We turn again to the Word of God at Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 19. Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 19. And today we continue again where we left off last week into the second session, the second part about being filled with all the fullness of God. Let us read this passage again. Ephesians chapter 3, we read at verse 14 going on to verse 19:
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you 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 have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
Paul's prayer then was that every one of the Ephesian Christians and the Ephesian church as a whole might be filled with all the fullness of God. This is a long way beyond the bare salvation which most churches seem to be contented with — that we may crawl through life and hopefully one day find ourselves a place in the heavenly kingdom. Paul is not content with this type of Christianity. He wants us to be filled with all God's fullness. And this can only be accomplished, as he points out in verse 16, through God's Spirit. This is possible only through the Spirit of God. So to be filled with all God's fullness means certainly to be filled with the fullness of his Spirit.
Now we've been talking last week as also this week about how to be filled with God's fullness. And we've been speaking in terms of food — or rather, the Bible has been speaking in terms of food. Because we know how to eat until we are filled. And using this parabolic language, we have seen four things in Scripture — or rather, we have looked at only two of them. But we will see four things in Scripture of which it is said that we eat them as food, and we are filled with them in the fullness and richness of abundance. Now you will also notice that all these four things are closely connected to prayer.
And here I would like to draw my first point for today. There is no possibility of thinking of the fullness of God, or the filling of the Spirit, unless you know what prayer is about. And perhaps in nothing is the church today so poverty-stricken as in the matter of prayer. I ask you just in all good conscience, in all honesty, to look at your prayer life, say through the past week, for the last few days. What was your prayer life like? Can you say in all good conscience that your prayer life was something delectable, delightful, fills you with a sense of warmth when you think about it, a sense of richness and pleasure, spiritual satisfaction? Or was it some dreary minutes that crawl by as slowly as time could ever get by? And when you had prayed for three minutes, you thought it was three hours that you had already prayed, and discovered that the hand of your watch had moved no more than three minutes across the face of the watch.
Now, what has that to do with our subject? Very much so. It has much to do with it. Because we have been speaking about these spiritual delights in terms of food that we eat. And hopefully it is not food that you find hard to swallow. Since food you find hard to swallow, you are not going to eat to your fill. You had two mouthfuls, and you said, "I have had enough of this." What is delightful, you keep eating until you are filled.
Now the first point I want to make is this. All these things that we are speaking about are spoken of in Scripture in terms of food. Now unless your prayer time is like sitting at a table and nourishing yourself with spiritual food, then what is your prayer time? An exercise in hardship, in endurance? An exercise to see whether your kneecaps can stand the hardness of the floor for how many minutes?
Now the first point that I want to make is this. When you come to prayer, come to it as though you are going to have a spiritual meal. Because that is what it is supposed to be. You are going to feed upon the richness which God provides. You know, some of us who are brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition — I went to Catholic school for many years. It was my first contact with Christianity. It was with the Catholics. We somehow were instilled with the idea that only saints ever prayed for any length of time. And that when they prayed, they — as you see in the pictures, especially in the Catholic churches, and also in Protestant churches sometimes — the saints are always in a kneeling position. And because we are brought up with this idea, we think that we cannot pray unless we kneel.
But anyone who has undertaken to pray with any degree of seriousness will soon recognize that it is really hard to pray for any length of time on your knees, especially on a hard floor. And even on a cushion, because it's not so much the knees — it's the back that begins to bother you after a while. And therefore we think that the essence of holiness is to see how long you can fight the fatigue in your back muscle while you stay in a kneeling position. And perhaps the great achievement of the saints was that their back muscles were particularly equipped to stand up to this long period of kneeling.
Now when you come to dinner, do you kneel down to eat? Maybe from henceforth we should remove all chairs and make everyone kneel to eat their supper, and see whether you can enjoy your meal or not. Soon you will be squirming from one knee to the other, and you will be leaning back and leaning onto the table and everything, because you find this is a very uncomfortable position. I would like — and that is what I have mentioned before — and I would like to drive this point home: unless prayer time is a time of spiritual eating, spiritual feasting, none of us will grow into spiritual giants. Because if you treat the time of prayer as a time of physical wrestling with muscle fatigue — I mean, that may be very good for physical discipline, but it does nothing in terms of spiritual feeding.
