Full Of It
How To Be Filled With God’s Fullness
6/16/04
I. Introduction
A little girl sat at the breakfast table with her parents one morning. Dad was reading the newspaper. Mom was making waffles. The little girl sat, wide-eyed, staring at her orange juice. She thought for a minute, and then asked the question, “Daddy?” “Yes, sweetie,” he said. “Jesus is God, right?” “Yes,” he answered. “Then God lives in my heart, right?” “Yes, sweetie, God lives in your heart.” “Ok,” she said, then she sat quietly for a while, and took a sip of her juice. Then she asked another question, “Daddy?” “Yes, sweetie,” he said. “How big is God?” “Well, God is big. Remember the song we like to sing, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands?” “Yeah,” she answers. He says, “God is big enough to hold the world in his hands. That’s big, isn’t it?” “Yeah, that’s really big.” She seemed content with his answer, and she again sat quietly and had another sip of juice. “Daddy, if God is that big, and he lives in my heart, wouldn’t He stick out?”
A lot of times, great wisdom comes from the mouth of a child. And this little girl’s statement is no exception. If God is living on the inside of us, he not only would stick out, but He should stick out. Tonight’s message is “Full Of It: How To Be Filled With God’s Fullness.” There’s a prayer that Paul prays for the believers at the church in Ephesus, in which he prays that the church would be filled with all the fullness of God. And so I’d like to take the next few minutes and talk about what that means.
II. What is the Fullness of God?
Ephesians 3:14-19 NKJV “14For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- 19to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
All the fullness of God is talking about more than just one experience or one aspect of His truth or power. It points to a broader spirituality, balanced through participating in all that God has to offer.
In the Greek, the word for fullness is pleroma and it means full number, full complement, full measure, copiousness, plenitude, that which has been completed. The word describes a ship with a full cargo and crew, and a town with no empty houses. Pleroma strongly emphasizes fullness and completion.
When you go to a restaurant or place of business, a lot of times they have these signs that plainly state the maximum capacity of that particular building, meaning that when that building has exceeded or gone over that number, it’s full.
When you try to get tickets to a concert on the day of the concert, sometimes it may be sold out, which means that there are no more seats or tickets available because the arena or civic center is full or occupied.
When you’re on vacation at the beach and you’re riding down the strip, a lot of the hotels will have a sign that says No Vacancy, when that sign is lit up, it means the hotel is full or occupied.
Well, when the building of your life has reached maximum capacity, when every seat in the arena of your life has been occupied by God, when there’s no vacancy for the enemy or anything that opposes God, you’re full of Him.
Are you so filled up with Him that your thoughts, your actions, your feelings are aware of His presence and His control?
The one who is filled up to the fullness of God will want what God wants, and there will be no conflict. The one who is filled up to the fullness of God will show Christ through his life. He will love as Christ loved, he will walk as Christ walked.
1 John 2:6 NIV “6Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”
When you’re filled to the fullness of God, you’ll live just like Jesus. When you so identify with who Jesus is and what He does, you’ll begin to recognize God’s fullness.
III. Be Filled
What are some practical things you can do to recognize God’s fullness?
1. Discover His Will
God’s Word is His will. When you read God’s Word, you’ll begin to be aware of His fullness that lives in you. You’ll begin to find yourself in Him and find Him in you.
Psalm 119:105 NIV “105Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
God leads us by His word, and He’ll lead us into all of His fullness by His word as well.
EXAMPLES:
Matthew 19:26 “But Jesus looked at them and said to them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
In the fullness of God, there are no impossibilities.
Acts 17:28 “... for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’”
In the fullness of God, we make every move in Him, our beings will be permeated with his presence.
Romans 6:11 “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In the fullness of God, we have dominion over the death of sin, because we have life in Christ, and it’s a life the conquers death.
1 Corinthians 2:16 “For ‘who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
In the fullness of God, we have the mind of Christ. That means we know everything we’re supposed to know and everything we’re supposed to do.
2. Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Another phrase for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, is being filled with the Spirit.
Ephesians 5:18 NKJV “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.”
The disciples were filled with the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost. When that happened, they were so filled with God and all of his fullness that they overflowed with this new language. When you’re baptized in the Holy Spirit, the HS fills you up so much that He comes out on you.
And then Paul writes here in Ephesians to be continually filled with the Spirit, which means to continue to pray in the Spirit and drink up the presence and fullness of God.
3. Worship
Psalm 22:3 AMP “3But You are holy, O You Who dwell in [the holy place where] the praises of Israel [are offered].”
God inhabits the praises of His people. Worship is that place where we hunger after God’s fullness. It’s the place where we forget about everything around us and focus on seeking after Him and what He wants for us. You’ll never be more aware of God’s fullness than in worship.
Tommy Tenney, a Spirit-filled Christian author who’s written books like The God Chasers and The God Catchers, tells this story:
He believes that God spoke to him and said, “You know, Tommy, your favorite worship services and MY favorite services are not the same. You leave your services full and satisfied, but when you leave, I’m still hungry.”
He writes, “God whispered this to me during a life-changing Sunday morning service. It was a divine encounter that forever imprinted itself with indelible ink on the pages of my memory.”
He continues, “There were tears in my eyes when I whispered to my wife, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to Him before. I wish I knew then what I have discerned since- that God will leave our meetings full and satisfied only when we begin to leave them feeling hungrier for Him than when we first came.”
Those are just a few things you can do to recognize the fullness of God. But here’s a point in fact: you can do nothing to earn His fullness or His power. He freely gives us His fullness. You can’t read His word enough, pray in tongues enough, or worship enough to earn the right to be filled with His fullness. He’ll fill you with His fullness if you just simply ask, but doing these things will make you more aware of that fullness and help you to live in it.
Now, another explanation of fullness in the Greek was this word completion.
IV. It Is Finished
That word complete signifies something that is finished, something that is fully carried out.
Philippians 1:6 AMP “6And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you.”
That very day that God drew you to Himself by His Spirit and you made the choice to accept Him as your Savior, He began something great in you. He changed you, transformed you from the inside out, but He didn’t stop there, and He hasn’t stopped. There’s a song that we used to sing when I was in Elementary School. It says, “He’s still workin’ on me, making me what I ought to be.” And God is still working on you, developing you, still filling you up with His fullness and completing the work that He started in you. And He won’t give up on you. No matter how many times you miss it, no matter how many times you let Him down, He won’t let you down. He’ll keep working on you until the job is finished!
Amen! Let’s pray!
