Pour It Out

Through the prophet Isaiah, God presents this picture: he would pour out his Spirit on Israel’s descendants like water poured over dry ground. I envision rain rushing across the surface of dry, cracked clay. Most of it runs off, but some absorbs into the cracks and brings life to the ground. This is a picture of how the Holy Spirit worked before the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Spirit would pour over someone, enabling them for a specific work God had for them.

However, something changed after Jesus ascended to the Father. It is like God took our formless, dry, cracked clay and shaped it into vessels. Now, when God pours out his Spirit on his followers, rather than a temporary empowering, we are filled with the Spirit. The apostle Paul said, in Ephesians 3, that we are strengthened with power through God’s Spirit in our inner being. He goes on to tell us that one of the functions of this filling of the Spirit is so that we can “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” When God pours out his Spirit on us, the first thing it does is help us comprehend the vastness of his love.

We can read in multiple places in the New Testament about the various gifts and benefits that the Holy Spirit brings to our lives. But in Acts chapter one, right before Jesus was taken up to the Father, he told his disciples the primary reason we are blessed with this outpouring of the Spirit. It is so that we can be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Holy Spirit brings change in us so that we can testify to the world about what he has done in our lives. So may our prayer not be just that Jesus will pour out his Spirit to fill us, but that we will also be vessels that pour it out from the overflowing abundance of his love.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for going to the Father so that I can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Help me to be receptive. To be a vessel and not just a cracked piece of ground. Continue to pour out your Spirit on me, so that I can continually bless those around me, my family, my church, my community, and my world, with your love and the good news about you. To you be the glory forever and ever! Amen.