FIVE MARKS OF A DISCIPLE: OCTOBER 5 – NOVEMBER 2

Posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: Fasting builds intimacy with God, and encourages you to grow inwardly, upwardly, and outwardly. Explore five marks of a transformed disciple of Jesus and determine five actions that will allow God to change you. An action that applies to each mark is focus. Fasting and prayer is God’s way for us to find the kind of focus that builds intimacy within and actions without. Be with Him. Be like Him. Do what He wants.

COMING NEXT! MAKING SPACE: NOVEMBER 4 – NOVEMBER 27

Reflect on how to make more space for God in your life. Make space in the moment and better reflect God to others. Make space in the morning and enjoy intimacy with Him. Make space in your conversations with others and learn how to listen like He does. Make space in your schedule to breathe and be refreshed by Him. Make space in your commitments so that you can say Yes! to the things He wants you to do. God made a space in this world for us. Let’s return the favor!

by Amanda Bew

Marks of a Disciple 4: Filling

We have fasted so that we recognize how God longs to feed us and fill us from His generosity! He wants to fill us with things that give us strength and that will fully satisfy our thirst. In His world, the sweet stream is always running within our reach. His food is full of eternal nutrients. It is His filling that enlarges our spirit.

We all live off His generous abundance, gift after gift after gift … this exuberant giving and receiving, this endless knowing and understanding, all came through Jesus. John 1:16 (MSG)

He is not stingy with His children. He promises to personally bend down to feed us (Hosea 11:4). He is interested and attentive to us and wants us to be full of all that He has to offer. And He has so much to give!

All He asks is that we come to Him and we listen carefully. He wants us to be quiet and hear Him speaking kindly to us (Hosea 2:14). He wants us to prioritize the good things He has to offer our lives. This generosity is His joy!

All that God gives is based on the fullness of who He is. Our God, I AM WHO I AM, came to our earthly realm to share Himself. Jesus, the demonstration of God’s love (Romans 5:8), shows us His fullness:

The church is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all things in every way (Eph 1:23).
Know the love of Christ, and be filled to all the fullness of God (Eph 3:19).
Be a mature man, to the measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13).
He will supply all your needs, according to His riches (Phil 4:19).
The Father’s pleasure was for all the fullness to dwell in Christ (Col 1:19).
For in Christ the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells in bodily form (Col 2:9).

How do we access or receive His love, His riches, and His nature? How can we be sure that we are filled with His Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and not filled with the things of this world? We are not filled with Him when we are engaging in sin, when self is on the throne of our life, or when we rely on our past or present works for feeling spiritual or right with God. Spiritual breathing is confessing any known sin (breathe out) and then asking to be filled (breathe in). Recognize you are forgiven and then just ask.

We were saved through faith and not through works. So we are also filled through faith, not through words or works. Pray sincerely and we are in that moment filled with His Spirit. We become humbly connected to God in a powerful way. We are free to experience all of the ways listed above that Holy Spirit fills our lives. Pray to be filled with His Spirit right now. When your sin disconnects you, confess and pray again. He will never leave you. He will overflow your life. You will grow and bear much fruit.

What difference might focusing on the fullness of God make in your prayer life?

How might your day to day life be changed specifically?

Lord, my Provider, You are all I need! Fill me with the fullness of all that You are. Spill Your life out of me to gift those people you place in my path. Amen.

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