On this point I want to deliberately drive into your minds. I say to you, if you really mean business with God, get yourself into a comfortable position in prayer, so that you can feed comfortably on the word of God. Now I did mention hardship. We must learn to endure hardship. But the table is hardly the place to endure hardship — unless, of course, God has particularly directed that you shall be in one for some period of time. And that happens too sometimes.
So what I do when I pray — I tell you quite frankly — I make myself comfortable. Because I intend to feed for a good long time. I lean my back against some wall, or against the back of the bed. And I put my spiritual napkin on, because I intend to be a spiritual gourmet, and go for the good food that the Lord provides. And I'm going to enjoy my fellowship with the Lord. What does Revelation 3:20 say? "I will come in and sup with him." How do you eat and sup? You know that in those days it was well known that they often reclined to eat. That is, they stayed in as relaxing a position as possible. They leaned against the cushions. And personally I find that rather tiring in some ways, because I'm not used to it. But obviously, sometimes I do that too. When the sitting position gets too tiring after a time — even sitting can get a bit tiring if you sit for a long time — then I do recline onto one elbow. Sometimes when this elbow gets tired, I recline onto the other one. And maybe that's what they did with the reclining position as well. So that I can feast upon the good things of the Lord.
Why am I saying all this? Because, like Paul, I would like to see all of us here be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unless you are a very fast eater — and I am not, and I know brother Joe is, he is a fast eater — I am not a very fast eater. Quite average, I guess. But even so, how long does it take you to have a meal? Do you polish your food down in two minutes flat? Not me. In two minutes I would have to just get through the soup, if we are having soup. Maybe some Christians' prayer time is a matter of gulping down some soup. So their spiritual nutrition is very deficient after a period of time. Imagine growing up on soup.
So why do we not understand that God wants us to be filled with all his fullness? And he wants to sup with us. We sit here and he sits there, and we are going to have this wonderful spiritual feast that he is providing for us. Do you ever come away from prayer with a sense of deep spiritual satisfaction? If not, stay there. Stay in prayer until the satisfaction comes. Ah, the deep spiritual satisfaction. You have the sense that you are filled with all the goodness of the Lord.
We have a church of spiritual pygmies today. Spiritually anemic. Spiritually deficient in everything. Lacking in strength. Lacking in power. Spiritually nothing. Because we have not learned to pray. We have not learned to pray.
So I ask of you all, if this is not just to be a sentence in the Bible — a letter of Paul to the Ephesians: "Be filled with all the fullness of God" — we are not talking about dreams. We are talking about a reality. The reality of being filled. For this, you must make time for God, just as you make time for a meal. You want to sit down and enjoy a meal. You don't want to rush through a meal. You know it is bad for digestion to rush through a meal. So no matter how busy you are, you are going to say, "This time is set aside for a meal." You are going to sit here for the next half hour and slowly enjoy the food here. If you don't do that, you are liable to be a candidate for ulcers of one kind or another — indigestion, malnutrition, whatever else.
But this is the church. If we made a survey today in the average church and handed out a form and said, "Please, in all honesty, without writing your name on it, write down something about your prayer life" — I think the results would be enough to make Paul weep. It would be enough to make the Lord weep. "Could you not watch with me?" he said to his apostles — even his apostles at that time. "Could you not watch with me one hour? Just one hour?" One hour is too much? "About half an hour." How much time do you spend on a meal? Can you not do that much?
We take three meals a day, normally speaking. I normally take two meals a day. But some people take three meals a day. Three meals a day, even at twenty minutes each — only twenty minutes — makes one hour. Of course, the quality of prayer does not depend upon its length, the length of time. But conversely, it is not to say that length of time is unimportant. The quality of the meal does not depend on how long you sit at the table, that's for sure. Otherwise, the longer we sit at the table, the better the food becomes. We might be willing to sit there a long time. But still, the length of time you sit at the table has something important to do with how well you partake of that meal.
So try to understand this point. If you want to have the fullness of God, there is not some cheap and easy way by which you just get into one emotional experience of the Lord and it's all over with. It is a daily, daily supping with him and he with us. Daily enjoying and being determined, by the grace of God, to enjoy the spiritual riches. There you draw the strength. There you draw the fullness and the abundance.
