Filled And Overflowing

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing Alright?

Well, we’re looking at Colossians, you and I-we’ve got now into verse nine, “For this cause we also since the day we heard it”, now the ‘it’ there, that is connected with the verb to hear, what is it that he heard? Well, he heard of your faith in Christ, the love you have to the Saints, the hope laid up for you in Heaven, the fruitfulness, he brings forth fruit, and your love in the Spirit. This is the package to which he refers when he says, “the day we heard it”.

Well, he said, “When we heard that, we don’t cease to pray for you”, we’re keeping on continually praying, we kept on praying and asking God to help you understand what He wants you to do, “to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding”, “to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will”. Oh there’s so many good things that are connected with that concept of being filled.

Let’s talk together for a little while about the Divine spillover. This word filled means filled to the overflow point, right straight up to the top, so that whenever you’re jostled, you spillover the blessing of the Lord. So many people seem to minister out of the scrapings, instead of out of the overflow. Have you noticed that?

I have more than a little mischief in my nature and sometimes when I’m traveling with a bunch of preachers I’ll say to them, “Well fellas, what have you gotten new from the Lord this morning?”, and there’d be a silence you know, and you know that they’re looking about in their minds for something they can say that will be respectable, and like as not somebody else will come up with. “Well, last Sunday I spoke on”, then he’d give you that warmed over remnants of his sermon. Many of us, preachers as well as, as folk in the pew, we minister spiritual things out of the scrapings. We scrape up whatever we can at the time.

Now, if that doesn’t apply to you, well I’m glad, but I’ve met a great many folk and I myself have been in the position sometimes of being dry spiritually and not really having very much to share. Oh, the normal Christian life is the life that’s full to the spillover point. You don’t have to be an eager proselytizer to be a normal New Testament Christian. Instead, all you have to do is just spillover the blessing of God, to share the precious things of the Lord. To share the Lord Himself with people, the blessed spillover of blessing and the Holy Spirit and the Presence of Christ, and the reality of our blessed living Lord in your life. These are the things that people see.

Often times under pressure, we manifest something quite different, isn’t that true? Now and again, during the years when I served as President of the College, we’d get a report that the someone had broken a door or poked a hole through the through the plaster wall of a dorm room. I remember one occasion, this boy showed up with his arm in a sling. I said, “What happened to you, buddy? What, did you fall?”, “No”, I said, “What happened”? He was a little reticent about it. Finally, the truth came out. The night before, he had broken up with his girlfriend and he was so upset that when he got back up to his room, he hauled off and and hit the door with his fist and broke the panel of the door, but he also broke some bones in his hand, and here he was, all bandaged up. Oh, dear!
Well, frustration and pressure can do strange things to you, isn’t that true? They say many an automobile accident is caused because someone had a monumental fight before he or she left home and their driving reflects their mood and they haul off finally and hit somebody and have an accident. Well, that never happens to you, does it? Or does it?

You see, the index of spirituality is not how you sing Holy, Holy, Holy on Sunday morning, but rather the index of spirituality depends on how you and I respond to pressures like on a Tuesday, you see? Things don’t always happen the way you wish they would. People don’t react the way you wish they would. Situations don’t develop the way you plan them, and so there’s a good deal of pressure and frustration that is implicit in the simple basic business of living through any given day, isn’t it true? Some days it doesn’t pay to get up, the way it looks.

Now, at that point, the index of whether or not you know God is how you react under those pressures, and instead of poking a hole through the door or through the plastered wall in frustration, breaking something, throwing something, driving like a maniac, or breaking forth into profanity and curses or whatever it may be, or going out and tying one on.

Instead of doing those things which are so common in our world, a person who knows the Lord Jesus Christ is going to react differently under pressure. The spillover factor of the Christian life, filled, is how full are you of God and His blessings? Well you say, “Brother Cook, you don’t understand what I’m up against”. Well, maybe I don’t because I don’t live with you or inside of your skin. You do. I know that. Another person never quite, although, we may sympathize and empathize as well, another person never quite shares completely how we feel. I know that, but I know the Jesus knows and I know that the Word of God has provided a way to live with the pressures and frustrations and heartaches and disappointments and challenges of life. That way is the, is the Presence of the Blessed Holy Spirit of God.

Now, I understand the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, you’re baptized into the Spirit of God, by the Spirit of God into the body of Christ, when you make the Lord Jesus Christ your Lord, but Ephesians 5 says, “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit”, and although there are different denominations that use different wording, different names for this, Dr. Pettingill used to say, “I don’t care what you call it, but get it”.

Some people call it the filling of the Spirit, some call it the baptism of the Spirit, some call it the deeper life, some call it the victorious life. Well whatever you want to call it, the fact is that God wants to fill you and me with His Holy Spirit, so that every room, to use the only illustration, every room in your heart house is filled with His Presence.

The secret to many a person’s failure is that there is one particular room into which the Spirit of God is never been allowed. That constitutes then the opportunity for Satan to bring down the testimony and the ministry of that particular saint. To be filled with the Spirit means that every area of my life, every that is, area of my life, is yielded to His blessed Presence. Then I’ll react on the basis, not of my own old human nature, but on the basis of the Holy Spirit of God who is controlling that human nature.

You find this in the book of Acts. Chapter 2 tells about how the Holy Spirit was bestowed upon the baby church. “They were all one accord in one place and the place was filled with the sound of a rushing mighty wind”, and all of that, “and they spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance, people from all parts of the world heard the blessed Gospel message in their own tongue”.

Now then, in chapter 4 of Acts, chapter 2 is over with remember, Pentecost is over with, but in chapter 4 of the book of Acts, we have Peter, chapter 4 verse eight it should be, “Then Peter”, there you are see, “The High Priest and John Alexander were gathered together when they had sent them”, that is Peter and John, “in the midst”, they said, “by what power or by what name have you done this ?”, then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost said unto them, “Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel”, and so on, “Jesus of Nazareth is raised up”. The man you killed is back again and He’s Lord, that was his message, Acts 4.Then and Acts 4:31, after the prayer meeting that ensued when Peter and John came back and reported what the Lord had done said, “When they had prayed the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness”.

See there’s another, “filled with the Holy Ghost”, and then I’m turning the pages of my big Bible over to Acts, it should be about chapter 13, let me look and see. Hear those pages? Thirteen, and this is Paul, “So on this first missionary journey, they came to Cyprus and there was a sorcerer, a false prophet, who was with the deputy of the country, and the elements the sorcerer withstood, Paul and Barnabas, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith, then Saul, who also was called Paul”, this is Acts 13:9, “filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him and said, ‘Oh full of all subtlety of mischief and so on, the hand of the Lord is upon thee and thou shall be blind, not seeing the sun for the season’, and immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness and he went about seeking somebody to lead him by the hand”.

This is Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, you see, and then in the end of chapter 13, “The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost”. Now, that tells me then that there is a continuing relationship possible, between you and the Holy Spirit of God. Let’s cultivate that blessed relationship of being full of the Holy Spirit, the spillover factor of the Christian life.

Dear Father today, may we spill over the Presence and blessing of the wonderful Spirit of God, in Jesus’ name I ask it, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!