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By Pastor Phillip Howell
web posted August 26, 2015
RELIGION –  I am full! We had baptisms last night at Lick Fork; I had the joy of baptizing my son Cason and two other great young people as well. As special as that was, one of my favorite parts of the evening was my wife’s chocolate no bake oatmeal cookies! I love those things. The texture, the flavor, everything about them is great! The only problem is that I ate so many that I did not really leave room for hot dogs or all the other goodies that other people brought.

I am not complaining, especially since I brought home lots of leftovers to eat today as yesterday’s belly full of cookies dissipated. But note that because I was full, there was no room for anything else.

I write this not to encourage over indulgence with oatmeal cookies, but to teach a pretty important principal in the Christian life. We as people crave fullness. We don’t like to be in hunger and in want. This is part of God’s design for us. But due to our sin we look for fullness in wrong ways. We drink too much, we eat too much, we talk too much, we spend too much, we surf the web too much. The list goes on.  We are empty apart from being full of Christ. And because of our sinful nature, we look to be full on wrong things.
 
I do have some good news to empty people hurting themselves binging on junk comes from a great little book called “A Gospel Primer for Christians.
 
Milton Vincent writes that “Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel. Indeed, it is in the gospel that I experience a God who glorifies Himself by filling me with His fullness.

He is the One, Paul says, “who fills all in all.”(Eph 1:22-23) He is the One who “fill[s] all things” with the gifts He gives. (Eph 4:7-10) And He lavishes gospel blessings upon me with the goal that I “be filled up to all the fullness of God.”(Eph 3:14-5 &19) This is the God of the gospel, a God who is satisfied with nothing less than my experience of fullness in Him! The first command God spoke in the Garden was, “eat freely.” (Gen 2:16) And with similar insistence He says to me now, “be filled.” (Eph 5:18)

What happens to my appetites for sin when I am filled with the fullness of God in Christ? Jesus provides this answer: “He who continually comes to Me will never hunger or thirst again.” (John 6:35) Indeed, as I perpetually feast on Christ and all of His blessings found in the gospel, I find that my hunger for sin diminishes and the lies of lust simply lose their appeal. Hence, to the degree that I am full, I am free. Eyes do not rove, nor do fleshly lusts rule, when the heart is fat with the love of Jesus!”
So, today are you full of Christ? A good test is that is if any lusts or longings persist you, you can be sure that you are not full. But you can be assured all you have to do is ask of Christ the bread of life and He will gladly fill you up!

Wondering if there are anymore chocolate oatmeal cookies left at house right now?
Pastor Phillip