A Bottle in the Ocean

A.W. Tozer

...To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God. --Ephesians 3:19


Pentecost means that the Deity came to mankind to give Himself to man, that man
might breathe Him in as he breathes in the air, that He might fill men. Dr. A.
B. Simpson used an illustration which was about as good as any I ever heard. He
said, "Being filled with the fullness of God is like a bottle in the ocean.
You take the cork out of the bottle and sink it in the ocean, and you have the
bottle completely full of ocean. The bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is
in the bottle. The ocean contains the bottle, but the bottle contains only a
little bit of the ocean. So it is with the Christian."

We are filled unto the fullness of God, but, of course, we cannot contain all
of God because God contains us; but we can have all of God that we can contain.
If we only knew it, we could enlarge our vessel. The vessel gets bigger as we
go on with God. The Counselor, 68.

Offer this Prayer:

"Enlarge my vessel, Lord, and fill me with more and more of the fullness
of God." Amen

Often I find that the problem I have is that I neglect to "take the cork out of the bottle" and end up getting tossed about on the waves in the midst of the storm of life. When you float on the surface you are alone and helpless, you have nothing to hold onto, no stability. When you "take the cork out" and allow yourself to be filled with the "ocean" that is God, you not only sink into the ocean, you settle to the deepest point where you rest peacefully on the ocean floor, immersed in and filled with God's love.

Rmember every day to make this prayer your's and "take the cork out of the bottle". Marty