Many times its spoken in the Bible as having fullness. Many times we speak of being so 'full of God'. What do these things mean, and how do we get more?
My concept of receiving the fullness of God is someone with heaps of miracle power, very wise and knowledgeable. They are someone who is mysterious because of how deep their insight is.
In reading Ephesians we see some interesting pictures of what it looks like.
We see that the fullness of God is not too hard to imagine thanks to the efforts of a Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Because the fullness of God is Jesus Himself.
All the fullness of the deity was pleased to live in Christ.
The image of the invisible God etc.
We see that God is less confusing as we once thought, and all those issues we have regarding His wrath vs. mercy are while not quite resolved, not a struggle any more. We look at Jesus. Jesus was merciful, did He show wrath? Well in some cases, but he decided to postpone it until the end.
Paul prays 2 things over the Ephesian church in Ephesians 3:14-20, and we would do well to take it for ourselves!
1) That God would strengthen us in our inner being with power, so that Jesus can dwell in us through faith.
2) That we may have power to understand (grasp, comprehend, etc) the full extent of Jesus' love for us. And the power to know (experience) this love that goes beyond our understanding.
He prays these two things over them so that they might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Essentially, that they might have as much of God as they could possibly hold.
What strikes me here is that my view of what someone with the fullness of God looks like, and what actually is the fullness of God really don't share any of the same things.
Incredible knowledge, deep wisdom, mighty power, it is none of these things. It is not holiness, nor righteousness, nor spiritual gifts, not leadership ability.
It is love.
Can you receive God's love?
If you can't, you do not have the fullness of Him, no matter how powerful or wise you may be. Are you deeply in love with Him? Does your desire for His presence burn inside you?
All the things I listed before are not evil, but they are fruit, they are the fruit of this love. We can pursue fruit, but we have to pick each one, and we will never be able to hold it all with juggling it around and eventually dropping some. When we pursue understanding and experiencing God's love, the tree will grow inside us. This tree will have on its branches all these and more.
My challenge for myself this week is this;
Am I pursuing revelation of God's love, and living in it, or am I chasing something else?
Can I challenge you to do the same?
Love you guys, hopefully now that I am back to some sense of normality, I can post more, I plan to write more about my last trip as well as thoughts like this and updates of what is going on this year.
Be blessed,
Daniel