POSSESSION, PROPHECY & PERSONALITY

“POSSESSION, PROPHECY & PERSONALITY"

Beloved Unchained Family, highly estimated friends:

We read in I Samuel 10.6,7:

“Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you,
and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.
And let it be, when these signs come to you,
that you do as the occasion demands; for God is with you.”

I remember that when my son Lucas was around 5 years old, I would ask him: “Son, what is the most important thing in this life?”, and he would promptly answer: “To be filled with the Holy Spirit, dad!”
Every time I would hear his response using these exact same words, a wave of joy would stream through my heart, because since early childhood I had been talking to him about the Person of the Holy Spirit and the amazing changes that His presence produces in our lives.

The text we read is the narrative of a very special and decisive moment in the life of a man who was about to be completely “possessed” when the Holy Spirit came upon him in a special and very intriguing approach. Saul was about to be the first king of Israel, and there is no way he could handle such a great undertaking without the enabling and power of the Lord.

We have three powerful statements in this verse, immediately followed by the result of them, and the order of the events are increasingly relevant, because we cannot have a full expression of the things of God if we are not completely dominated by His Spirit, and we will not be changed unless the same Spirit would do it.

With that in mind, what happened to Saul? Scriptures are clear that at least three main phenomenas happened to him on that day:

1 - He was “possessed” by the Holy Spirit
We see early manifestations of the Holy Spirit throughout the Bible, long before His great descent on Pentecost empowering the early church, after Jesus’ resurrection. Here, Saul, a very timid and young man was the receptacle of one of those demonstrations. With his experience, we learn that we can have our body, soul and spirit completely governed by the Lord, through His Spirit. What a beautiful thing is to have “the Lord coming upon us” and to be completely possessed by God! 

2 - He started prophesying
After being filled with the presence of God, Saul started prophesying. It is only natural that someone overcome by the Spirit of God begins uttering the wonderful things of the Lord.
In fact, Jesus foresaw that His own disciples would be filled with the Spirit with the main task of being His witnesses for the proclamation of the Gospel, which is one of the powerful sides of prophecy, the main one, actually. Also, when the early disciples received the Holy Ghost in Pentecost, prophecies of the greatness of the Lord were the protagonist event again.
There is no empowering of the Spirit of God that does not honor the proclamation of Who the Lord is and His wonderful deeds, and that is coherent and evident throughout Scriptures.

3 - He was changed into a new person
Here we have the climax of that episode in Saul’s life, the power and divine presence that would enable him to battle and win wars, to lead a whole nation under the counseling of the God of Israel and take care of the Kingdom’s affairs. The verse said he would be “turned into another man”! His personality, the very fabric of everything that was imprinted in his soul would change, his essence would be reshaped, because when the Holy Spirit “takes” someone, nothing remains the same.

In verse 7, we see that the outcome of this “possession” is absolutely amazing. Saul is given a green light, something close to a “free pass” to his next moves, because God Himself would be with him. What an amazing statement, what an impact, to do something with God Himself as the guarantor is simply pretty awesome! Being controlled and filled with the Holy Spirit opens endless possibilities and is the maximum credential someone can attain to operate in the Kingdom of God.

We can all be “possessed” by the Spirit of God, prophesy the glory of the Almighty to the world and be changed into a new person - today! That’s also called revival, and we certainly need it every day in our walk with the Lord.

Wishing peace, health and many blessings to your body and soul,
Pr. Joshua Mateíne