Thank you to everyone who helped make our church-wide potluck dinner so wonderful last night.
Yes, we had cheesy potatoes. Three or four varieties by my count.
Yes, we had carrot sticks. Again, three or four different styles to choose from.
So many people visiting, sharing, and talking about the beauty of Christ and the greatness of His gospel.
The two missions updates took us from the Truck Stop Chapel all the way to Kabardino-Bulkaria and war relief.
Dan’s message was convicting. May our first love always, always be Christ. May we spot the signs of decay and fight them with a fierce faith.
And sharing in communion as the close to the evening sent me home filled with praise and thanksgiving!
Here is one more thought on being filled with the Spirit that did not make it into yesterday’s sermon.
All Christians have the Holy Spirit. But the interesting paradox is that all Christians are commanded to be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Spirit is the moment by moment depending on Him and taking from Him the resources you need to live the life that God is calling you to. We are commanded to be full, and yet we are not the filler, the Spirit is.
The answer to this predicament in the New Testament is that God has ordained to move into our lives with fullness through faith. The pathway that the Spirit cuts through the jungle of our anxieties into the clearing of joy is the pathway of faith.
Luke says of Stephen in Acts 6:5, that he was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” and he says of Barnabas in Acts 11:24 that he was “a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” The two go together.
If a person is filled with faith he will be filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of joy and peace.
The most important text in Paul’s writings to show this is Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Notice that it is in or by believing that we are filled with joy and peace.
And it is by the Spirit that we abound in hope. When we put those two halves of the verse together what we see is that through our faith (our believing) the Spirit fills us with His hope and thus with His joy and peace.
And, of course since hope is such an essential part of being filled with joy by the Spirit, what we have to believe is that God is, as Paul says, the “God of hope.” We have to rivet our faith on all that He has done and said to give us hope.
John Piper