Pastor Benny Tate knows that the enemy can keep us busy to the point where the priority of serving God sometimes becomes an afterthought. Our culture has opened its doors wide for that attitude, especially in America.
But then Tate, who has served for more than 30 years as senior pastor of Rock Springs Church in Milner, Georgia, also knows that with God’s Holy Spirit, we don’t have to “compartmentalize” our lives to exclude our Lord and Savior from any part of our life.
We must, Tate says, think of our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit, which should be welcome in every corner of our lives.
“As elementary as it may sound, the more I give myself to God … the more we are letting Him in every room,” says Tate, author of Unlimited: Experiencing the Fullness of God’s Power in Your Life.
“A lot of times we say that ‘God, You can be in this section of my life, but I don’t want You in the business aspect of my life.
“I’ve learned that when we allow Him to enter every room, when I’m surrendering every room, every aspect of my life, that’s when I experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life.”
Unfortunately, many believers never experience the fullness of their Holy Spirit in their own lives because they never fully surrender to Him. Many believers in the body of Christ don’t realize how the Holy Spirit can impact every part of their being because they don’t truly believe they are capable of embracing the Holy Spirit as a “layperson” in the church.
They believe that the Holy Spirit’s dunamis power is simply reserved for God’s elect. And, Tate says, nothing can be further from the truth.
Tate mentions that in Exodus 31, a man named Bezaleel was the first person the Bible says was filled with the Holy Spirit. He designed stones for the Tabernacle and was a master craftsman.
In essence, the first person that was filled with the Holy Spirit was not a sacred priest, a prophet or a Levite. He was secular. He was not in ministry, but in the marketplace.
“Bezaleel was simply a secular person and I just think that we have to understand that the Holy Spirit is for every aspect of our lives,” Tate says. “It’s interesting that we talked about being filled with the Spirit. We read Ephesians 5:18, and right after that verse, that’s when Paul talks about the husband and wife relationship.
“Right after those verses is when he talks about the parenting and child relationship. After those verses, he talks about the employer-employee relationships. The bottom line is, for that to be fruitful and effective, it’s going to come through being filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have a clue as to what to do or what to say or how to act or how to respond. We desperately need the Holy Spirit.”
Tate says it doesn’t simply apply to individual believers. This kingdom concept also applies to the church itself, and many individual churches need, and desperately crave, a fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit every time they meet.
“Most churches are starting at 11 o’clock sharp and they’re ending at 12 o’clock dull,” reveals Tate. “We’ve got everything programmed and planned, but we need the Holy Spirit to lead our churches. We need the Holy Spirit to lead our services. Everything will be decently in order, as long as it’s led by Him.”
That happens especially in the American church. Yes, the Holy Spirit is a desired part of the service, but many church officials and congregation members count on the fact that God is orderly. They are focused so much on that, that they miss out on the great things the Holy Spirit has for them on any given Sunday or Wednesday night.
Jesus told His disciples not to preach or to assimilate—or do anything—until they were endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
“If He told these men not to minister without the Holy Spirit, why would the American church be trying to do anything else?” Tate asks. “I don’t know why we would try to do anything without the presence of the Holy Spirit leading us. I am convinced that unless the Holy Spirit leads me, nothing of significance is ever going to happen.”
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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