Fill Us Completely

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the holy spirit. -Romans 15:13

 

I absolutely love this verse! This is Paul’s prayer for the Roman church, for God to fill them completely with joy and peace, and that their lives would overflow with confident hope. 2,000 years later, this is my prayer for my life, my friend’s lives and my church family’s lives too. I find myself myself feeling empty from time to time, as if a puzzle piece is missing. I think we all find missing puzzle pieces in our lives sometimes, when it feels like something just isn’t right. We wind up trying to force the wrong piece into the gap, but no matter how hard we try, nothing will be a perfect fit until we find the right piece. In our lives, that only perfect piece is God. We may try to force the wrong piece by trying to be “good enough,” by trying to be happy, or by filling it with friends and relationships, with our grades, or with our busy schedules. But those things will never fit the puzzle. God is the only one who can fill all the gaps in our lives and complete our puzzle. The only place we find satisfaction is in God, in his truth. Friends, school, grades, work, etc., those things are great! But we can’t get our satisfaction in anything of this world. We live in a fallen world, with fallen people, and fallen ideas. Everything in this world will inevitably fail us. It sounds so sad, so hopeless; but our joy, our peace, our confident hope is found in Jesus. When something is missing, we have to learn to come to God.  When we finally bring our anger, and sadness, and pain, and incomplete puzzle of our life to him, he takes it and he reminds us that it has already been put to death on the cross and he completes our puzzle. God is the ultimate source of satisfaction. When something is missing in our lives or something out of place, it’s because we aren’t letting God fill us completely. So, join me in praying Paul’s prayer for your life, for my life, and for the lives of the people around us. Let God fill you, fill me, fill us, completely with joy and peace. Let our lives overflow with confident hope as we allow the Holy Spirit to live and work inside of us.

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