Full

This time of year we may experience more often than usual the feeling of a full stomach. When you’ve had enough to eat, you know you can’t fit any more food in you, so you stop… unless you’re a Rottweiler.

Hunger is like a vacuum. Where there is a void, there is a yearning to fill it with something. Sometimes we make good choices on what we eat. Sometimes we hit the drive-thru.

The human heart is like a vacuum too. If it feels empty, we will fill it. Sometimes we choose poorly in the filling of our hearts. Once sin finds a home in our heart and mind, showing up in our habits and lifestyle, there’s really just one way to eliminate it effectively. In a practical sense, it can’t be simply removed or forgotten. When you pull something from a vacuum, low pressure forces draw it—or something else nearby—back into it. It must be replaced, selectively, with something good.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.
~Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662)

Pascal recognized the vacuum in the human heart that only found true satisfaction in God. Paul encouraged Christians to “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things”, (Colossians 3:2) and warned against superficial vices: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18)

Choose to ingest Him—through prayer, reading His word, practice worship and right living, and fellowship with other believers. When you are full of something good, there simply isn’t room for lesser things.

“Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” (Romans 8:5-11)

Eat up!