I said to you, maybe from week to week you go through the lay training and you receive feeding. You go through a Bible study. You come to church. You can be fed on the word of God. And who feeds me? If I did not learn to abide in the presence of the Lord and be fed by the riches from him, what do I have to pass on to anyone else? What do I have to give? But I would like you to learn this secret, because you will not always be here. And when you go back to wherever it is you'll be going to, you might find no spiritual food at all. And then how shall you survive? But he who knows how to abide in the secret place of God, he who knows how to dwell in the fullness that God provides, will never be in want.
And you know, I often come before the Lord and beg his forgiveness because I felt that I failed to convey in the message the richness of what he had given to me. I felt that he had given me so much and I managed to pass on so little. And therefore it is vital that you learn how to feed, that you learn yourself how to draw upon this richness. Because if the fullness — being filled with all the fullness of God in your life — depends entirely on my preaching, then what happens when you are not here to listen to the preaching? What happens if I cannot pass on the fullness that I receive? Then how are you ever going to attain to the fullness?
So please, learn the enjoyment of prayer. When communing with the Lord, think of prayer no longer as some feat of physical endurance. Think of it as something truly that you are going to enjoy, and you will. You will be filled with such richness every day — not once a week in the Sunday message, or in the Bible study, or in the lay training — but every day drawing upon the richness and strength that comes from the Lord. And then you are going to see wonderful things happening through you, beyond what you imagine possible.
What do we read in John 1:16? "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." Verses 16 and 18, isn't it? Wonderful. Fullness. Of his fullness. Because when you are filled, you have something to give. When you are empty, you have nothing to give.
I've seen nothing so pitiful sometimes as people who are trying to witness. You know, in many churches, it's all the time the stress on personal work and personal evangelism. "Go out there and give your testimony and witness." And have you ever seen the pitiful spectacle of somebody who is inwardly empty trying to witness to somebody else? And hoping that in the process of witnessing to somebody else, he might get some filling. Have you tried witnessing to people when you yourself are empty? Because you are impressed by the preacher, whoever keeps telling you "you have to witness, you have to witness, you have to do personal work." And so you go out there and do it. And doing it from a sense of emptiness, you feel your own hypocrisy. You feel your own utter shallowness in the whole process. You feel that somehow you shouldn't be doing this. And you are right. You shouldn't be — not until you have the fullness.
We are always talking about every Christian being filled. That's how the church started. At Pentecost, filled right from the beginning. And continue being filled, as Ephesians 5:18 has it. We cannot serve except in fullness. And have you ever seen the pitiful situation in which you have elders of churches, deacons of churches, or whatever these officers of the churches like to be called — or even pastors of churches — who are patently empty? You can see his emptiness. You can hear his emptiness when he preaches. He has nothing to give, nothing to share. He is utterly empty. And there he is in the midst of his emptiness, sounding hollow, trying to give forth the gospel. No officer of the church, whether he be elder or deacon or preacher or lay preacher or whoever he may be, should serve the Lord unless he has the filling. That's what the Lord said to his disciples: "Don't go out there until you are filled." That means when you go out when you are not filled, you are serving the Lord in a manner and in a way you should not be doing.
So this is the vital thing that we must grasp. And we cannot be filled until we feed upon the Lord and upon all that he has provided for us through prayer. And again, change your concept of prayer. Change it.
Now I do say to you that sometimes I do pray upon my knees. I don't want you to get the notion that I am saying to you that you should never pray in a kneeling position. Paul does say here, "I bow my knees." Sometimes when there is a deep crisis, sometimes when there is a certain matter of great urgency, or sometimes when I feel a deep pain in my heart because someone has fallen into sin or done something that grieves me, I do go upon my knees before the Lord. I prostrate myself upon my face before the Lord. I plead with the Lord on my face. There are times when I do pray in this way, because no other position would express the depth of feeling in my heart except upon my knees. But here we are talking of being filled. We are talking about the steady daily filling. And again I don't want to forget this point: the Lord invites us to sup with him, to enjoy feeding upon that which he provides for us.
