For most of my life, when I heard “be filled with the Holy Spirit,” I pictured an empty pail. Something I needed to fill up so it was full. Which sounds fine until you realize a bucket is a one-time deal — unless you spill it, or it’s got holes in it. And I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m always in need of another filling.
Paul writes, “Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:18-21 NLT). Notice what filling actually looks like in context — it’s not a one-time ecstatic download. It’s singing together, giving thanks, submitting to one another. It’s just regular church stuff. Ordinary life lived in community with people who are seeking to be all God’s called them to be.
Here’s the image I’ve traded the pail for: think sail, not pail. When you’re sailing, you don’t fill the sail once and coast for the rest of the trip. You’re continually working it — trimming it, adjusting it, keeping it full of wind and pointed in the right direction. The wind doesn’t stop blowing just because you caught it once yesterday.
I think a lot of us — especially those of us who’ve been in ministry a while — quietly operate like the Spirit’s filling is something we topped off at ordination, or at that one retreat, or during that one season when everything felt alive. And now we’re running on the fumes of a filling from years ago, wondering why we feel like we’re leaking.
We’re barraged constantly with stuff trying to fill us up — the news, entertainment, our phones, our inboxes. There’s always something angling for the space inside us. Which makes the question worth asking honestly: what is actually filling you up today? Not what you’d say in a sermon. What’s actually there when you check the gauge?
The Spirit isn’t offended by the question. He’s not a one-time pour you’re supposed to protect from spilling. He’s wind — available, present, ready to fill the sail again the moment you turn back into it.
REFLECT: What’s trying to fill you up today that isn’t the Spirit? And what would it look like this week to trim the sail instead of guarding the pail?
