Are You Full?

Are You Full?

Carolyn

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

John 1:14, 16

An Introduction and Invitation

This year in Bible Study Fellowship, we’ve been studying the Gospel of John. It was written so that we might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

John introduces us to Jesus as He truly is. Jesus has now entered the world, God in human flesh, and shows us who He is and what He can do. Among other things, Jesus gives us 7 “I am” statements (who He is) and 7 signs (what He can do).

I’ve been fascinated by the powerful presentation of who Jesus is. John moves from a stunningly beautiful prologue and introduction of Jesus in John 1:1-18, to John the Baptist introducing and baptizing Jesus, then Jesus calling His disciples, the wedding at Cana, the cleansing of the temple, a conversation with Nicodemus about being born again, the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus healing people, feeding the 5000, walking on water, and more—all before we get to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, Judas’ betrayal, the Upper Room Discourse with His disciples, and His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Jesus lovingly prepares His disciples for His departure and describes for them how He will provide for them still; they will not be left alone. Every step with Jesus shows us more of who He is, His heart for the world and for us, His power to heal and to save, His humility, servanthood, and sacrifice for us, and His ongoing power and presence through His Spirit.

There are so many ideas presented to us today about who Jesus is, but in reading John, as we see more of Jesus as He really is, the ideas we have about Him are clarified or corrected. He lovingly and graciously invites us to believe and to have life to the full (John 10:10).

Filled with His Fullness

After studying John’s prologue, I wondered about what it meant that Jesus was “full of grace and truth” and that “from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” Prior to this, the law had been given to them through Moses, now grace and truth through Christ. Something better than the law had come; in fact, the fulfillment of the law was here (Matthew 5:17). Interestingly, that word “fulfill” (plēroō in Greek) means to bring to “fullness” (plērōma), to make “full” (plērēs), these words all sharing a Greek root.

As I prayed about what that meant that Jesus was full of grace and truth and that from His fullness, we have all received, grace upon grace, various Scriptures came to mind.

  • In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul prays that the saints in Ephesus would “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (3:19).
  • Paul encourages us to “be filled with the Spirit” in Ephesians 5:18.
  • Paul prays in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” This suggests a fullness to overflowing, so that as we are filled up, we might overflow. (See 2 Cor. 9:8.)
  • In the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
  • I think back to John 2 when Jesus had the servants fill to the brim (to the point of fullness) six stone water jars, used for Jewish rites of purification, with water that He turned into wine. Empty vessels, filled up, by the true Vine, who causes us to bear fruit as we abide in Him (John 15).
  • David writes in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

I sense that this is only the beginning of my understanding of this word and concept, but I’d like to keep learning more, so “full” is my word for the year. (I’ve written before about why I choose a word for the year here, though I know and understand not everyone likes to do that!) Yes, it’s taken me almost 2 months of the year to sit down and try to describe this word for the year. But I keep finding a richer depth to who Jesus is and what He offers us.

Life to the Full

It seems we have a God who is able to fill us up with His love, His grace, His truth, His fullness, His Spirit, His joy, His peace, and does so to overflowing, that we might spill over into bearing fruit and being a benefit to the world He made and loves.

Are you full in Christ? Are you experiencing the full and abundant life He came to give? Do you want to? Ask Him today to, through Jesus, fill you up to all the fullness of God, to give you this full and abundant life, as you put your faith and trust in Him.

“… I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

John 10:10
Thanksgiving Reflections 2023

Thanksgiving Reflections 2023

Carolyn

It’s been a little over a year now since we moved 734 miles away to a new home. It’s taken about that much time to get adjusted to a new home, community, church, job for my husband, and the gift of having my mom live with us. All of these are grace gifts from the Lord for which I give thanks, especially today.

We’ve traveled back to our former community for Thanksgiving to be with family that remains there. Longtime friends welcomed us to stay in their home for the week. I’m always stunned by others’ hospitality to us when we travel back, their willingness to open their beautiful homes to us so graciously and without any obligation. It’s like a retreat to stay there. More grace gifts.

I was thinking this morning about that surprising gift of someone sharing their home. What enables me to have access to such a lovely place, free of charge, without any debt owed, being able to partake of their generous gift and be so blessed? Relationship, friendship. If I didn’t know them, they likely wouldn’t open their home to me! But it’s out of that friendship that this gift is offered.

And how is it accepted? By saying yes, receiving it, realizing I don’t have a way to repay them for this abundant generosity with anything other than thanks and maybe a small gift which can’t begin to measure up to what I’ve been given! It seems almost feeble to leave a small gift and note of thanks.

The Bible is full of parables, stories, analogies, metaphors that give us a glimpse of a greater truth. This sharing of home is a picture to me of a greater truth. Jesus has a home prepared in heaven for us that is beyond comprehension and beyond what I could afford. It’s a home which I could never earn and never repay Him for bringing me into. In that home, the true King Jesus reigns and rules, and we will be set free from all that we struggle with on earth. He invites us to come.

