MERRY MONDAY-
“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” EPH.3:19
The world shows up empty everyday. Doctor’s offices are filled with patients getting opioids subscribed that lead to addiction. Prisons are over crowded while mental patients wait for a bed, our courts are jammed with lawsuits, and heinous crimes never stop. Young America continues to spend thousands of dollars to get taught by professors bombastically teaching them on whatever hip current idea that comes into their head. Thank God there is another way-Christ lived out in our lives; day by day. He comes with abundance and makes the crooked go straight. Yes, it can be that simple. By the end of this year Frank and I will have pastored 40 years, have run a school for 35 years, fed the poor for 30 years, put on a drama to teens for 20 years, and now run a rehab for 10 years. In each of these situations we have been personally hands on, we have watched Christ come in the worst case scenarios. He doesn’t show up unprepared, put out, or out of touch. If the person is hungry and desperate, Christ comes and brings HIS FULLNESS and overflows abundantly into our issues.
Christ comes to fill us up because we have been running on empty for far too long and we have tasted its emptiness. His love comes unencumbered and unabridged. Christ has the uncanny ability to prepare, expand, and strengthen our capacity to receive more of his love. He imparts to us his own character and glory taking out of us the old character and canceling out the stain of the past. In Luther’s words he says, “he alone completely rules and works in us” and are “filled in every way that he can make full”.
We remain no more in defect but instead he imparts his perfection to the church, making us a partaker of His Divine Nature! We become a sign and a wonder that causes judges, doctors and scientists to stand in awe. Another author named ALFORD says; All the fulness of the Godhead abides in Christ, Col. 2:9. Christ then abiding in your hearts, ye, being raised up to the comprehension of God’s mercy in Him and of His love, will be filled, even as God is full—each in your degree, but all to your utmost capacity, with Divine wisdom, might, and love.”
If you need a word picture; imagine ships are filled with freight, merchandise, sailors, oarsmen, and soldiers; or the animals filling up Noah’s Ark, or a city filled with inhabitants, houses and towering buildings. A gap that is filled or baskets that are overflowing. Do you get the picture yet? God comes to fill you up! Wholly flooded and filled!