Being Filled with the Fullness of God

Being filled with the fullness of God is like a bottle in the ocean. You take the cork out of the bottle and sink it in the ocean, and you have the bottle completely full of ocean. The bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the bottle. The ocean contains the bottle, but the bottle contains only a little bit of the ocean. So it is with a Christian.

Dr. A. B. Simpson

"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"

The Lord Jesus once asked His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; some Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."

He then said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" And Simon Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

This inspired confession from Simon Peter is further elaborated in other portions of Scripture.

• The Lord Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.
• By Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities - all things have been created by Him and for Him.
• He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.
• He is also the head of the body, the Church.
• He is the beginning and the first-born from the dead so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything.

It pleased the Father that all the fullness of God dwell in Him and through Him reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through the blood of His cross.

• The Lord Jesus is heir of all things.
• Through Him God made the world.
• He is the radiance of God's glory.
• The exact representation of God's nature.
• He upholds all things by the word of His power.
• After He provided purification of sins, He sat down at the right Hand of the Majesty on high.
  

• The Lord Jesus was in the beginning with God.
• He is God.
• All things came into being by Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
• In Him was life and the life was the light of men.
• He is the true light which enlightens every man.
• He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.

The Lord Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega (the Beginning and the End) who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

 This list could go on and on. For space would not be sufficient if we add: Saviour, Redeemer, Lamb of God, High Priest, etc. etc.



Oh! The bliss of just being enthralled in the thought of all that He is and what it means to me.

 Matthew 16:13-16

 Colossians 1:15-20

 Hebrews 1:2&3

 John 1:1-4,9,10

 Revelation 1:8

Meekness and Rest

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. In the world of men we find nothing approaching the virtues of which Jesus spoke in the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; instead of mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance; instead of hunger after righteousness we hear men saying, "I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing"; instead of mercy we find cruelty; instead of purity of heart, corrupt imaginings; instead of peacemakers we  find men quarrelsome and resentful; instead of rejoicing in mistreatment we find them fighting back with every weapon at their command.
    
2. All our heartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out of our sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginations, malice, greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.
    
3. Into a world like this the sound of Jesus' words comes wonderful and strange, a visitation from above. It is well that He spoke, for no one else could have done it as well; and it is good that we listen. His words are the essence of truth. He is not offering an opinion; Jesus never uttered opinions. He never guessed; He knew, and He knows.
    
4. Jesus tells us more about meekness and applies it to our lives when He goes on to explain in the book of Matthew. "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
    
5. Here we have two things standing in contrast to each other, a burden and a rest. The burden is not a local one, peculiar to the first hearers, but one which is borne by the whole human race. It consists not of political oppression or poverty or hard work. It is far deeper than that. It is felt by the rich as well as the poor for it is something from which wealth and idleness can never deliver us.
    
6. The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.
    
7. Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within.
    
8. First there is the burden of pride. The labour of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable.
    
9. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.
    
10. The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life. He knows he is weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto.
     
11. The meek man knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father. He is willing to wait for that day.
     
12. In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walks on in meekness he will be  happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings.
     
13. Then also he will get deliverance from the burden of pretense. By this I mean not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. For sin has played many evil tricks upon us, and one has been the infusing into us a false sense of shame. There is hardly a man or women who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression.
     
14. To all the victims of the gnawing disease Jesus says, "Ye must become as little children." For little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else. Only as they get older and sin begins to stir within their hearts do jealousy and envy appear.
     
15. Another source of burden is artificiality. I am sure that most people live in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance an enemy or friend will be allowed to peep in their own poor empty soul. So they are never relaxed. This unnatural condition is part of our sad heritage of sins, but in our day it is aggravated by our whole way of life.
     
16. Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are we will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.
     
17. The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ. Good keen reasoning may help slightly, but so strong is this vice that if we push it down one place it will come up somewhere else. To men and women everywhere Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend. It will take some courage at first but the needed grace will come as we learn that we are sharing this new and easy yoke with the strong Son of God Himself. He calls it "My yoke," and He walks at one end while we walk at the other.

Restoring the Creator-creature Relation

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. It would be true to say that order in nature depends upon right relationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its proper position relative to each other thing. In human life it is not otherwise.
    
2. The cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He adopted towards God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay.
    
3. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation.
    
4. A satisfactory spiritual life will begin with a complete change in relation between God and the sinner; not a judicial change merely, but a conscious and experienced change affecting the sinner's whole nature. The atonement in Jesus' blood makes such a change judicially possible and the working of the Holy Spirit makes it emotionally satisfying. The story of the prodigal son perfectly illustrates this latter phase.
   
   
5. In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make no allowances. Such a centre is God.
    
6. As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get out moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.
    
7. Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own images. We can get a right start only by accepting God as He is and learning to love Him for what He is.
    
8. Back of all, above all, before all is God; first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignity and honor. As the self-existent One He gave being to all things, and all things exist out of Him and for Him, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."
    
9. Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full Lordship on His part and complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.
    
10. The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all we step out of the world's parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire a new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us; a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurging and its outgoings.
     
11. Our break with the world will be the direct outcome of our changed relation to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God. Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some token respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above.
     
12. "Be Thou exalted" is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It is a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It is central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually "Be Thou exalted," and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set his course, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automatic pilot. If blown off course for a moment by some adverse wind he will surely return again as by a secret bent of the soul.
     
13. Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by the voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as one made in the image of his Creator. His honor will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God over all he finds his own highest honor upheld.
     
14. Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.
     
15. Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.
     
16. That place is His by every right in earth or heaven. While we take to ourselves the place that is His the whole course of our lives is out of joint. Nothing will or can restore order till our hearts make the great decision: God shall be exalted above.
     