So let us refresh our minds. I spend much time on this because it is so essential that your prayer life can be utterly transformed. And when you feed upon the Lord, you are not going to keep track of time anymore. Time is not a factor anymore. It doesn't interest you anymore. So that you don't remember how much time you prayed. You don't know whether it was an hour, was it two hours, was it two and a half, was it three — it doesn't really matter. The time seems to have gone by so fast, you can't recall how much time it was. It's just like when you spend time with your girlfriend. Did you say, "Oh, I've spent one hour with you already, it's time for me to go, so much time I spend with you"? Did you remember how much time it was? The afternoon went by and you can't remember how long it was. Because you were in the company of someone you loved, you don't worry about time. But remember the guy who was so boring? I mean, you spent five minutes with him and you wondered, was it the whole day that already went by? It's so exhausting. So is the Lord boring to you, or is he someone you love? Well, try enjoying this fellowship with him. Without that, you will never reach the fullness.
Now, let us come back to this fact. The first thing we talked about was to be filled with the Spirit. And we saw that the Lord in his teaching, especially in Matthew 7, compared the Spirit and the filling — the receiving of the Spirit — through the receiving of bread and fish. The Holy Spirit himself, we feed upon him until we are filled, rather as a father provides bread and fish to his sons.
And secondly, we saw last week that the Lord Jesus spoke of himself as food, as the bread of life. In John chapter 6, he said, "I am the bread of life. He that eats my flesh and he drinks my blood will live by me." The meaning of the drinking of blood we will not go into, of course. It has much to do with the wonders of covenant relationship that we have no time to talk about today. But whatever it is, the picture is clear to each one, even who does not have deep spiritual understanding, that the Lord is inviting us to feed upon himself, upon his saving work, as we saw last week — claiming his power to break sin in our lives, feeding upon his flesh until we see the freedom from sin, experience that freedom which is the portion of every redeemed servant and child of God. And to draw upon his life represented in that blood, until the fullness of his life fills every part of our being.
Now today we come to the third of these: filled with the richness of his word. His word. Let's turn to Colossians chapter 3, verse 16. Colossians 3:16. And this is what Paul says here: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." Now notice the order of events. First, Paul wants all the Colossians to be filled with the word of Christ, that it will dwell in them richly.
This word "richly" is used of food in Luke chapter 16, verses 19 to 22. Luke 16:19-22 — used several times of the rich food, the abundance, the overflowing abundance of food that the rich man had on his table, which he refused to share with the poor man outside, poor Lazarus. And Paul is saying: let the word of God so overflow in your life, as the food — the rich and abundant food — overflowed upon the table of the rich man, an overflowing filling of the word of God.
Now, eating the word of God is a commonplace in Scripture. It is used so frequently that, as I say, it is a commonplace. You can see that in the Old Testament, for example, in Ezekiel chapter 2, verse 8; chapter 3, verses 1 and 3; also Jeremiah chapter 15 and verse 16. Let me read to you Jeremiah 15, verse 16. Jeremiah 15 and verse 16. And this is what Jeremiah says: "Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and a delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Yahweh, God of hosts." Your words were found — I found your words, I got hold of them, and I did eat them. I gobbled them up. And your words became to me a joy and a delight of my heart. Also in Psalm 19, verse 10; Psalm 119:103, and so forth. In the Old Testament, the eating of God's word, as I say, is a commonplace.
The same is true in the New Testament. Revelation chapter 10, verses 9 and 10; or 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 2, where Paul says of the Corinthians that they were so spiritually carnal that he could not give them strong meat to eat, but could only give them the milk of God's word. The same is true in Hebrews chapter 5, verses 12 and 14, and so forth. The word
# Be Filled With the Fullness of God (Part 3)
And so we are to feed. Now, you know, I mentioned last week that the Ephesian church was one that was very precious to Paul. Highly commended by Paul. He commends the Ephesian church in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 15, as a church that is faithful to the Lord, loving the Lord and loving his people. In Paul's letters, there is not a word of rebuke to the Ephesian church. But there is rebuke found, for example, in the letter to the Corinthians. There is rebuke to the Galatians. There is rebuke in the letter to the Thessalonians. All these churches Paul rebukes in one way or another. But not the Ephesian church.
