FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT - Part 1

“When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for Me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."  (Acts 1:8 GNT)

As Jesus prepared to enter heaven, He told His followers of an event that would change them from the inside out. The Holy Spirit was going to come into their lives… we would be filled with the Spirit. When we become followers of Jesus Christ, He immediately enters our lives. We pray for His filling, which means a full cooperation with Him and all He wants to do through us.

[The Spirit] is the presence of Christ with us, everywhere we go. He gives us special gifts for ministry. He counsels and comforts us, and each day He continues to transform us to the image of Christ Himself -- through tiny, almost imperceptible moments when we think something or do something that is the Jesus way, instead of our old way. And as we are filled with the Spirit, we begin to know what it means to have a truly full life. 

-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”

#4902

EMPTY AND RECEPTIVE

How much easier it is for most of us to give than it is to receive.  When we are in a giving mode, we are generally strong and in charge.  Sometimes we have to be brought to our knees before we are ready to receive.  This is when events and circumstances of life take over and do the emptying for us.  Maybe a bout of extended illness, or the trauma of a divorce, or the heartache of a loved one's death empties us.  When we cannot stand on our own strength, when we do not have the inner resources we normally have, we are being readied to receive.  When we are empty and poor inside, we finally realize that we have to rely on someone else giving us what we need.

Many things are given to us when we are receptive -- gifts such as a deeper understanding about ourselves and about life, a stronger union with God, a much fuller appreciation of friends and loved ones, a new look at things we so easily took for granted, a renewed vision of life that we only dimly glimpsed before.

At first we may not be receptive to what is being offered.  What is being poured into the receptive cup of our hearts may seem to be unneeded by us, or it may initially challenge us, or frighten us.  We may not want to hear the truth about our illusions, or take a giant risk of change, or to make a huge leap of belief in ourselves and others, or to accept a love like God's that is so total and unconditional.

-- Joyce Rupp in The Cup of Our Life

#3982

SPILLING OUT

"Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!"  (Philippians 4:4 NLT)

Philippians is Paul's happiest letter. And the happiness is infectious. Before we've read a dozen lines, we begin to feel the joy ourselves -- the dance of words and the exclamations of delight have a way of getting inside us. But happiness is not a word we can understand by looking it up in the dictionary. In fact, none of the qualities of the Christian life can be learned out of a book. Something more like apprenticeship is required, being around someone who out of years of devoted discipline shows us, by his or her entire behavior, what it is. Moments of verbal instruction will certainly occur, but mostly an apprentice acquires skill by daily and intimate association with a 'master,' picking up subtle but absolutely essential things, such as timing and rhythm and 'touch.'

When we read what Paul wrote to the Christian believers in the city of Philippi, we find ourselves in the company of just such a master. Paul doesn't tell us that we can be happy, or how to be happy. He is simply and unmistakably happy. None of his circumstances contribute to his joy: He wrote from a jail cell, his work under attack by competitors, and after twenty years or so of hard travelling in the service of Jesus, he was tired and would have welcomed some relief. But circumstances are incidental compared to the life of Jesus, the Messiah, that Paul experiences from the inside. For it is a life that not only happened at a certain point in history, but continues to happen, spilling out into the lives of those who receive Him, and then continues to spill out all over the place. Christ is, among much else, the revelation that God cannot be contained or hoarded. It is this 'spilling out' quality of Christ's life that accounts for the happiness of Christians, for joy is life in excess, the overflow of what cannot be contained within any one person.

-- Eugene Peterson's introduction to the book of Philippians in The Message

#3713