And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 13:52 NIV)
One Wednesday last month our missions team reported on the people they had encountered when on a missions trip to Brazil. They had participated in large rallies and prayed for many, many people. The reports they brought back were amazing! God miraculously healed so many people! These Brazilian people knew no person, or government, or other entity could help them. They had such faith in the power of God that they would walk for miles and miles to be a part of the meetings. One of the team members made a comment that the people they encountered in Brazil were so, so hungry for the hope and healing of God. He commented that, “The amount of their faith is because…God is their last and only hope. To replicate that here in the US; I don’t even know where to begin. Our society is so wise in their own estimation and that’s a huge hurdle to overcome…The level of faith [in Brazil] was just off the scale compared to here.”
Can faith be measured? Can God be measured? I expect that if you’re reading this you probably don’t think the Creator of the Universe can be quantified. There’s nothing humanity could create that would be able to fully encompass a Spirit-Being who is infinite. Throw in “omnipotent,” “omniscient,” and “omnipresent,” (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present) and it becomes even more challenging to think of quantifying something that is ALL. So why do we say someone is “full of God” or “Spirit-filled”? Can a finite human be “filled up” with God?
This can lead us into some interesting theological conversations and to a few about quirks in the English language. But I want to tie it back to a handful of incidents in the Bible.
First after Solomon dedicated the newly built Temple in Jerusalem, the presence of the Lord came upon that place and filled it. When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple. (1 Kings 8:10-11 NIV)
Second, seemingly random (but important!) people are suddenly “filled with the Spirit,” like the parents of John the Baptist. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit….[The baby’s] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” (Luke 1:41, 67-68 NIV)
Thirdly, after Jesus’s ascension, the bewildered disciples were gathered together, and on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon them in powerful ways. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:2-4 NIV)
At minimum, you would probably agree that when people are “filled with the Spirit” amazing things happen.
Consider with me, though, that maybe measuring how much we are “Spirit filled” is about measuring our capacity for God in comparison to our fruits of that faith. When we are beginning, “baby” Christians with a very early understanding of Christ’s work in our lives, our capacity to know, love, understand, and worship God may be smaller. God loves a “baby Christian’s” heart for him. Yet, as we grow in our understanding and relationship with God, our God-capacity grows. We more fully manifest the gifts and fruits of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12, Galatians 5). The more we grow in faith, the more we grow in the things of the Spirit and the more that overflows upon the people and world around us. Perhaps being “Spirit-filled” is being fulled to the measure of what we can hold. As we grow, we can hold more and so, when we ask we are filled more and more.
Lord God,
Fill us to the measure of all fullness with you, Holy Spirit, so we can go and make disciples of Jesus Christ, and share your miraculous power with all those around us. We ask this in Jesus’s name, AMEN.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV)
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV)