Saturday, April 24, 2010

Being Filled.

Our fast is almost over. We have emptied our bodies, deprived ourselves of all kinds of foods. In a few hours we’ll eat again, and there are lots of choices of what to put into our waiting stomachs. You can put in junk food. You can choose healthy alternatives. I recommend taking it easy. Choose foods that are gentle on the stomach and easy to digest.
It’s very much the same on a spiritual level. I looked up all the verses in the Bible that talk about being filled. You can be filled with anger, hate, malice, envy, evil, fear, worry, terror, self, pride, and deceit. You can also be filled with compassion, love, joy, mercy, righteousness, knowledge of the glory of the Lord, awe, glory, justice and power of the Spirit of the Lord. You can be filled with the Holy Spirit, God himself, in you.
If you’ve been on your face before God, I’m sure that He has helped you empty your spirit of the junk you found there. Maybe you found yourself truly hungry for righteousness, desiring to have God fill you. That is what God wants to do!
God had this crazy idea, because He is crazy in love with you, that he would send his son to the Earth to die for us, to give us the Holy Spirit, so that He can fill us up. He is crazy about you, and He wants you to be crazy about Him, so that you can live in fellowship with Him forever.
Paul writes, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:14-21
In these last few hours, meditate on how wide, long, high and deep the love of Christ is and what it means to be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”.

Read Acts 2
What happened to the people gathered together?
What did people on the outside think of them?
How did those filled with the Spirit live afterwards?
In what way does this apply to you today?


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