Those who are filled with the Holy Spirit are not “lone rangers” whose total Christian experience is vertical — “me and Jesus.” After committing themselves to Christ, they also commit themselves horizontally as they find their place in the body of Christ.
The apostle Peter describes this twofold conversion process of first coming to Christ and then participating in Christ’s body (1 Peter 2:4–5): “As you come to Him, the living Stone . . . you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” The Christian life is not a superficial gathering together of isolated individual believers. When the Holy Spirit came upon the early Christians, they were together with one heart and soul. In Acts 2:41–47 we see just how much they were together: “All the believers were together and had everything in common . . . . every day they continued to meet together . . . they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”
In Acts 4:31–32, in addition to boldness for preaching, there was another result of the believers being filled with the Holy Spirit: “All the believers were one in heart and mind… they shared everything in common.” The Holy Spirit brings us together in unity and transforms us into a family. There is power when we participate in genuine Spirit-filled Christian fellowship. Jesus said in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three of you come together in my name, there am I with them.” Of course, Jesus lives in us as individuals and He is with us all the time. But the Holy Spirit adds another dimension of His presence and power when we gather together in His name.
I will never forget a personal experience that made me appreciate this truth in new ways. When our children were young, Cheri and I took them to Disneyland.Having been a youth pastor in Southern California for a number of years, I had been to Disneyland many times, so being there again was not something that I was excited about. The weather was dreary and overcast, I had grudgingly spent a lot of money on admission tickets, and I just plain didn’t want to be there. In fact, I felt somewhat depressed and irritable. Had I been a Disney character that day, my name would have been “Grumpy.” Once inside the park, my children spotted “Goofy,” the dog in many Disney cartoons. They ran to him, eager to shake his hand. Obviously, Goofy was a person dressed up in an elaborate costume with a huge happy mask that entirely covered his head. He was thoroughly enjoying himself as he danced around and shook hands with all who came up to him. I meandered over to him, following my kids, and I started to put my hand out to shake his. As he extended his hand toward me, something very remarkable happened — our hands never met. Instead, without any thought of doing so, our arms reached out toward one another and we found ourselves embracing in a warm bear hug. Amazingly, I experienced the very powerful presence of the Holy Spirit, and I said to him, “You are a Christian, aren’t you?” Without saying a word, Goofy took Cheri’s hand and “drew” on her palm with his finger the shape of a cross. Then he used his finger to write the letters “B-O-R-N A-G-A-I-N.”
I tingled all over! A fellow Christian, whose face I could not even see, from whom I heard no voice or words, had brightened my whole day. The Holy Spirit in him and the Holy Spirit in me drew us together in a way that lifted me up and gave me a joyous heart for the rest of the day. That experience still amazes me because I had no visible or audible cues that told me “Goofy” was a Christian. It was purely and simply the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit that revealed it to me. Think about this: If that one encounter with one fellow Christian whom I didn’t even know was a Christian had so much power to bless and strengthen and encourage me, imagine how much blessing, strengthening and encouragement comes to us when we deliberately come together with brothers and sisters in Christ to worship Him, pray together, study His Word, and serve Him as a team.
It would be extremely difficult to overemphasize the importance of fellowship for Christ-centered, Spirit-filled living. The spiritual gifts of healing, words of knowledge, prophecy, words of encouragement, and other gifts generally are most effectively released within the context of believers gathered together in the name of Jesus. In one small group Cheri and I belonged to, the Holy Spirit used our prayers for one another to dramatically heal two of our men in one evening. One was an executive on medical leave from his job, suffering from an emotional breakdown; the other, an operations manager for a large corporation, had been diagnosed by his doctor to have five or six things wrong with him. The man experiencing the emotional crisis was completely healed. The amazed doctor sent him back to work the next week. The other man was healed of all but one of his conditions, and that one was greatly improved.
Certainly, our participation in Christ-centered, Spirit-filled community is God’s primary plan for bringing us to spiritual maturity (read Ephesians 4:11-16). If you are Spirit-filled, you will be motivated to be in fellowship; and if you want to be Spirit-filled, you must be in fellowship. I leave this section with one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Act 14:19-20. Its relevance here obviously speaks for itself: “They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city.” PRAISE THE LORD!!!