What's Inside of You?
Have you ever thought about prominent men of the Bible like King Saul or King Solomon? Have you ever considered the life of Judas Iscariot? What could cause people who were promoted to such a place of prominence to have a destructive end as they had?
Each of these had a varying degree of money, success, and power yet they still had destructive ends. Therefore, it is easy to see that position and power does not secure our end. What causes people to have destructive ends? I am sure that you do not want an end that does not meet up to God's expectation, but if these great men could fail then so can we.
The answer to this question is not really so difficult. God created us as a spiritual beings. In being a spiritual being we have the capacity to contain things within us. It is for this reason that the writer of Proverbs (4:23) tells us to guard our heart with all diligence because out of our heart flows the issues of our life. Therefore, when we reach the point in our lives where we wonder why we do the things that we do it is easy to figure out that we do them because those things are within us. There are many scriptures that show we can be "filled" with a variety of things, but let me list just a few:
Luke 4:28
And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath...
John 16:6
But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.
Acts 13:45
But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy...
In each of the above scriptures we see that we can be "filled" with a variety of things. You may have seen someone who was filled with anger (wrath). When a person is filled with anger the result is that they are an angry person.
You may have lost a loved one and sorrow filled your heart. When sorrow fills your heart you are very sorrowful. When in that state it is hard to be hopeful. The point that I am trying to make is that we have been created as spiritual containers and what we are filled with controls our life.
It was not in the design of God to be filled with anger, confusion, envy, sorrow, or any other negative force. It is through sin and the fall of man that these spiritual forces are able to lodge in our hearts and control how we live.
If God created us as spiritual containers, but did not want us filled with all of these negative forces then we must ask ourselves what God's intent was. Let's go to the Word of God and see what God's plan for us is.
Ephesians 3:19
And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
God wants us to be filled with Him and He is love! Not only does He want us to be filled with Him, but we are told that we have the ability to be filled with the "fullness" of God.
The focus of our lives should be to have more of God in us. To be filled with more of God will give us a character that is more like God. The love of God will fill our hearts and we will be driven by this love. It is with this fullness that all of God's power manifests through our lives and we can fulfill Jesus' Words, "He that the Son has set free is free indeed."
