Filled part 3
I'm going to try to give a key to the kingdom tonight. And it comes from Philippians 1:9-11, "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." As simply as I can put it: How do we fill ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with? We fill ourselves with the fruit of the Spirit! How else do you get filled? By eating a good meal, right? And you are what you eat, right? So I guess it comes down to diet. It comes down to eating the right thing. The bread and the wine. The lamb and the living water. The fruit of the Spirit--which is love. The Tree of Life only has one fruit on it. You can't expect oranges from an apple tree. So if you want the fruit of the Spirit--again, love--you need to make sure you're on the right tree. The problem I see so often with the tree of knowledge of good and evil--the tree of death--is that we think we can pick and choose which fruit we get from that tree. "I'll eat the good, not the evil, and all will be well." But all we're really doing is swinging from one branch to the other on the same tree. And, like I said, you can't get two different kinds of fruit from one tree. You don't need to keep trying to turn over a new leaf. You need to understand that Jesus cursed the fig tree. And, if you notice, right after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and realized they were naked, and were ashamed of their nakedness, they made themselves coverings of figs. I believe the fig tree IS the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So Jesus cursed that tree because it wasn't bearing any fruit. There was nothing "good" coming from it. "If you eat of that tree you will surely die." Not because God will punish you, but because it is the tree of death. What else could happen if you eat from the tree of death? So Jesus cursed it, and it withered and died. Jesus left us--and we see this in the book of Revelation--with only one tree. Only the Tree of Life remains. Only love remains. So we can get on the correct diet. We can fill ourselves with the fruit of the Spirit. Which, one more time, is love. To live is to love and to love is to live. Eating the fruit of the Spirit is how we fill ourselves with the love of God that we've already been filled with. That's how we let what's inside come out. That's how we experience the gift we've been given. Let God love you, and then love Him back... by loving each other. He's already filled you up. He said, "This is my body, eat. This is my blood, drink." He prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies. All we have to do is sit down (rest) and enjoy the love feast that He IS. You are what you eat. What you feed is what will grow. If you want to be filled with love, you need to let love in. Guard your heart by keeping it open to love. Letting love in and out. Letting the love that's already IN come out! If you want to be filled, if you want your appetite (for love) to be satisfied, then you have to make sure you're eating the right fruit, from the right tree!