Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 5 Study # 7
August 29 2004
Lincolnton, N.C.
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<089> Thesis:  God's plan for "filling" man with Himself involves a "faith in revealed truth" methodology. Introduction:  This morning we are going to "slow down" a little in our hurried rush through Luke's words to Theophilus. I have been arrested by Luke's focus upon the "filling of the Holy Spirit" in relation to the way most of us, as believers, live. This motivates my curiosity about God's provision for life as that Provision is identified as the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, we have "life" as the experience that results from God's (pretty much direct) provision of relational reality so that "peace" with God results in a "restfulness" of the soul and spirit as our confidence in what He has said grows and includes "me". Then, on the other hand, we have life as the experience that results from the way things "happen" to us in this world where the "restfulness of the soul and spirit" is directly challenged by events that we did not plan, we did not foresee, nor did we "want". Both of these issues of "life" have a solid root; but that root has only a rather tenuous "connector" to us. Luke addresses the "root" in our text this morning as he draws out his illustration of the tenuous "connector" that has so much of an impact upon our actual experience of life. What we are seeing is God's plan for human "life" as a participation with Him in Who He is as Life Personified. His is not the "potato" plan, but the "tomato" plan. So, this morning, let's reconsider Luke's concept of the "filling of the Holy Spirit" and why it is mentioned.