on wine.    I am indebted to the teaching of Tony Evans in here: You know that a drunken man doesn't get that way by looking at advertisements for liquor.  He gets drunk by drinking.  And the more he drinks, the more drunk he gets.  The more drunk he gets, the more completely the alcohol inside him is controlling him.    When a man becomes drunk, another power takes over his life.  We say he is under the influence of alcohol.  This substance transforms him into someone he was not before.  One minute he is nice and quiet.  But when the juice takes over, he becomes loud and boisterous.  He becomes aggressive.  He thinks he is Pavarotti, and he starts to sing.    When a police officer stops someone who is driving under the influence of alcohol and tells him to walk a straight line, he can't do it.  Something else controls his legs.  No matter what the officer tells him to do, he can't do what he used to do, the way he used to do it, because something else is running the show.    What alcohol is to the body, negatively, the Holy Spirit is to the spirit, positively.  He makes you walk in ways you would not walk normally.  We find ourselves walking in the way of humility and service.  The Holy Spirit makes you talk in ways you wouldn't talk normally.  You have a freedom to speak of things that are of eternal significance.    When the Spirit takes over, a lot of our excuses are nullified.  We say, "Well, that's my personality."  But the Spirit can change our personalities.  "But this is how I was raised."  Well, when the Spirit takes over, he can change the way you were raised into the way you ought to be.  "I've always been like this."  That's because you have not always been under the control of the Spirit of God.    The Spirit transforms us supernaturally.  That's why I say determination is of no use when it comes to change.  What we need is dependence, being under the control of the Holy Spirit.  A sober man doesn't have to try to stagger.  All he has to do is get drunk.  The alcohol will take care of the staggering.  He doesn't have to try to change his personality.  He just has to get drunk.    So rather than saying, "I am not going to do that anymore," what we need to do is get intoxicated with the Spirit, get under the control of the Holy Spirit.  When we yield control to him, he takes care of the transformation.2    So, how can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?  How can I get under his control?  Now, I am cautious of formulas.  We must recognize that God is sovereign; he does the filling.  He is in control but, just like you cannot command the wind to blow, if you don't have your sail hoisted, you won't go anywhere when it does blow.    So, how can we be filled with the Spirit?    First, recognize your need.  In Isaiah we read God's words, "I will pour water on a thirsty land, and steams on the dry ground: I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring."  (Isaiah 44:3) (NIV)    God promises to fill us with his inexhaustible, renewing, reviving Spirit when we recognize our need.    Second, surrender yourself fully to God.  Romans 6:13 reads, "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness." (Romans 6:13) (NIV)    In other words, when we yield ourselves to God, we do not simply sit back and hope that God will somehow work through us.  No, instead we place ourselves at his disposal - we say in effect, "Lord, I am yours, to be used in whatever way you want to use me.  I am at your disposal and you may do with me whatever you will.  I seek your will for my life and not my own."    My friends, all of you who have welcomed Jesus Christ into your life, now have the Holy Spirit as resident - but some of you have not made him president.  There are still areas of your life that you have not yielded to him.  You are making business deals without first consulting him.  You have spent your money without first consulting him.  You have not made God sovereign in your relationships.  You continue to live life according to your will and your desires rather than his desires.    Won't you recognize your need?  Won't you realize how parched the ground of your heart is?    My friends, as long as I think I can live this Christian life in my own strength, I will not know the power of the Holy Spirit in my life.  As long as we think as a church that we can win this town, that we can feed the hungry, that we can minister and care for one another with our own abilities and our own energy, we will not succeed.    To be sure, we have resources and we will feed this person, and that person will be saved, and this other one will be helped.    But, something happens when the people of God recognize their poverty, even though they may be in the midst of great wealth financially, great ability and great determination - when the people of God recognize that even though they have all of this, they still do not have anything if they do not have the Spirit of God.  When we, the people of God, finally realize that we can do nothing apart from Christ, with the fullness of his Spirit in us, then something happens to the people of God, something happens to the church.    Jesus Christ is glorified.  People are brought to repentance and faith.  Our Lord's character begins to shine through us and his church truly becomes his body reaching out to the world in love, compassion, and grace. Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - April 2001 Footnotes: 1. Quoted by Michael Cassidy, "Bursting the Wineskins" (c. 1983 Wheaton, Illinois, U.S.A. Harold Shaw Publishers), p. 143 2. Tony Evans, "The Promise" (c. 1996 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Moody Press), pp. 82-83 Most often, the fullness of the Spirit is characterized by the moral rather than the miraculous.