What Are You Filling Yourself With?

A Few Thoughts to Consider

What fills most of your free time?

The answer to this question reveals the true affections of your heart. Some crave food, some crave activity, and some crave distraction. When they’re stressed, this becomes their coping mechanism.

Of course, this is nothing new. That’s because this inner desire to be full comes from God. Our souls crave to be more than cultural Christians. We long to experience God’s activity in our lives and all that God has to offer. The good news is that God provides both the opportunity and means to receive all of him that we want. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:14-19:

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. ¹⁶ I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, ¹⁹ and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Keep in mind that Paul is addressing saints. Thus, this prayer isn’t for their salvation but for God’s ongoing transformative work in their lives. Paul’s first request for the Ephesians is that they would be strengthened with power through the Spirit in their inner being.

The word used for “power” here is dunamis, which refers to moral power and excellence of the soul. The inner being includes the heart, mind, and spirit—everything that stands in contrast to the outward self (Romans 7:22; 2 Corinthians 4:16). This inner strength is given through the Holy Spirit, and it’s the means by which God works within us. This strengthening isn’t something we can achieve on our own. It must be granted by God. It’s a gift of his abundant mercy.

Paul’s prayer for inner strength has a clear purpose. He wants Christ to dwell in believers’ hearts through faith, much like how God’s presence filled Solomon’s temple in the Old Testament. Now, instead of living in a physical building, God makes his home in the hearts of believers, who must prepare themselves as a temple for him.