Are You God's Leaky Vessel?

God uses some interesting things to help us understand who we are in Him. We are sheep, a body, and living stones making up a temple. We are His friends, co-heirs, and God's sons. He also calls us His "earthen vessels". 2 Corinthians 4:7, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." Even though we came from the soil, check Genesis 2:7, the Lord has determined to use us to carry the glory of His message concerning His Son. The Spirit of God dwells in us and empowers us to live lives that have purpose and value. However, there seems to be an issue with God's plan. Even though all these things are true, God directs the Apostle Paul to warn the believers in Ephesus that their vessels may well leak.

Ephesians 5:18, "And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit." Writing to a city that had pagan festivals which involved the consuming of wine to the point of intoxication, Paul warns the believers to avoid such conduct. Drunkenness removes self-control and leads to all sorts of actions that are wounding, foolish and sinful. In opposition to this the Spirit brings forth fruit, including , self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). To be consistent in our Spiritual fruit bearing we are told to be "filled with the Spirit". Individuals have had some interesting interpretations concerning this verse. Sometimes forgetting that "self-control" is an evidence of the Spirit's filling not lack of control. We, who are filled, should be bringing forth that Spiritual Fruit. You remember, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. These aspects of the Spirit's fruit integrated together reveal that "excellence of the power of God" we read of in 2 Corinthians 4:7. So we have the message and the power, however, we do not seem to always be effective at putting all that on display.

The problem seems to be that our earthen vessels leak. In Ephesians 5:18 the word "filled" is actually a present passive imperative verb. Meaning we need to constantly keep on being filled with the Spirit. The passive part indicates we cannot do this ourselves. It is something the Spirit does, we just need to be willing receptacles. In reality, it is less that we need more of God's Spirit and more like God's Spirit needs more of us. We crowd our lives with an enormous amount of stuff and push the Spirit into the corners of our existence. We replace the Spirit with things like anxiety, bitterness, complacency and insensitivity. It is never our objective to do so. We my never get drunk with wine but we may well replace being self-controlled by the Spirit. It may be that we acquiesce to the cry of the urgent and the tentacles of our illusion that we can handle things on our own. We often are unaware of how easily we can be drawn away from the Spirit and fail to receive His desired filling of our lives. It seems, in my own life, that my Earthen vessel leaks more often than I would want to believe. Paul shares some very good advice. We do indeed need to keep on being filled with the Spirit so we can produce the fruit of the Spirit so the excellence of the power may be of God, rather than having our own weakness on display. I do want to be more than a leaky vessel. How about you?