Sharon Norris Elliott: A Devotional

Filled

What do you picture when you hear the words “to fill”? I think of a container of some kind into which something is being poured. For example, I picture a mug being filled with coffee by a waitress; a bucket being slowly filled with sand by a child with a plastic scooper; and my gas tank receiving the precious over-priced liquid that keeps me rolling up and down the highways of Los Angeles.

In each of the above cases of filling, the containers are being filled from the top. The waitress is pouring the coffee, the child is scooping the sand, and I am pumping from the nozzle the last drop of petrol I can get for my money. When the pouring fills the container, we will all stop pouring, because if we keep pouring, the resultant spillage will be considered waste.

Filling doesn’t work that way with God. Jesus told the woman at the well, “…the water that I shall give… shall be… a well of water springing up into everlasting life,” John 4:14 (KJV). Wells differ from mugs, buckets, and gas tanks in that wells are filled as the substance flows up from the bottom rather than the substance being poured in from the top. And when God fills a well (i.e. one of us), the water (which could be joy, gifts, wisdom, understanding, discernment, etc.) will “spring up,” from a hidden source, becoming not waste, but a beautifully gushing fountain – the overflow intended to be enjoyed by everyone who sees it.

Let’s look at our devotional times a little differently from now on. Instead of thinking we are filling our heads with the knowledge of the Word so that the truth can then penetrate to fill our hearts, let’s shift the focus. Let’s now see our times of reading and prayer as opportunities for God’s love messages to us to spring up from the hidden Source within. Just imagine what it would like if our hearts were saturated with Him first before our brains were even able to comprehend what was going on? By the time the living water reached our heads, it would gush out of our mouths as anointed messages and praise – pure water from the Source.

Perhaps that’s what Paul was getting at when he said, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess” (filled by our own efforts from without); “but be filled with the Spirit” (filled by the gushing up of God from the inside) Ephesians 5:18 (KJV).

Be a well!

©2009 Sharon Norris Elliott
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