Completely Filled

March 26, 2020

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13 NLT

Occasionally we will say or hear someone say of another person, “Oh, he’s full of it. She’s full of it.” We all realize that is not a compliment. Beyond the surface meaning, it could refer to the fact that a person is full of himself, she is full of critical opinions, full of fear, sarcasm—any number of things that negatively impact our souls and relationships with others.

What would life be like if we were completely filled with the Holy Spirit? The time in which we are living now is difficult, no doubt. We have daily challenges, and the information given to us changes on a daily basis, sometimes several times in a day. How do we have hope in these days?

Paul lived in times where the challenges were massive and daily. It was not just illness that threatened. It was the constant separation from friends, the economy, the persecution, the false accusations, the fact that he was constantly in danger of being arrested and beaten or killed for preaching Jesus—and his friends who were Jesus followers were constantly hit with seeming impossibilities.

He reminded them that God was the Source of hope. He said that God will fill us up completely with joy and peace, not because of the circumstances, but in spite of them! How does it happen? “Because we trust in Him.” There it is again—trust and surrender.

The result of that trust and surrender is that we get “full of it.” We don’t “somehow make it through.” We “overflow with confident hope.” Isn’t that what we need? Isn’t that what our world is seeking? People who overflow with confident hope. We cannot get enough facts to make us overflow with confident hope. We can’t positively think our way to that place. It is only made possible “through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

We need confident hope. Our families, our neighbors, our nation, our world—we all need it. If we are led by the Spirit of God, we will be full of it and conveyors to the world.

• Oh, Holy Spirit! I surrender myself entirely to You! I ask You to fill me with Your presence and give me that confident hope; the peace and joy that nothing and no one can take away. I want to stay connected and pure, to be a conduit of hope to the world.