Filled to the Fullness of the Abundance of the Glory of God

SPIRITUAL fervour is found within the heights of a heady rock ‘n’ roll church worship, but it’s felt as much within the depths of the ordinary life.

The solemnity of a moment brings home the truth; God is indelibly with us all on this journey — and pure existential cognisance of this fact goes toward a filling; a fullness; a heavenly abundance for which nothing in life could compare. Such is worship. It places us in an incredibly blessed position for which billionaires possibly have no inkling.

What is it like? Can it be described so we can taste it? I think we can explain how it occurs, but it would be a travesty to attempt to put into words what the Sacred Spirit of Revelation has ever hidden from descriptive comprehension.

As the anointing of gratitude toward the experience of even ten minutes of joy attests, being filled to the fullness of the abundance of the Glory of God is a classical experience.

Even one portion of such an experience indwells itself in our memory, and, forever more, that experience is etched into the cast of our soul. I remember my first experience; the audacity of life had taken me into convolutions of grief. At that depth where I literally had no hope if I didn’t have God, the Lord showed himself. I cannot describe what it meant to me that God was faithful in that way — to be taken into his Presence — to be filled to the fullness of the abundance of his Glory.

What is inexplicable is also so overwhelmingly wondrous.

There are always gifts given in such moments of ethereal proximity to God. This first moment I was bathed in the tears of anointing — big, heavy (‘oily’), hot drops — and more of them in heaving splendour than I could contemplate or contain. I wasn’t just emotional beyond control in my grief; I was emotional for what I was feeling as I willingly surrendered my old, now very irrelevant life. Without identity I was free to assume a new one. If we’re at an end of ourselves we do well to do a good job of it, then we let it go. So I was caught up to high heaven in my bedroom. God brought heaven to me in my conscious regard. God had filled me with his Spirit to the emptiest part. Only as I lost all did I gain all.

But I do know that the gift I speak of here is not the only one. There are as many gifts of God’s Presence as God would determine.

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The point of being filled to the fullness of the abundance of the glory of God is plain: it proves God is real — awesome and fearsome — one and for all. We may say we believe in God but faith never makes sense until we actually meet him. Then faith comes into its own. We’re ready to step away from safe land to enter an unknown and tremulous journey. And the sojourn into the next world has begun. We will never go back.

Meet God and he becomes real. When God is real in our experience, faith, hope and love are a natural and supernatural outflowing.

Filled to the fullness of the abundance of the glory of God: it’s every believer’s designation and destiny.

God’s fullness was always intended to dwell richly in us. Richly blessed are we when the Spirit’s intention fills us with the fullness of his abundance.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.