17. "Them that honour Me I will honour," said God to Eli, a priest of Israel, and that ancient law of the Kingdom stands today unchanged by the passing of time or the changes of dispensation. The whole Bible and every page of history proclaim the perpetuation of that law. "If any man serve Me, him will My Father honour," said our Lord Jesus, tying in the old with the new and revealing the essential unity of His ways with men.
     
18. The utter tragedy upon Eli and his family was their failure to honour God. Set over against this almost any Bible character who honestly tried to glorify God in his earthly walk. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah, or whom you will; honour followed honour as harvest the seed. The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.
     
19. A saying of Jesus, and a most disturbing one, was put in the form of a question, "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God alone?" If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honour among men made belief impossible. Is this sin at the root of religious unbelief?
     
20. The whole course of the life is upset by failure to put God where He belongs. We exalt ourselves instead of God and the curse follows.
     
21. In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also hath desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to exalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above all treasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theatre where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them God can walk unhindered, toward them He can act like the God He is.

The Gaze of the Soul

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

 

1. If an intelligent plain man approaches the Bible without any previous knowledge of what it contains, such a man will not have read long until his mind begins to observe certain truths standing out from the page. As he reads on he might want to number these truths as they become clear to him and make a brief summary under each number.
    
2. High up on the list of things which the Bible teaches will be the doctrine of faith. The place of weighty importance which the Bible gives to faith will be too plain for him to miss. He will very likely conclude: Faith is all-important in the life of the soul. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith will get me anything, take me anywhere in the kingdom of God, but without faith there can be no approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no communion, no spiritual life at all.
    
3. Now if faith is so vitally important, if it is an indispensable must in our pursuit of God, it is perfectly natural that we should be deeply concerned over whether or not we possess this most precious gift. And our minds being what they are, it is inevitable that sooner or later we should get around to inquiring after the nature of faith. What is faith? would lie close to the question, Do I have faith? and would demand an answer if it is anywhere to be found.
    
4. Almost all who preach or write on the subject of faith have much the same things to say concerning it. They tell us that it is believing a promise, that it is taking God at His word, that it is reckoning the Bible to be true and stepping out upon it. The rest of the book or sermon is usually taken up with stories of persons who have had their prayers answered as a result of their faith.
    
5. In the Scriptures there is practically no effort made to define faith. Outside of a brief fourteen-word definition in Hebrews 11:1, I know of no Biblical definition, and even there faith is defined functionally, not philosophically, that is, it is a statement of what faith is in operation, not what it is in essence. We are also told from where it comes and by what means: "Faith is a gift of God," and Faith cometh by hearing and hearing the Word of God." This much is clear and to paraphrase Thomas à Kempis, "I had rather exercise faith than know the definition thereof." Therefore the complexion of our thoughts will be practical, not theoretical.
    
6. In a dramatic story in the book of Numbers faith is seen in action. Israel became discouraged and spoke against God, and the Lord sent fiery serpents among them. "And they bit the people; and much people of Israel died." Then Moses sought the Lord for them and He heard and gave them a remedy against the bite of the serpents. He commanded Moses to make a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole in sight of all the people, "and it came to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." Moses obeyed, "and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived" (Num. 21:4-9).
    
7. In the New Testament this important bit of history is interpreted for us by no less an authority than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is explaining to His hearers how they may be saved. He tells them that it is by believing. Then to make it clear He refers to this incident in the Book of Numbers. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14,15).
    
8. Our plain man we introduced in the beginning, while reading this would make an important discovery. He would notice that "look" and "believe" were synonymous terms. "Looking" on the Old Testament serpent is identical with "believing" on the New Testament Christ. That is, the looking and the believing are the same thing. And he would understand that while Israel looked with their external eyes, believing is done with the heart. I think he would conclude that faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.
    
9. When our man had seen this he would remember passages he had read before, and their meaning would come flooding over him. "They looked unto Him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed" (Psa. 34:5). "Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that He have mercy upon us" (Psa. 123:1,2).
    
10. Our Lord Himself looked always at God. "Looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the bread to His disciples" (Matt 14:19). Indeed Jesus taught that He wrought His works by always keeping His inward eyes upon His Father. His power lay in His continuous look at God (John 5:19-21).
     
11. In full accord with the few texts we have quoted is the whole tenor of the inspired Word. It is summed up for us in the Hebrew epistle when we are instructed to run life's race "looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith." From all this we learn that faith is not a once-done act, but in continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.
     
12. Believing, then, is directed the heart's attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to behold the Lamb of God," and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives. At first this may be difficult, but it becomes easier as we look steadily at His wondrous Person, quietly and without strain. Distractions may hinder, but once the heart is committed to Him, after each brief excursion away from Him the attention will return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird coming back to its window.
     
13. Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.
     
14. Faith is not in its self a meritorious act; the merit is in the One toward Whom it is directed. Faith is a re- direction of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus. Sin has twisted our vision inwards and made it self-regarding. Unbelief has put self where God should be, and is perilously close to the  sin of Lucifer who said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God." Faith looks out instead of in and the whole life falls into line.
     
15. When we lift our inward eyes to gaze upon God we are sure to meet friendly eyes gazing back at us, for it is written that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout all the earth. The sweet language of experience is "Thou God seest me." When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.
     
16. Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do. It would be like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within the range of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us.
     
17. Since believing is looking it can be done at any time. No season is superior to another season for this sweetest of all acts. God never made salvation depend upon new moons nor holy days or sabbaths. A man is not nearer to Christ on Easter Sunday than he is, say on Saturday, August 3, or Monday, October 4. As long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation.
     
18. Neither does place matter in this blessed work of believing God. Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a berth in a coach or a factory or a kitchen. You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.
     
19. When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men.