Is He in You?

I went to a concert at a church on the South Side earlier this evening, and I had a blast. Awesome music, the fellowship of friends, free cookies, and free refills on coffee. What else could a man ever want?

The headlining band was a Christian group by the name of Maron. They're not a big-name group and most people I talk to have never heard of them, but they put out some phenomenal music and I'd highly recommend checking them out. Their lyrics are very good as well and while they're often funny or humorous, they're usually quite profound as well. 

One of the songs they performed tonight parodied the "Is It in You?" Gatorade slogan. Surprisingly enough, the song was called, "Is It in You?" Anyway, the chorus went something like this:

Is it in you? Are you quenched?
Is it in you? Are you drenched?
Is it in you? Is it in you?

I imagine that most people have seen the black and white Gatorade ads with people sweating out different colors of Gatorade. I'm not an advertising executive, but it's not hard to guess why the athletes in the ads are able to sweat in Technicolor. If a person drinks Gatorade, they can sweat Gatorade too...or at least they can in the commercials. I drink Gatorade every once in a while, but I've never managed to pull off that sweat trick. Not once. Maybe you have to be a professional athlete for it to work.

It sounds like Maron's song might make a good jingle for Gatorade, and while it would, the lyrics are talking about something deeper than sports drinks and sweat. In Maron's song the "it" in the "Is it in you?" doesn't refer to Gatorade---it refers to the Holy Spirit. 

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The moment a person becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit takes up a residence in that person's heart. If you're a Christian and someone asks, "Is He in you?" you can honestly answer, "Yeah, He's in me." Here's where things start to get interesting, though. In the Gatorade ads, if "it" is in someone, you can tell by the color of his or her sweat. If the Holy Spirit is in someone, you can tell by the way he or she lives...can't you?

I think that sometimes, we profess to have it in us, but we don't have the sweat to prove it. There are times when we don't live like the Christians we claim to be, and that's wrong. If He's really in you, then people should be able to tell by the way you act.

In Ephesians 5:18, Paul tells the church in Ephesus not to be filled with wine, but to be filled with the Holy Spirit instead. When a person is filled with wine, it affects everything he does, because they're under the influence of the wine. In the same way, when a person is filled with the Holy Spirit, it should also affect everything he does. Instead of filling ourselves with the garbage this world has to offer, let's be filled with the Holy Spirit instead. In the end, He's far more satisfying.

Is He in you? Are you quenched?