The ministry of the Holy Spirit is the most invisible of all the ministries in the Godhead. He encourages and helps in a silent, invisible way, without even wanting recognition or credit for His work. He is quite content for people to praise the Father and Jesus alone, and to be left out of the picture altogether. What a beautiful ministry.

What does it mean then to be filled with such a Spirit? It must mean that we will be like Him, content to have a ministry like His - silent, invisible, receiving no credit, and content for the credit to go to others. Are we indeed filled with this Spirit?

Many who claim to be "filled with the Holy Spirit" today however seek such prominence for themselves through the exercise of their gifts on Christian platforms, promote themselves, and seek for money for themselves. All this is anything but the work of the Holy Spirit. All this is the work of some other spirit counterfeiting the Holy Spirit, and it is our duty in the church to expose such counterfeit spirits and deception.

What is the identifying mark of being baptised in the Holy Spirit? Jesus made it crystal clear in Acts.1:8 that it was power. He never said a word about tongues being the evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Neither did the apostles say a word about this. If you had gone to those waiting disciples and asked them, "How will you know when you have been baptised in the Holy Spirit?" - they would not have said that they would speak in tongues. They would have said that Jesus had told them that they would receive power. You may ask "How will I know that I have received this power?" God can assure us of that, just like He assured us that our sins were forgiven. The Holy Spirit, Who bears witness with our spirit that our sins have been forgiven, will also bear witness that we have been endued with power. Ask God to give you the assurance for both these important matters. So, they were waiting for power. But when they got power, they also received the gift of speaking in unknown languages (tongues).

It is certainly God's will that every Christian should have power. To have power does not mean that you will become a fiery evangelist. You will have power to fulfil your own ministry in the Body of Christ. Consider the human body. To be a member of our human body, blood must flow through that member. An artificial hand cannot be a part of a body because the blood doesn't flow through it. In the same way, only where the blood of Christ has cleansed someone can that person be a part of Christ's body. But even if the blood flows in an arm, it could still be paralysed - and therefore be a useless member. If the paralysis is healed, and the arm gets power, will it become a tongue? No! It will become a powerful arm. In the same way, if a paralysed tongue receives power, it won't become an arm. It will become a powerful tongue. So, if God has called you to be a mother and you get filled with the Holy Spirit, you won't become an evangelist; you'll become a powerful, Spirit-filled mother.

The tongues of fire that sat on everyone's heads indicated that the most important part of our body that God would be using in the new covenant age would be the tongue - a tongue set on fire by the Holy Spirit and under His total control all the time. This is also part of the symbolism of the gift of tongues. God wants to use your tongue to bless others with, not only if you are a preacher, but also in your ordinary conversations with people every day. But for this, you must let the Holy Spirit have full control of your speech, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.