OVERFLOWING

Overflowing

Read: Romans 15:4–13
Bible in a Year: 1 Chronicles 4–6; John 6:1–21

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.—Romans 15:13

“No! No! No! NO!” I screamed. It didn’t help. Not one bit. My brilliant solution for our plugged problem—flushing again—accomplished exactly the opposite of what I’d intended. I knew I had made a mistake the second I pushed the lever down. And I stood helplessly as water overflowed.

How many times have our kids tried to pour milk and misjudged the process, with white liquid flowing everywhere. Or maybe we failed to remember that a two-liter bottle of soda just rolled around in the trunk . . . with explosively startling results.

No, spills are almost never a good thing. But there might be one exception. The apostle Paul uses that image of overflowing to describe a people so full of God’s Spirit that what naturally spills out of them is hope (Romans 15:13). I love that picture of being filled to the brim with joy, peace, and faith because of His powerful presence in our lives. So much so, in fact, that we can’t help but exude and express winsome confidence in our heavenly Father. That might be during the beautiful, sunny seasons of our lives. Or when the proverbial cup of our lives gets jostled. Either way, what sloshes out over the top is life-giving hope to those around us who are “drenched” by it. —Adam Holz

Lord, spills happen in life. But when they do, help us to be so full of Your Spirit that what pours out of us is the kind of hope that others can’t help but notice and be blessed by.

The Father gave us the Spirit to make us like the Son.

INSIGHT: Hope is a central theme in Romans. Testing results in hope (5:4), we are saved in hope (8:24), we are to be joyful in hope (12:12), we draw hope from the Scriptures in the trials of life (15:4), and our lives can overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (15:13).

For more on hope, listen to the Discover the Word series Hope: The Missing Ingredient at discovertheword.org/series/hope-the-missing-ingredient. Bill Crowder

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