The Empty Cup

Ephesians 5:18 Don’t be drunk with wine, which will ruin your life, but be filled with the Spirit.

Mention the Holy Spirit, and you get all sorts of funny reactions. Which is really pretty strange, since He is, after all, God. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Every now and then, one of the things that I like to do to relax is to watch a favourite police drama on television. It just helps me unwind from the day.

So, I have this favourite one that’s been running for, like, seventeen seasons or something ridiculous like that. I love the characters, the action, the drama, watching them solve their cases. But there’s one thing about the show that drives me crazy. Whenever one of the characters picks up a coffee cup and takes a sip, just by the way they pick it up and pretend to drink, you can absolutely tell that the cup is empty and they’re just pretending. It’s nuts.

And to tell you the truth, I meet a lot of Christians who are a lot like those coffee cups. On the outside, they look like a cup. But they’re just going through the motions, because on the inside, they’re empty. And honestly, it just doesn’t have to be that way.

Ephesians 5:18 Don’t be drunk with wine, which will ruin your life, but be filled with the Spirit.

Anyone who believes in Jesus has received the Holy Spirit. But not everyone who believes in Jesus is filled with the Spirit. The tense of the verb “to be filled” there, in the original Greek in which it was written, means literally “to go on being filled with the Spirit”.

Look, you can’t go on following Jesus on your own. You need power. Serious power. Holy Spirit power.

So do yourself a favour: go on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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