Eph 3:17-19 NIV “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 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.”
To be “filled with the fullness (pleroma) of God” means that God is the controlling influence at a given moment governing your feelings, desires, thoughts, hopes, relationships, words, actions, reactions, calendar, check book, etc. At any given time, you may be hangry, sad, lonely, righteously indignant, but you are not allowing those emotions to control you. You are continuing to walk in the Spirit. The Spirit wants to fill you until you reflect him to others. You were fashioned to be godlike (Gen 1:26; Eph 4:23-24) God employs his infinite power to ensure that this happens – v20 says, 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 . . .
Power is dunamis: “dynamite”. How much power does Paul say God has to “fill us with the fullness” of himself? Immeasurable!
Oswald Chambers in He Shall Glorify Me says, “The great idea is not that we are at work for God but that He is at work in us; not that we are devoted to a cause and doing aggressive work for God but that He is working out a strong likeness to His Son in us.”
In other words, the Spirit is not given just to some Christians and not others (see Romans 8:9). Those who are saved all have the same, the only, Spirit of God with them. There are not different versions of God’s Spirit, though there are different kinds of gifts given to believers by Him. Differences in spiritual gifts are not, at all, differences in spiritual value or salvation. They all work together for the common good.
Corrie Ten Boom said, “Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”
God never forces himself on us. As we surrender our lives bit by bit, his Spirit is able to occupy more and more of us, and we in turn can tap into his strength, power, knowledge, and wisdom.
One last quote from OC, “My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know about you, but I want more of Him and less of me, until Jesus can be lifted up for this dark world to see. Jesus, we long to be a clear reflection of you; help us shine brightly for you only. Amen.
Deb Hill