How much control do we have over staying full of the Holy Spirit?
At salvation, believers are filled to the brim with the Holy Spirit, and this fullness is not earned. Yet God leaves within our realm of control how much fullness we maintain, so we can either keep it or let it empty by filling our lives with material things.
Les teaches that the moment we're saved, we have all of God as He can put Himself into us; we have everything so far as the fullness of the Holy Spirit from the very moment we believe. You don't have to work for it or look for it; that was all part of salvation. However, God does leave within our realm of control how much of the fullness we're going to maintain, or whether we let it kind of empty out. Using a cup analogy, Les explains that when a cup is full of liquid, to fill it with air you have to pour the liquid out. If you pour out half a cup, half is full of air; if you pour out three-fourths, three-fourths is air and one-fourth is liquid. The moment we're saved, we're filled to the brim with the Holy Spirit, like a recently saved person who is bubbling over and excited. But we're still in this old world with all of its allurement, temptations, and desires of the flesh, so we start filling that cup with material things. Soon the cup is full of the material instead.