How do I gain access to this heavenly home? Through relationship, friendship. By knowing Christ and receiving His invitation of saving grace. The ultimate grace gift.

John 15:12-17 is a beautiful passage about friendship with God. Jesus says in verse 14 that those who do what He commands are His friends. I want to be His friend; do you? Verses 12-13 tell us what his command is: “Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Verse 17 emphasizes it again: “This is my command: Love each other.“

How do we know how to love? We follow Jesus’ own example of love. He laid down His life for us. Why? So that we could know Him, have relationship with Him, and be saved from our sin by faith in Him. In that love and relationship, He will one day welcome us into His perfect and eternal home. I want to be with Him where He is, in an eternal home; do you?

It’s interesting today that in our society, oftentimes, Christians are depicted as hateful. But true Christians will be known by their love. That’s the hallmark of Christianity. A loving God who rescues us, who laid down His very life in love. And He calls us with the two great commandments to love Him and love others. Love.

If people fail to show love, Christ is not to blame. We are. We are sinners in need of His grace gift of salvation.

I myself have failed in this measure of love this past week. When I travel and leave my routine, I find myself often stressed and easily irritated, putting this stress on to those around me. Isn’t that lovely to admit during this beautiful holiday season? I have failed to love as Christ has loved me.

But as I awoke this morning, tempted to wallow in the shame and frustration at my own sin and self and shortcomings, eyes on me, I instead was drawn to worship. Don’t wallow; worship. Don’t look down and around; look up. Don’t remain in the sin; repent and turn again to Christ. For His love for us is so great, He gave His life, a sufficient sacrifice, for sinners like me.

This Thanksgiving, I rejoice in that salvation, in Jesus Christ who saves and loves, who will one day welcome me into His home, not because of what I’ve done, but because of who He is and what He has done. I want to receive this free gift of grace through faith and enjoy all the benefits of knowing Christ as my Savior. I want to turn again for forgiveness in the daily wear and tear of life, not wallowing there, but looking up to worship. On this Thanksgiving, I want to thank the One who is worthy of all my worship.

I pray you have a joyous Thanksgiving, too, giving thanks for gifts such as these today with people you love, in the presence of the King of love.

Summer Wrap-up and Fall Launch

Summer Wrap-up and Fall Launch

Carolyn

September may be my favorite month. The heat of summer begins to give way to the cooler weather of fall. Everything launches again, whether schools and academic schedules or various activities and groups. A more typical routine resumes. It almost feels like the start of a new year when we make our resolutions as we set our fall schedule, our new goals and ways to grow. I can feel life regulating again, moving away from some of the free and unformed days of summer to days that are more planned and possibly even more productive.

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Happy Father’s Day 2023

Carolyn

As I start this post, I feel like an award winner who is going to try to thank and recognize all those who have impacted her life and contributed to this moment! Where do I begin on this Father’s Day, and how do I convey adequate thanks for so many loving men in my life through the years?!

I’ll start in Mississippi, where my mother, sister, and I were this past week for my uncle’s memorial service who passed away in May. He was such a dear man who loved his family dearly and was always so joyous and fun to be around. In the absence of my own father, it was a blessing to have loving uncles. This is a picture with Uncle Carl and my sister several years ago when we were together for the funeral of my other uncle.

Being in Mississippi reminds us of many childhood trips there to visit my dad’s family for summer and holidays. Though my dad had passed away when I was a baby, we always remained close to his family. What a gift!

It had been many years since I had been back to my father’s hometown. As a child, we always went by the cemetery to remember him when we were in town. The candy store, the swimming pool, the park, the local department store, and the cemetery were the places we frequented. My grandmother always had flowers there, as someone so graciously placed this past week on his and my grandparents’ headstones beside where we had my uncle’s burial service.

While we were at lunch at the church after my uncle’s service, a man named Jim came up and introduced himself. He told me he was a childhood friend of my father’s. They went to school together growing up, then to the same college. Jim was my father’s “big brother” in their fraternity. Jim moved to Miami after college, and my father and mother moved there as well. Jim was supposed to have lunch with my father the day he died. Instead, after my mom received word that my father had been in a wreck on his way to work, being at home with two young daughters and no car, having just moved to town, she left my sister and me with a neighbor she didn’t even know, and Jim came and took her to the hospital. He drove her back home after finding out my father had died. My mom didn’t see Jim again after that day. She flew to New Orleans with my father’s body on the plane. She was met there by family, and my dad was buried there in southern Mississippi near his family home. She then moved to Memphis to be near her family. Jim lived in Florida until recently when he moved back to Mississippi. And here we were meeting him, my sister and me for the first time, and my mom all these years later. He told us some stories about my dad, which I loved to hear!

