To be filled with the Spirit is to be controlled by the Spirit and is therefore crucial to successfully living the Christian life.  Unlike the indwelling of the Spirit, filling is a repeated experience.  This is underscored by the use of the present tense ("be filled") as well as by biblical examples of Christians who were filled more than once.

Acts 2:4  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.  A very proper, needful, and serviceable  miracle.  The language the disciples spoke was Syriac, a dialect of the Hebrew; so that it was necessary that they should be endued with the gift, for the understanding both of the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, in which it was written, and of the original Greek of the New Testament, in which it was to be written.  But this was not all; they were commissioned to preach the gospel to everycreature, to disciple all nations.  But here is an insupperable difficulty at the theshold.  How shall they master the several languages so as to speak intelligibly to all nations?  It will be the work of a man's life to learn their languages.  And therefore, to prove that Christ could give authority to preach to the nations, he gives ability to preach to them in their own language.  And is s hould seem that this was the accomplishment of that promise which CHrist made to his disciples.

 

Acts 4:31 ANd when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.

   When they had prayed, one by one, according to the rule, and when they had concluded the work of the day, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; there was a strong mighty wind, such as that when the Spirit was poured out upon them which shook the house, which was now their house of prayer.

  Just as important, we must observe that filling is a command to be obeyed, not an option.

    The next most important question is, How can someone be filled with the Spirit?  The prerequisites are simply confession of sin and yielding to God.  The former means to agree with God about the person's sin; the latter means primary dedication of himself to God.  As the believer chooses to  obey in these areas he is filled with the Spirit and enabled to manisfest Christlike character.  This obedience may be accompanied by prayer but is not necessarily so.

   The certainty of being filled with the Spirit may be confirmed by the believer's faith and life.  The believer must, of course, believe God's Word that meeting the conditions will result in the filling.  The Spirit-filled person will exhibit the CHristlike character described in (Galations 5:22, 23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such ther is no law.) as the fruit of the Spirit. 

 

He specifies the fruits of the Spirit, or the renewed mature nature, which as Christians we are concerned to bring forth.  And here we may observe that as sin is called the work of the flesh, because the flesh, or corrupt nature, is the principle that moves ans excites men to it, so grace is said to be the fruit of the Spirit, because it wholly proceeds from the SPirit, as the fruit does from the root: and whereas before the apostle has chiefly specified those works of the flesh which were not only hurtful to men themselves but tended to make them so to one another, so he chiefly takes notice of those fruits of the Spirit which had a tendency to make Christians agreeablle one to another, as well as easy to themselves; and this was very suitable to the caution or exhortation he had before given, that they should not use their liberty a an occassion to the flesh, but by love serve on another. 

 

Included in that list are all the vibrant, atractive qualities desired by all Christians.  How delightful it is that any Christiain may possess them and be transformed by the filling of the Spirit.