Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Spirit-filled

Matthew 12:34

The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.


Hebrews 4:12

The word of God ... examines the thoughts and motives of the heart.


Proverbs 4:23

"Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."


When I was little we use to play a word association game where we would say a series of words and ask what they all had in common. That's sort of what I'm doing with today's verses. I'm asking myself what they have in common.

The study guide I'm using for the next few weeks tells me that the verses have to do with why I say the things I do, why I feel the way I do and why I act the way I do which are all God-given motivations. To be honest I'm a little confused over this statement because sometimes I think I don't talk, feel or act Godly and I think if these are God-given motivations I would.

Still, the guide goes on to say that almost every one of our passions (motivations) can be identified in the ministry of one of the twelve Apostles. That was interesting to me and I'll have to think further on that.

Psalm 37:4 says

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.


I suppose if you are delighting yourself in the Lord, the things you say, feel and do will be from the Lord. Maybe the key for me is to understand that everything we do doesn't have to be "spiritual" to be God-given.

The Bible use words like "passion" to describe all kinds of motivations that we all have like our hopes, dreams, ambitions, affections, things we love to do and all of those don't necessarily have to be labeled with the word spiritual. They are just ordinary activities of our everyday life. Actually, I believe this is what God wants from us. He wants our everyday life, our everyday attention. If we give Him our everyday life, our everyday attention, our lives are spirit-filled which I think He wants from us more than being spiritual if that makes sense.

I suppose what makes me make this connection is looking at the list of synonyms for the word spiritual: religious, pious, holy, sacred, devout which are actions we can do, but the word spirit-filled makes me think more on the terms of God doing the action. Being spirit-filled is His gift to us as we give our lives to Him, I’m thinking.

Anyway the verses for today gave me a lot to think on as I go about my everyday life this day. It's already started out to be a great day and I hope yours will be too.

1 comment:

Joe said...

Thank you for visiting my blog and for you kind comments.

It's a mess of a blog...kinda like my thought processes, but it can be a decent read at times.

This post is nicely written. I visited your painting site and loved it.

Word of the day.

.:.