We chug, chug, chug through life – and pretty soon, we're running on empty.  And then we try filling up with all sorts of different things.  But running on the wrong fuel can have disastrous consequences. In a world that's hungry for some sort of authentic spiritual reality. It just blows me away that God has a plan. He's always had a plan, that plan is to pour His Spirit out on us, His Holy Spirit, a flood tide of His life, His love, His presence, rivers of living water, an overflow of abundance. You think I'm going a bit over the top? Well they're God's words not mine. Sometimes in our day-to-day desert existence we get a puny view of God and His plan, but that doesn't change the fact that God is a god of overflowing abundance. And the biggest blessing of all is to be so immersed in Him and His Holy Spirit that we can't wipe the smile off our face and adulation out of our hearts. That's why He urges us, "Go on, go on being filled with the Holy Spirit." We all go through times in our lives when God seems a long way off and the further away He seems the smaller He looks. The day-to-day reality crowds our vision, God ends up being a small speck somewhere in the landscape, you know what I'm talking about? Recently I had a large job to do, it was a huge job, now I'm involved full-time in this ministry of Christianityworks but I still do some IT consulting work because it helps us to cover the costs of producing these radio programs. And for four months I worked 12 hours a day and had literally only about 3 days off that whole time. Now don't try this at home, it is not a balanced existence, it's not to be recommended and you can't sustain that sort of thing but it was a season, it was something that I had to travel through. Fatigue and exhaustion really knock you around physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have to tell you some days, God felt like He was a long, long way away. So what does it mean, "go on being filled with the Holy Spirit". It's easy to say but when life's not easy you don't feel very spiritual, some days maybe we even despair, where is God? But what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit when life's tough? Because that's exactly the time that we do need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. There's an interesting story of Jesus when He's ministering and Jairus the leader of the synagogue, whose daughter is dying comes to Him and there are crowds everywhere and he presses through and says, "My daughter's dying, quick I need you to come." But there's this other person, this woman, this woman who'd been bleeding for 12 years, she's unclean, she's an outcast, she's spent all her money on Doctors, she's in absolute despair and she hears that Jesus is in town and this is what she does. When Jesus crossed back over by the boat from the other side of the lake a large crowd gathered around Him while He was at the lake then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there, he saw Jesus and fell at His feet and pleaded earnestly with Him, "My little girl is dying, please come and put your hands on her so that she'll be healed and live." So Jesus went with him and this large crowd followed and pressed around Him and a woman was there who'd been bleeding for twelve years. She'd suffered so much under the care of so many Doctors and she'd spent all she had and instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus she came up behind Him in the crowd and just touched His cloak because she thought, ' if I just touch His clothes I'll be healed.' Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering and at once Jesus realised that power had gone out from Him. He turned around to the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" His disciples went, "Come on, there's a whole crowd pressing in against you and you ask who touched me?" But Jesus kept looking around to see who'd done it and then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at His feet trembling with fear. She told Him the whole story. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go on, go in peace and be freed from your suffering. That power that flowed out of Jesus when she touched Him in faith was the power of the Holy Spirit and a small desperate seed of faith is all it took. It was an act of sheer desperation, just a single touch and a desperate faith. "Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit." Paul writes that, the Apostle, in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18. He says: Don't get drunk on wine it leads to debauchery, instead go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and sing spiritual songs and sing and make music in your heart to God, always giving thanks to the Father for everything in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. We can try and fill ourselves with all sorts of stuff. Here Paul says, don't try and fill up with wine, that's not where it's at. Shopping doesn't soothe your soul. Winning at work doesn't make you happy. Don't chase after all those things; instead be filled with the Holy Spirit. Do things like reading God's word and singing hymns and songs and making music to God in your heart. God's given us the ability to sing in our hearts maybe you haven't got such a great voice, that's okay, God loves your voice. When you and I worship Him from our hearts, when we sing and we say, "Praise you God," we just sing the melody in our hearts. God is overjoyed because we're worshipping Him and that's how we end up getting filled with the Spirit by doing the simple things of drawing close to Him every day. Just the simple basic things, spending just a little bit of quiet time every day, praying and asking Him and bring Him our needs and worshipping Him. He says in His word, "If we draw close to Him, He will draw close to us." My experience is that every day I need to do that because every day I get filled with His spirit afresh and I pour that out to other people, other people benefit from that and I get to the end of the day and I think, "I need some more of what God's got, I'm addicted to the Holy Spirit. I'm addicted to His joy and peace and His wonder and awe." Be filled with the Spirit, deliberately do the things that will reach out and touch Jesus, press through the crowd and the clutter of every day life, through adversity and pain and worship Him anyway. Pray anyway, make a melody in your heart to Him anyway. Lord I don't feel like worshipping you today but I will anyway. God seems so small on those days, such a long way off and our faith feels so small like the size of a mustard seed but what happens? What happens when we reach out through the crowd and the clutter with just the smallest bit of desperate faith and touch Him? Immediately Jesus felt the power go out of Him. The Holy Spirit, day after day wants to do that as we touch Jesus. When we do the little things to draw closer to Him, He will draw close to us, to fill us day by day, to flow through us, to re-fill us to flow out, to re-fill us in the process to be changed, healed, and transformed. That's the plan for the Holy Spirit and you.

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