For the Love of God
Filled with the Holy Spirit…Acts 4:8
This is how God describes spiritual motivation: filled with the Holy Spirit. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them… Thus began Peter’s address to the elders of Israel, Acts 4:8. Luke is bringing forward an act of God from the Old Testament. This is the way God inspires people to achieve great things.
Moses is commanded to build a tabernacle. Not just any tent but a specific tent, a certain size, with certain materials. To accomplish this special task God gave certain people the abilities to do things God’s way. He filled them with His Spirit, Exodus 31:3 and Exodus 35:31: He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship.
Apparently, God is still filling people with His Holy Spirit. In Acts 13:9: Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit…Acts 13:9. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit, Acts 13:52.
Knowing this, Paul is inspired to write: Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, Ephesians 5:18. Apparently, Paul wants for us what he experienced, the fullness of the love of God, Ephesians 3:19. This was Paul’s prayer for the church: For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be full with all the fullness of God, Ephesians 3:14-19.
This is our prayer for each other. That as we experience the enormous love of Christ, that we become empowered to do beyond what we thought was possible being filled with His Holy Spirit. Clearly, being full of the Spirit of God is not receiving more of Him. We are already full. Being filled is knowing more of His abounding love.
