Filled with the Fullness
Filled with the fullness of God: this is the experience to which the fullness of the Spirit is intended to bring us and will bring us.
God has made provisions for our enlightenment. In Christ Jesus we see a man full of God, a man who was perfected by suffering and obedience, filled with all the fullness of God. He was a man who in the solitariness and poverty of an ordinary human life, with all its needs and infirmities, has nevertheless let us see on earth the life enjoyed by the inhabitants of heaven. The will and the honor, the love and the service of God were always visible in Him. God was all to Him.
When God called the world into existence, it was in order that it might reveal Him. In it His wisdom, might, and goodness were to dwell and be visibly manifested. We say continually that nature is full of God. God can be seen in everything by the believing eye. The seraphim sing, and the whole earth is full of His glory. When God created man after His image, it was in order that He Himself might be seen in man, that man would simply serve as a reflection of His likeness. The image of a man never serves any other purpose than to represent the man. As the image of God, man was destined simply to receive the glory of God in his own life, to bear it and make it visible. Man was to be full of God.
This divine purpose has been frustrated by sin. Instead of being full of God, man became full of himself ad the world. Sin has blinded us to such an extent that it appears an impossibility ever to become full of God again. Even many Christians see nothing desirable in this fullness. Yet Jesus came to redeem us and bring us back to this blessing. God is prepared to work mightily within us by His Spirit. This is no less the result for which the Son of God desires to dwell in our heart and which He will bring to accomplishment.
Yes, this is the highest aim of the Pentecostal blessing. To attain this, we can count on the Spirit to make sure of our reaching it. He will open the way for us and guide us in it. He will work in us the deep humility of Jesus, who always said: "I can of Myself do nothing;" "I do not My own will;" "The words I speak, I speak not of Myself." Amid this self-emptying and sense of dependence, He will work in us the assurance and the experience that for the soul which is nothing, God is surely ALL.. By our faith He will reveal Jesus to us, who was full of God. He will cause us to be rooted in the love in which God gives all, and we will take God as all. Thus it will be with us as with Jesus: man is nothing, and God's honor, His will, His love, and His power are everything.
I beg of you by the love of God not to say that this is too high an experience for you or that it is not for you. No, it is in truth the will of God concerning you: the will alike of His commandment and of His promise. He Himself will work it out. Today, in humility and faith, take this word, "Filled with the fullness of God," as the purpose and watchword of your life and see what it will do for you.
~Andrew Murray~
(continued with # 39)
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