…”fill-er-up…”

 A friend just called me a few days ago and exclaimed…”I get it, I finally understand what you were telling me about being filled with the Holy Spirit.  We had a conversation where you told me about how much fuller life is with the Holy spirit… and to be honest, I thought you were nuts…. But I get it now.”

I am now a spirit filled person…. It has been a long journey to get here again….

I say ‘again’ because I really believe that as children, we are very spirit filled…. Sometime between puberty and adulthood…. Life and society warp us, if we allow them to.

I was a child who loved the Lord.  In public kindergarten I drew a picture of Jesus as my best friend in a book about me…. The next year my folks enrolled me in Catholic School, realizing and meeting my spiritual need to be surrounded with believers. 

As a teen I loved the Lord, but selfishness and the need for attention thought achievement won me over…. And I wasn’t thanking the Lord for those talents…. I was a Kansas State medalist in track, I was a cheerleader in the Macy’s Day Parade and performed on NBC tv…. I cheered for Kansas University in the 1992 Aloha Bowl in Honolulu, Hawaii….. I was accepted to camps for exceptional future teachers…. I traveled as an ambassador of Kansas to a American Rural Electric Coop gathering in Steamboat Springs, Colorado…. I was elected to return the next summer, & then asked back the summer after that…. I taught  a camp at Kansas State University, Summer Adventure, mostly for professors children … and was asked back to lead the camp the following summer…. I was on the Dean of the college of Education list…. I was awarded Outstanding Student of Elementary Education at my 1997 college graduation…..

A life of achievements piled up….. then I was just an elementary teacher…. I had such a hard time when life was no longer a list of achievements to be racked up…… 6^th and 7^th graders did not care what I had done in life.  They really only cared about what I was doing for them.  I had to learn to live each day for the Lord…. Allowing the Holy Spirit to fill me, use me, be the salt and light to all around me….

Life being filled by the spirit is rich and full… everything is brighter, colors are more colorful… I see the beauty of nature around me…. I see the Lord’s hand in all things….

So how does one become filled with the Spirit?

You have to be faithful in your prayer life.

You have to have spiritual friends, who support you & keep you accountable on your spiritual journal.

You have to be in the word. I have to find ways to make it fit into my busy life…. Many days I am in scripture on my iPhone or on wwww.biblegateway.com I love to sit with my 12 year old bible, a gift from my husband when I joined my first women’s Bible study… it was on the book of Ezra, I was back in Ezra this past winter with my Living Fire small group….. so fun to read 12 year old notes….

Five years ago I read a book by the late Henri Nouwen,  In the Name of Jesus.1

Nouwen was a Catholic priest who taught at Notre Dame, Harvard and Yale. He left Yale and went to live in a community of mentally handicapped individuals.  There he was just Henri, not Herni Nouwen the Yale educator…. According to Nouwen it was life altering, humbling at it’s finest.  When Nouwen would travel and give lectures, he would always travel with one of the men form the handicapped community…. To keep him real, to keep him humble, to keep him spirit filled….

Remember the saying, "you are what you eat?"  If you eat mostly junk food, your body is junk.... if you eat healthy food, fruit & veggies, your body is health.  The same is true with your spirit. You have to feed it.... food for the soul.  

In Galatians the apostle Paul explains the fruits of the spirit....

Galatians 5:22-23 (Today's New International Version)

 "²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

To have a healthy soul... a spirit filled soul, you must fill it with these things... LOVE
JOY
PEACE
PATIENCE
KINDNESS
GOODNESS
FAITHFULNESS
GENTLENESS
SELF-CONTROL

If you fill your soul with the opposite, anger, hate, grumpiness, badness, roughness, out-of-control-ness.... you will be "what you eat"...

I had the biggest smile on my face as my friend told her story…. How she thought I was wacked out back when I first told her about my spiritual life…. How she now gets it….

What joy it brings to be used by the Lord… to be a blessing to others… to share a spirit filled life…

So dear reader....  what do you fill your soul with? Definately food for thought... pun intended....

1 Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York, NY.: The Crossroads Publishing Company., 1989)