What are You Full of?
Simple Summer Shifts to Soothe Your Soul
Welcome to Simple Summer Shifts!
Summer has its own rhythm, doesn't it? The longer days invite us to slow down, breathe deeper, and notice things we might rush past during the rest of the year.
This summer, I'm offering you Simple Summer Shifts—digestible pieces of encouragement and biblical insight.
So pour yourself something cool, find a comfortable spot, and let's discover together what shifts God might want to make in our hearts this summer.
In His love,
Kim M.
I stood at the kitchen sink, water rushing over my hands as I filled yet another glass. The simple action caught my attention—the way the water curved against the sides, rising steadily until it reached the brim and then spilling over my fingers when I didn't stop in time
Filled to overflowing.
The phrase echoed, stirring something richer than the mundane task before me. How often had I prayed to be "filled with the fullness of God" without pausing to consider what that meant?
What are we asking for when we pray to "be filled"?
Empty Spaces
We all know what it feels like to be empty: the hollow ache when something or someone we love is gone, the gnawing restlessness when purpose feels unclear, and the quiet desperation that sends us searching for anything to fill the void.
I've felt that emptiness. Maybe you have, too.
We try to fill these spaces with so many things:
achievements that validate our worth
relationships that make us feel chosen
possessions that promise security
distractions that numb the discomfort
But they never quite satisfy, do they? Like water in cupped hands, they slip through our fingers no matter how tightly we hold on.
The prophet Jeremiah described this perfectly: "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jeremiah 2:13, NIV).
We keep digging our cisterns—fashioning containers we believe will hold what we need—only to find they crack under pressure, unable to contain what our souls truly thirst for.
Redefining Fullness
Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:17-19 stopped me in my tracks the first time I truly let it sink into my heart:
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (NIV).
Paul prays that we will be filled to the fullest measure of God's presence.
But what exactly is "the fullness of God"?
The word Paul uses here is pleroma1—not partial filling, but complete, overflowing abundance. Picture a container filled to capacity and beyond, unable to hold back what's been poured in. Pleroma speaks of totality, of holding the complete sum of something rather than just a portion.
What is the complete sum of God? What is God full of?
God is love—not just that God loves, but that God is love (1 John 4:8). Experiencing God's fullness means embracing love itself, not merely the emotion but the powerful force that creates and sustains the universe.
What Love Is
We must unlearn all we know about love and recalibrate it to what God says love is.
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16a, NIV).
It is through the cross we learn to love. Let that sink in for a moment. The One who is love itself chose to show us love's truest expression not through words or feelings, but through sacrifice.
Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the very image of the Father in human form, willingly laid down His life. Not because He had to, but because love compelled Him. Love doesn't simply stir warm feelings—love acts. It gives without calculating the cost or counting what it might receive in return.
This kind of love reaches across time and space to embrace us. We are loved with the same, costly love that led Jesus to the cross. Not because of what we've done or who we've become, but because of who God is. His love for us isn't earned—it's given. We don't have to perform our way into fullness. We receive it, complete and whole, because Christ has already paid the price.
In Colossians, Paul explores this fullness further: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness" (Colossians 2:9-10a, NIV).
Christ is filled with every bit of God's attributes and character. Remarkably, through Him, we are also brought to fullness.
The fullness we receive isn't meant to remain within us—it has purpose.
A Filling That Equips
Being filled to the fullest measure of God's presence isn't just for our comfort or satisfaction. It equips us for purpose, like it did Jesus.
Jesus was always about His Father's business. The fullness of God’s presence, in Him, empowered Him to do the Father’s will all the way to the cross—all from a posture of love.
When God fills us with His loving presence, it actively flows through us instead of sitting stagnant. Like water in that glass at my sink, when filled beyond capacity, it spills over. The love that fills us becomes the love that flows through us.
I think of Ezekiel's vision where water flowed from God’s temple, deepening as it traveled, bringing life to everything it touched—even transforming the salt water of the Dead Sea into freshness (Ezekiel 47:1-12). "Where the river flows everything will live" (Ezekiel 47:9, NIV).
We are now the temple, the dwelling place of God's Spirit. God's fullness flows from us as tributaries of His love to a world dying of thirst.
Pressing Out of Other Loves
Yet I notice a resistance to this filling in myself. If I'm honest, it's because I have other lovers—other things I turn to for fulfillment that compete for space in my heart.
In his sermon "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection," Thomas Chalmers writes that the only way to overcome the love of the world is not to suppress it but to replace it with a greater love—the love of God.2
When we grasp even a fraction of how wide, long, high, and deep Christ's love is for us, it begins to press out our lesser loves, not through force or guilt, but through the sheer magnificence of a better affection.
Being filled with God's loving presence transforms what we want, value, and pursue. Our broken cisterns lose their appeal when we taste living water.
The Overflow
I returned to that water glass in my sink, watching it overflow, the water cascading down the sides.
This is what happens when we are filled with God's fullness. We don't contain it. We can't. It spills over into our relationships, our work, and our everyday decisions. It flows from us to others, still desperately digging cisterns and coming up empty.
What are you full of today?
Are you trying to fill yourself with things that won't satisfy you? Are you digging cisterns that cannot hold water?
Or are you opening yourself to be filled with the fullness of God—with love itself—allowing it to transform you from the inside out and flow through you to a thirsty world?
The invitation stands. The water flows. Will you drink?
What areas of your life need to be filled with God's love today? How would your life change if you were filled to the measure of all the fullness of God? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
For more on the Greek word pleroma, see "What is the Pleroma?" GotQuestions.org, https://www.gotquestions.org/pleroma.html
Thomas Chalmers, "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection," sermon preached at Tron Church, Glasgow, 1813.