Luke 1:14-15 :
You will have joy and gladness; and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.
This is a great true story. A good couple suffered, prayed, waited and finally received an amazing gift directly from God. The angel promised that they would have joy and gladness and that their son would be one they would be very proud of.
I see two very important things here that I want to mention. Notice that one good thing about their son was he would not drink alcohol. This implies that drinking alcohol is to be avoided by good people. It is very interesting to contrast this with the special gift that John was to be given in that he was to be filled with the Holy Spirit before birth!
If you are struggling with an addiction, I encourage you to start depending on the Holy Spirit and turn away from anything else that comes between you and God. We should be addicted to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to fill our minds with God’s word. Let God’s Holy Spirit speak to you directly as you study, think about and sing about God and His word and you will see why drugs and alcohol are a pitiful substitution for the real thing.
Our minds were meant to be full, not empty. They were designed to think, not be wasted. The Holy Spirit conquers the mind with the word of God if we will allow him to do it, and he and will fill us inside causing us to see how much better things are when He is our God. As God works in our minds, we see things as they really are and life actually makes more sense.
The second issue I want to discuss is abortion. This is important because many people try to put away the guilt of abortion by saying that the baby in the womb is not a person. Here we read that John was not only spoken of as a person in the womb, but was to be filled with the Holy Spirit there. Modern Americans have been very inconsistent. The same Creator that endows us with certain unalienable rights has stated that babies are people in the womb.
I realize that this makes many people guilty of murder, but Jesus said that all of us, when we hate someone are guilty of it. Jesus died for hate and abortion just as well as all of the other sins we do. What we must do is confess our sins and start living by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we will sin less and less. Our desire to sin will never go away, but the power to stop sinning is with us because we have the Holy Spirit as Christians.