However, by the time of Revelation — the letters to the churches in the Revelation — some of the early fire in the Ephesian church had died down. This is 30 years later, of course. Thirty years after Paul had parted from the Ephesian church, as we read in Acts chapter 20. The early fire had somewhat died down. And we read that in the letter to the Ephesian church in chapter 2 of Revelation. And we read there that the first love had somehow cooled down. They had left their first love. The ardor of the first love. The intensity of the first love had now been replaced by a kind of beautiful love. A kind of plodding love.
It's rather like in a marriage, you know. Those who have been in marriage or watched your parents in their marriage, you understand. What happens after a period of time? You see, first when you fall in love, there is the fire. The enthusiasm. The ardor of first love. There is this intensity of the first love. But then you got married. And then after some years, what happens is that this enthusiasm — in fact, sometimes this enthusiasm disappears not after some years, it disappears after a few weeks already — and this enthusiasm has left. And then the two people are still married and they are still faithful to one another. And there is a certain real love for one another. But this love for one another has now become a kind of beautiful love. A kind of plodding love. It is a faithful love. But the enthusiasm has gone out of it. The fire has gone. Maybe you have watched your parents. And sometimes you may even have scratched your head and wondered — I mean, if they are that unexcited about each other, how did they get married in the first place? But that is what happens many times in marriage. The early fire has been replaced by a genuine love, a steady love, but very plodding. Very pedestrian. Very ordinary. No fire in it.
So this is what the Ephesian church is being rebuked for, in the letter to Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2: "I have this against you, that you have left behind your first love." The spiritual lesson is this. God wants a love from us that is always like the first love — that never dies down, that never cools down, that never loses its early enthusiasm. On the contrary, the early enthusiasm gets stronger all the time. Now that is impossible, first of all, without total commitment. And secondly, without this constant filling of the Spirit. It is just not possible.
And therefore you find in the churches many Christians who have this weary look about them. "Oh yes, I came to the Lord, you know, 25 years ago. Or I was in one of these meetings there." And you look at him. There is no fire. There is no enthusiasm. They have lost the first love. They are still faithful. They still give their 10% to the Lord. And they never fail — not one cent less than 10%. Sometimes one cent more, but never one cent less. And they are still faithful in church attendance. They are faithful in the Bible study. They are simply faithful. No fire. No zeal. No enthusiasm left. Oh, God save us from this type of Christianity. That scares me.
Look at Paul by contrast — the apostle Paul. This man's fire never dies. In fact, it gets more enthusiastic all the time. His zeal goes on from strength to strength. When you read his last letter, the devotion and the enthusiasm are the same as in his first letter. It has not wavered one whit. The intensity is in fact even stronger. It is deeper. And it is no less enthusiastic. That is the sure sign — the sure sign that there is a totality of commitment and there is a continual filling. Because if you are not constantly filled, you will soon get tired. Soon the fire goes down. And you will become plodding along. Plodding along.
So, the charge against the Ephesian church is not the same as the Laodicean church. It is not that they have grown lukewarm. That is not the charge. The charge is that the zeal, the enthusiasm has gone. They are still faithful. They are still devoted. But the enthusiasm is not there. Now, it is essential to understand this. Because almost as it were with prophetic foresight, Paul saw, he foresaw somehow that the Ephesian church would go down on this point. And that is exactly what happened 30 years later. It is in the letter to the Ephesians that Paul repeatedly speaks about being filled — and filled with the fullness of Christ, and filled with the Spirit. He keeps talking about fullness, as though he anticipated this particular problem with the Ephesian church.
And it is my concern for you all. In many of your hearts, there is a fire. And I thank God for it. But I would not have it seen that when you leave this place, the fire goes down. Many people have left the church here, and then they suddenly discovered that not only the fire goes down, they can hardly survive. Survival is at stake. You have got to learn this filling. And that is why I am harping on this filling — not tedious to me, but beneficial to you, that I keep repeating this.
