Living from Fullness Rather Than from Empty

This morning I'm remembering something that happened to me a few years ago.  We had been on a long trip, traveling as we so often do by the Indian rail system.  Our train had been delayed and we arrived into our own city very late at night.  We finally reached there and got a taxi to go to our home.  It must have been around midnight.  We got into a taxi, bargained for a price and headed home..the final leg of a long journey. A few minutes into the ride the taxi driver stopped at a shuttered store front got out and started banging on the front of it.  “What in the world are you doing?” I asked.  “I need petrol” he said. It wasn’t even a proper petrol pump!  They didn’t have any so we crept along hoping to find a place to get petrol so we could go forward and make it home.  We finally found a station that was open, got a liter or two of petrol and made our way to our destination.

This made me think.  How often am I like that taxi driver?  How often do I do ministry, or “pick up passengers” running on fumes or running on empty?  If you’ve lived in South Asia at all, you know that this is the way taxis, autos and most people function.  They always have a mostly empty tank, and just put in a few liters at a time.  They operate from emptiness rather than fullness.

In these days, I believe God wants us to change our spiritual paradigm.  He wants us to become people who operate from FULLNESS in Christ.  Lets look a moment at a passage from Colossians.

Colossians 2: 6-9  So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces^[a] of this world rather than on Christ.⁹ For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰ and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

Say that last phrase to yourself today- “in Christ you have been brought to fullness.”  Declare it over your life, over your team, over the people you have been discipling- “In Christ, you have been brought to FULLNESS!”

We as church planters and busy leaders are often tempted to run on empty.  To only go to the "petrol pump" long enough to get the liter we need to make it to the next destination.  This may lead to some fruit, but it won’t lead us to abundant fruit or abundant life!  Take time to go to Him today and receive FULLNESS. You may not feel full, but chose to believe His Promise- In Him you ARE brought to fullness.  This is your inheritance and your destiny from the Father!  Lets live it and lets give it away.  No more emptiness, we live and walk in Fullness because Christ lives in us!