Maybe you have been a Christian for a while and yet have never before understood the filling of the Holy Spirit defined in this way. As a result you are not sure whether Jesus is still Lord of your life or not. Your next obvious question would be,

How can I presently be sure that I am filled with the Holy Spirit and that Jesus is presently Lord of my life?

If you are unaware of any unconfessed sin in your life at present, the way you are filled with the Holy Spirit is according to,

1. One, Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:18:
   
   "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."
   
   

2. And two, according to the Apostle John’s promise in the first Epistle of John 5:14-15:
   
   "And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

The Apostle Paul in God’s Word commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the Apostle John in God’s Word promises that whatever we ask God according to His will is ours because He promises to answer any prayer according to His will. It is God’s will that you be filled with the Holy Spirit, or that Jesus is Lord of your life.

If you would like to reacknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ over your life right now, and thus be filled with the Holy Spirit, then pray the following prayer,

Accept this as a fact, not as a feeling. It is not based on feelings but on the trustworthiness of Jesus Himself and His Word. The Bible says, it is impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18a). Jesus promised in His Word that if we would ask Him anything according to His will that He would do it. If you just prayed the above prayer, you are presently filled with the Holy Spirit and Jesus is Lord of your life.

How do we get unfilled with the Holy Spirit? The Apostle Paul commands in the book of Ephesians,

"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you." (Eph 4:30-32).

We become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we grieve the Holy Spirit. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we allow unforgiveness, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander to rule in our hearts instead of forgiveness and edifying conversation. Paul says in an earlier verse,

"Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear." (Eph 4:29).

We also become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we commit any act of immorality such as is outlined in 1 Corinthians 5:11, 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, and other related Scriptures.

We also become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we disobey Jesus’ instructions and commands to us through the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrews states,

"Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.’" (Heb 3:7-8)

You might ask the question, How do I know for certain when I am grieving the Holy Spirit and have retaken the control of a certain area of my life? Grieving the Holy Spirit through attitude or action is not a guessing game. Sometimes it is obvious to us, whether Jesus makes it obvious to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit or not, such as when we make false accusations against another. You know if you are telling the truth about someone or not. Therefore, whether you are aware of it or not by the Holy Spirit, you know when you have committed the sin of slander. If you are mindfully aware of it, then whether you feel convicted by the Holy Spirit or not the Bible says, "Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin." (James 4:17).  If you know you have knowingly sinned, then you have grieved the Holy Spirit. When you sin, you grieve the Holy Spirit.

Outside of known sin, Paul plainly says that we are not qualified to judge ourselves.

"But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord." (1 Cor 4:3-4).

Paul says here plainly that we are not qualified to judge the rightness nor the wrongness of our actions. We are not to play the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit came to convict the world concerning sin, judgment and righteousness.⁵³ This is what Paul is talking about in Galatians when he says, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal 5:1).

Jesus came to set us free of ourselves and self-examination so that we would be free to enjoy Him and His plans for our lives and so that we would look to Him and Him only to be the judge of sin in our lives, outside of obvious sin.

As was said earlier, the Christian life is a supernatural life. Only Jesus can live the Christian life, and only Jesus can live it through us. Only Jesus can intimately. Since Jesus created us and is Lord of our lives and since only Jesus knows what His plans for our lives are, only Jesus can know for certain what is truly sin in our lives against His Lordship and personal dictates to our lives. We cannot nor can anybody else. This is what Paul means when he says, "But he who is motivated and controlled through his spirit discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned¹¹⁵ by no man." (1 Cor 2:15). We are discerned, or judged by no man because only Jesus knows His individual Lordship over our lives. Paul says,

"Therefore do not go on judging anything before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God." (1 Cor 4:5).

This does not mean men will not try to judge us by appearance, but unless their judgment is motivated out of relationship with Jesus (Jesus coming and revealing the heart of the matter) backed by true investigation of the objective facts, their judgment has no valid basis, because only Jesus truly knows the motives of our hearts.⁶⁴

Therefore, outside of obvious sin in our lives, we are grieving the Holy Spirit when Jesus by the Spirit makes known plainly to us that that is what we are doing.

Paul says in another passage, "But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged" (1 Cor. 11:31). Paul is not talking here about self-introspection to try and find any unconfessed sin in our lives. He is, first, talking about dealing with obvious sin, what we know is sin in our lives. Second, he is talking about sin in our lives made known to us by Jesus through the Holy Spirit as a result of our asking Jesus to make known to us any sin in our lives before partaking of communion. Third, I believe it is talking about wrongly judging others from appearance’s sake before knowing all the facts and heart motivation behind others’ actions.⁶⁵ Jesus said, "Do not judge lest you be judged yourselves. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it shall be measured to you." (Matt 7:1-2).

If we judge others wrongfully then Jesus says He will judge us. Paul said that because of false judgment, "Many of you are weak and sick, and a number sleep" (1 Cor 11:30). How many of our brothers’ and sisters’ faith has been destroyed as a result of our wrongly judging them, by our comparing them to ourselves and by what we see only on the surface?⁶⁶ Many good Christians who needed our love and support have been weakened, made sick, and even died spiritually as well as physically because of our, many times unintentional, self-righteous, moralizing condemnation of their lives without any true heart factual basis? And how many times have we been hindered in our own spiritual, mental, and physical development because of our wrong slander of others? The writer of Proverbs states, "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion" (Prov 28:13).⁶⁷

We judge ourselves and others rightly when we look to Jesus and Jesus alone for His evaluation of our lives and others when taken into consideration with objective reality as well. Christianity is Jesus centeredness, not self-centeredness. Self centeredness and other-centeredness leads only to strife, self-condemnation, self-righteousness, intolerance of others’ weaknesses, etcetera. Because Christianity is Jesus centered, our confession of sin, aside from known sin, must be motivated out of relationship with Jesus to be meaningful and have healing virtue that will lead to life, because Jesus is Life.⁶⁸

When Jesus by the Holy Spirit makes us aware of an attitude or action in our lives that is not pleasing to Him, that is no longer surrendered to Him, He is doing this so that we can surrender or resurrender that area of our lives to Him.

One morning during my quiet time the Lord renewed to me the reality if we are to be anything in Him it must come out of relationship with Him. Jesus-stimulated by the Holy Spirit, not self-stimulated through the flesh. Self-stimulation leads to strife, self-righteousness, intolerance, and lack of love for self and others.