So, there is one thing we would like you to notice. In the letter to the seven churches, there are only two churches that are not rebuked. One is Smyrna, and one is Philadelphia. Two churches: Smyrna and Philadelphia. What is the secret of these two churches? Well, when we look at Smyrna, we don't discover any secret at all, because Smyrna is not rebuked, but neither is it commended. The fact is that they are not rebuked nor commended, because the church in Smyrna is just trying to survive, because it's just been through persecution or tribulation of some sort. And it's soon going to go through another period of suffering. And so the messenger to the church brings no rebuke. But sad to say, we cannot see any positive qualities mentioned either. So we can't draw any spiritual lessons from that church. They are faithful, but that faithfulness is implied rather than stated.
So we have to turn to the Philadelphian church. And this church is positively commended on two points. It is commended on the first point: "You have not denied my name." And secondly, they are commended for their patient endurance. The surprising thing is that both these points are also mentioned in connection with the Ephesian church. In fact, there is no church that has a longer commendation than the Ephesian church, of the seven churches in Revelation. The longest list of commendation is given to the Ephesian church. And these two points concerning the Philadelphian church are found also in the Ephesian church. But with one essential difference. And what is it?
The essential difference is this. Twice to the Philadelphian church it is said, "You have kept my word." That is, you have obeyed my word — Jesus' word. They have kept it. They have guarded it. They have lived by it. They have manifested it in their lives. They have steadfastly obeyed Jesus' word. That commendation, repeated twice in Revelation 3, verses 8 and 10, is not found in any other church. They have kept his word.
Now let us remember what is the third point we are talking about: filled with his word. Feeding upon his word until we are filled with it, so that we can live it, we can manifest it, we draw our strength from it. That was the secret of the Philadelphian church — the church that receives no rebuke but only praise, of all the seven churches. It is praised and it does not fail for one fundamental reason: it keeps Jesus' word. This means — this is the spiritual secret of Philadelphia — do you know his word? That is the first point. How can you keep his word if you don't even know what Jesus' word is?
This is the reason that through the past six years, I have expounded in detail the teaching of the Lord Jesus, and we are not finished yet. We are now coming to our seventh year. In the seventh year of expounding the teaching of the Lord Jesus systematically — now you will see why. Because if you keep that word, you shall never fail. If you feed upon that word, draw upon it day after day after day, you shall never fail. His strength will uphold you. You will become like the Philadelphian church. You will not decline like the Ephesian church. But your light will shine.
Now, one practical question: which word shall we feed upon? Now here we must distinguish two things. When we are speaking about feeding on the word of God, we are not speaking about some academic knowledge about the Bible. Nor are we even speaking about exegetical knowledge of the Bible. To be an exegete requires high technique and skill, which is part of why the training teams are training in these matters. But I do not wish that the training teams, or all of you in the church who have been through lay training, just become skilled exegetes. Because your skill in exegesis can lead you to pride. You know you are good. And you are good. And that skill brings pride.
When I am speaking about feeding — or when the Bible is speaking about feeding — it is not just being able to analyze the word of God, draw the lessons from it, understand the details clearly. As some of you even in the lay training are becoming really skilled exegetes, and I thank God for it. But beware — skill, and I repeat this again, can lead to pride. Here we are speaking about feeding spiritually upon that word. Or what I have called internalizing that word. Not putting it in your mind only, but into your heart. Remember: "Let the word of Christ dwell in your hearts richly." That's where it is to dwell. Some of us are well equipped in the mind. Oh, we know the Bible. If we are dealing with a cult, we know exactly which verse to use. Like a weapon, we can strike them down with the word of God. We are skilled. But here we are talking about in the heart. Dwelling in your heart. Living in your heart.
Now, this is what I would like to say again. When you go before the Lord — and I am still talking about prayer and the practical matter of being filled with the Spirit — let's refresh our mind. You are going to sit very comfortably, whether it be on the floor or on your bed or on a chair, wherever. And you are going to feed. And so, the first thing you do is open your heart. And you ask the Lord to fill you with the Holy Spirit. Every day, let him fill you with his Holy Spirit.
And then, you start feeding upon Jesus. What do we mean by that in picture language? What is meant by that? It means you begin to apply his flesh, his death, into your life. You ponder the sins and failings of that day. All your weaknesses which you are going to face through the coming day. And you ask the Lord, as you feed upon his flesh, to break every power of sin in your life. Fill you with a sense of freedom as his power comes in. You know, it's an amazing thing — spiritual power. You can sense spiritual power. You can feel the power in yourself. If you haven't felt it, you have not yet known the fullness of the Christian life.