As I remember my own father today, along with my wonderful uncles, grandfathers, and my step-father who played fatherly and spiritual roles in my life before their own deaths, I also give thanks to God for my husband and his father, pictured last weekend at a family wedding. They are two godly men who provide stability and constancy for our family.

I’m still getting caught up and rested from 9 days away for the family wedding in Chicago and then the funeral in Mississippi, flying in through New Orleans where my parents first lived after they were married, and reliving so many memories. It felt like a pilgrimage of sorts!

For the many fathers and father figures who have blessed my life, I give thanks to God today. Most of all, I praise God for being my loving and faithful heavenly Father who is always with me, leading and guiding me.

Happy Father’s Day!

Remember the Garden

Remember the Garden

Carolyn

A few years ago, I listened to a podcast describing Jesus and His emotions in the Garden of Gethsemane. As I listened, I found myself teary thinking of Jesus as He faced the cross (Luke 22:39-46). Imagine His anguish (He was fully human after all) that literally caused him to sweat blood — and yet His willingness to stay and do the will of His Father. As God, He knew what was to happen. His suffering brought salvation for whoever believes in Him. It was costly for Him to die in our place, and it demonstrated His great love (Romans 5:8)!

The next morning, as I was getting coffee, still reflecting on this, these words went through my mind: “You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood.” I looked up that phrase and found it:

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” (ESV).

Hebrews 12:4

Hebrews 12:4 would most certainly seem to be referring to the martyrs, to those who have suffered persecution for their faith. It follows Hebrews 11, that great hall of faith that concludes with martyrs who did shed their blood. And because Hebrews 12:1-3 (immediately before verse 4) urges us to fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, it no doubt also points to Jesus’ death on the cross where he suffered, bled, and died.

But I think we can also gain encouragement by remembering Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46).

There in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was resisting the great forces of evil, as he had done when tempted earlier by the devil in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11), both times during which an angel or angels ministered to Him. In His obedience, in doing His Father’s will, in withstanding temptation, not only did He save us, but He gave us an example to follow. If He could endure, we can endure, and His Word assures us He gives us the strength to do so (1 Corinthians 10:13).

This section of Scripture (Luke 22:39-46, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) is bookended with Jesus telling His disciples to go and pray that they would not enter into temptation. As He faced the cross, He didn’t ask them to pray for Himself, but twice told them to pray that they would not enter into temptation. Prayer is that necessary to defeating temptation. They instead fell asleep.

(As an aside, it’s made me wonder what might have happened if Peter had prayed that he wouldn’t enter into temptation–would he still have denied Jesus three times? Of course, this was part of a larger, sovereign plan. But what would happen if we pray, as Jesus told us in the Lord’s prayer, that we might not enter into temptation but be delivered from evil. Are we sleeping more than praying?)

In between these commands to the disciples to pray that they would not enter temptation, Jesus Himself prays the anguishing prayer that His Father might remove this cup from Him, but says, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” “Being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

Returning to Hebrews 12:4, Barnes, in his “Notes on the Bible,” writes:

[T]he fact to which the apostle alludes, it seems to me, is the struggling of the Saviour in the garden of Gethsemane, when his conflict was so severe that, great drops of blood fell down to the ground . . . It is, indeed, commonly understood to mean that they had not yet been called to shed their blood as martyrs in the cause of religion; see Stuart Bloomfield, Doddridge, Clarke, Whitby, Kuinoel, etc. Indeed, I find in none of the commentators what seems to me to be the true sense of this passage, and what gives an exquisite beauty to it, the allusion to the sufferings of the Saviour in the garden. 

Barnes goes on to give three reasons why he has this view, which you can read here by scrolling way down to the Hebrews 12:4 commentary and seeing his 3-part list. It is quite moving.

The question that strikes me as I read and studied this: In our struggling against sin, have we resisted to the point of shedding our blood? The answer most certainly and always will be no, we haven’t. (In fact, sometimes, I wonder if I put up much resistance at all!) If not, we must keep praying! This is so central to the victory He wants to give us! And we can then, in His power, keep enduring as He did, we can follow His example, we can receive His strength to resist. The Bible also tells us that endurance builds character and character, hope (Romans 5:3-5). It also gives us a promise that those who endure will reign with Him (2 Timothy 2:12).

So Remember the Garden of Gethsemane. It tells us of Jesus’ love and faithfulness, His determination to do the Father’s will, no matter the cost.

Remember the Garden. It reminds us He entered into humanity for us. Nothing we experience should tell us He’s disinterested or unloving. He died to rescue us. He loves us.

Remember the Garden. Pray that we would not enter into temptation.

Remember the Garden. If He could endure, there’s nothing we face (sin, temptation, etc.) that He can’t enable us to endure and resist, too.

Remember the Garden. Thank Him for making a way for us to be saved and to be victorious over sin and temptation in Jesus’ name.

*Garden of Gethsemane Photo by Stacey Franco on Unsplash