The feeling of power is a very common feeling to me. And by feeling I don't mean emotionally. It is a sense of power that comes upon you when you are clothed with God's power in your life. Just as you know if you are physically strong — the feeling of strength — you know you've got the strength to do it. Have you ever been challenged to a fight? In my non-Christian days, that would not be so unusual. And you look at your opponents and there is a feeling of strength. All your training, all the physical training that you have done, whether it be in the martial arts or in sports, you feel in your muscle and every fiber the strength. You back down from nothing. That strength — you know you have more than enough to meet the challenge. But more important than that is the spiritual power that every Christian should have. When you are filled with the Spirit, you have a sense of power when you have to do his work. You have also with it the sense of love, because we are not non-Christians anymore. We do not fight in a carnal way. We do not fight with hatred. These are important things.
And so, you feed upon the flesh of Christ until the power of sin is sensibly broken in yourself. And then what do you do? You feed upon his word. Now, the word of God is vast. We have been expounding it into our seventh year. So which part of it? Now here is where it is so important to understand John 14, verse 26: "The Holy Spirit will bring his word to your remembrance." He will bring that word to your remembrance. He will remind you of it. He will apply some part of the Lord's teaching that is suitable to you for that moment, for that day. Let the Holy Spirit bring that word to you and you feed upon it. You see, the beauty of a spiritual life is you are simply open to God, and he, being the living God, brings to your heart and to your mind the passage suitable to you at that time, and you feed upon it. You start meditating upon it. You ask the Lord to teach you what that means as applying to yourself, that particular day, that particular moment.
Now time is easily going. Let's come quickly to the fourth and last point here. We are to be filled with something else. We are to be filled with God's will — with the knowledge of his will. Colossians chapter 1, verse 9. Just look speedily at Colossians chapter 1, verse 9. And this is what we read here: "And so, from the day we heard of it" — that is, we heard of your faith, of your love — "we have not ceased to pray for you, asking" — notice again this has to do with prayer — "asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." Filled with what? With the knowledge of his will. Oh, that's wonderful.
It is a sign of a weak and diseased Christianity that forever needs to have a sort of "how-to-do-it-yourself" lesson on discovering the will of God. We are looking for ways: "I don't know the will of God, so how do I find the will of God?" Well, here he is saying that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. Now, is that your experience? Or are you forever trying to figure out, "Is that God's will, or is it not God's will?" How to live a Christian life like this? You never know whether it's God's will or not God's will. And then you are trying to figure out which way to discover. And some people have even worked out six or seven points on how to discover the will of God. Techniques for discovering the will of God. Well, there isn't much of a technique to begin with. You just get yourself filled, by the grace of God, by his gift to you. Filled with the Spirit of God and you will soon know his will.
But my question is: do you live by his will? Do you even bother to know what his will is? We have a church today in which, when I talk to many Christians, it becomes clear to me that they neither live in the center of God's will, nor do they know what that will is, nor are they very concerned to discover how to live in that will. They only want to know whether it's God's will if they have to make a major decision. And the rest of the time they can do whatever they like. And so when they come to a crisis, they want to say, "What is God's will?" And they don't know how to discover his will. Unless you live constantly in his will, don't bother to find out what his will is in a crisis, because the likelihood is, he won't even tell you. If you most of the time don't live in the center of his will, how are you going to live in the center of his will when a crisis comes? Because by that time you are so far off from whatever his normal will for you might be, that how is that particular crisis going to fit into the course of events as God plans it for your life?
But he who daily communes with the Lord, who daily feeds upon the spiritual goodness of the Lord, will be filled with his will. Now in the Bible, the amazing thing is that even God's will — this fourth thing — is compared to food. Where do we find this? Take for example John chapter 4, verse 32. Let me read to you John 4:32 and 34. John 4:32, the Lord says this, when he said to his disciples — the Lord Jesus said to his disciples — "I have food to eat of which you do not know." I have food that you don't know of. You see, the disciples went off to buy food at the nearest Samaritan village, because they had run out of food. And they came back with the food and the Lord Jesus refused to eat it. And they said, "How come? Did somebody give him something to eat?" And he said, "I have food of which you don't know." Even the disciples at that stage didn't know what kind of food he was eating. And then he goes on to explain in verse 34 what that is. Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work." What is my food? My food is to do his will.
Do you ever regard the will of God as food that you can feast on? Or is it the unpleasant orders of a sergeant major? When he says, "Do this!" — "Yes, sir." What does he want me to do? What can I do? So unpleasant. All the time he says, "Do this, do that." What is your concept of the will of God? Is it as it is in the Scripture: "I delight to do your will, O God"? I delight to do it. Or is it, "Oh, since I have to do it, I am a bit scared. What is he going to tell me to do? I mean, what a fright if he says to me, 'You know that nice fat job you've got? Ditch it. Go up there to serve the Lord in China. I've got some task for you to do.'" What? I don't want to listen to the will of God. It's too dangerous. You listen to him, he's going to tell you these kind of things like, "Take up your cross." And I forget about his will. "My food is to do his will." His will is my food that I feast upon. I fill myself with his food, filled with the knowledge of his will. Is that your experience too?
You know what will be the result of that? In doing his will, you find yourself filled with all his goodness, his righteousness, such as we read of in Philippians chapter 1, verse 11 — filled with his goodness and righteousness. And also in Romans chapter 15, verses 13 and 14. Let us read this as we come to the end of this exposition. Romans 15, verses 13 and 14: "May the God of hope fill you" — notice the word. Paul is never content with anything less than filling. We are content with scraps. Paul is only content when there is filling. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that" — notice the Holy Spirit comes — "so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Fullness. Abounding. And if that's not enough, let's go on to verse 14: "I myself am satisfied about you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another."
You know what these points are? A church that is filled is able to instruct one another. Is able to build up one another. A church that is not filled is going to depend on one man or a few people to build them up. We need a church that is so filled that you are able to build each other up. Because out of your abundance you've got something to give to others. Then the church can grow by leaps and bounds. It has the inner spiritual strength to grow without depending on one or two or a few people. Filled. Notice how many things are filled: filled with hope — that is spiritual direction (hope in the Bible is spiritual direction, which we have been expounding before); filled with goodness; filled with all spiritual knowledge.
Which of these things are true of you? And then the Lord Jesus speaks of being filled with joy so many times. John 15:11, 16:24, 17:13 — all in John. Filled with joy. What kind of a Christianity are we reading about in the Bible? Is it your mediocre type of Christianity which only talks about getting saved? Or is it not the fullness that comes from this close communion with God? Feeding on his word. Feeding upon his will.
Have you ever tried doing God's will? Do it sometimes. The doing of God's will brings with it such refreshing strength and power. And it's just something you will delight to do more and more. For example, you find somebody hard to cope with, who has done something nasty to you. Pull your courage together, by the Lord's grace, and say to that brother — go to him, grab his hand and say, "I forgive you, and I love you, brother." You see, you're doing his will — doing God's will. You try it, and suddenly you feel yourself filled with a sense of joy and refreshing. But up to that point you refuse to forgive. Your heart is nagging and uncomfortable. "Why is he like this? Why?" And it so gets you down, doesn't it? Now you're going to do his will? Okay, no matter what he is — Christ died for this brother, he's an unpleasant fellow, but I'm going to love him with God's strength and I'm going to forgive him. You do that. Do his will, and you will find yourself refreshed, strengthened. It's a common experience. Take every challenge, do God's will, and you will know what it means to feed upon it. "My food is to do his will." You draw strength from doing his will.
One concluding point: out of your fullness, you will be able to share with others. It has a lot to do with prophecy, and I come full circle to this matter of prophecy. Everyone a prophet. You'll begin to see what we are driving at. When every Christian has this fullness — as the Scripture says, "Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks" — when you are so filled with God's word, filled with his will, filled with the Spirit, you cannot help but become a prophet. You see what he is? You can't help it. That's what a prophet is. He is filled with God's word. He is filled with God's will. You cannot help but be a New Testament prophet. That is the path to being a prophet of God.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer. Thank you.