Will you please turn to the book of Genesis?
And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaac;
and Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi.
And Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him.
And the man waxed great, and grew more and more until he became very great.
And he had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and a great household: and the Philistines envied him.
Now all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped, and filled with earth.
And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.
And Isaac departed thence, and encamped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.
And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.
And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water.
And the herdmen of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they contended with him.
And they digged another well, and they strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.
And he went up from thence to Beer-sheba.
And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for My servant Abraham’s sake.
And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac’s servants digged a well.
Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his host.
And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore are ye come unto me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?
And they said, We saw plainly that the Lord was with thee: and we said, Let there now be an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee,
that thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou art now the blessed of the Lord.
And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.
And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to another: and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac’s servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water.
And he called it Shibah: therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day.
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now.
Howbeit what saith the scripture? Cast out the handmaid and her son: for the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman.
Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, but of the freewoman.
Our heavenly Father, how we praise and thank Thee that Thou hast revealed Thy Son, our Lord Jesus, to us. Oh, He is not only treasure to Thee, but He is most precious to us.
How we praise and thank Thee that we can gather together to worship Him and to remember Him. And now we can come together into Thy very presence to hear what Thou hast to say to us.
Our heavenly Father, we do pray that through Thy Word the Lord Jesus may be revealed afresh to us, that we may be filled with Thy Spirit, that our lives on earth may be a reflection of what Thou art, and that glory may be unto Thee. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Lately, we have been considering together this book of Genesis. We mentioned at the very beginning that the book of Genesis is a book of biographies.
In other words, God is not so much interested in doctrines, in methods, or in any other thing, but He is interested in man. And that is why the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is a book of biographies.
It is the biographies of eight persons. It reveals to us what God has done in the lives of these men and through these men. They show us also the man that God is really after. And, as we mentioned at the very beginning, God did find that man in Christ Jesus, and He is now going to find it in His church, the corporate man.
Each of these men, we find, God has done a work. And that work is expressed with a single thing, almost like a tide mark in the lives of these people.
We mentioned Adam’s tree, Abel’s sacrifice, Enoch’s heaven, Noah’s ark, and Abraham’s altar. Now this morning we would like to come to Isaac. Without doubt, the single thing Isaac had in his life is the well.
You will find that Isaac’s life is connected with wells. Through his life, he dug many wells. Just as Abraham built altars, the altar is symbolic of Abraham and the well is symbolic of Isaac.
As a matter of fact, Isaac found his wife at a well. You remember in Genesis 24 how the servant of Abraham went to find a wife for Isaac. This servant stood by a well and prayed that if a maiden should come, and when he asked for water she would not only give him water to drink but also give his camels water to drink, then that would be the woman God had chosen for his master’s son.
And sure enough, Rebekah came and did the very thing. So Isaac found his wife at a well. He met his wife just after returning from Beer-lahai-roi. Beer in the Scripture means “well”—the well of Lahai-roi.
He began his life by living at Beer-lahai-roi. Then later on you find how he went to the land of the Philistines. There he dug the wells that his father had dug before, and he dug new wells. Finally, you find that he moved to Beer-sheba, and there he found another well of living water. Beer means “well”—the well of Sheba.
So throughout his life, you find he dug many, many wells. That is symbolic of him.
Now, brothers and sisters, we know what water represents in the Scripture. Of course, sometimes water may represent something bad, such as judgment—the flood. But many times you find that water in the Scripture represents something which is very, very good.
Water represents life—the Spirit of life. You remember one day when our Lord Jesus was by the well of Jacob, and a Samaritan woman came out of the city to draw water from that well. Our Lord Jesus said to her, “If you knew with Whom you are talking, and if you would ask Him, He would give you living water.”
That water will become in you a spring of water, and you will never be thirsty again. Of course, we know that the Lord offered Himself, His own life, to that woman.
Then in John 7, you find that on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, our Lord Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, come to Me. He that believeth, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This He spake of the Holy Spirit.
So we know that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of living water. He is the Spirit of life, the Spirit of living water. God offers that life, that Spirit of life, to whoever will come and believe in Christ Jesus.
But what is a well? What is the difference between a well and a river? A river is something that God has made. A well is something that man digs.
God gives the water. The spring is there. But you have to dig to make a well, so that the water may be preserved and the water may be drawn.
And you know, this is the part that man must do. There is a part that God does: He gives water, He gives life, He gives the Spirit of life. But there is a part that we have to do—our responsibility. We have to dig. We have to clear the dirt. We have to prepare the emptiness so that the life of God, the Spirit of life, may fill us.
Not only are we to quench our thirst, but even to supply water—life—to other people. So this speaks of the experiential side of our life, and this is something that we must do.
Now let us look into the life of Isaac. Isaac began his life at Beer-lahai-roi, at the well of Lahai-roi. I do not know whether you are familiar with that well, but if you are acquainted with the book of Genesis, then you know that one day, when Hagar was persecuted by her mistress Sarah, she fled.
She fled and found herself in the wilderness. God appeared to her, and God asked her, “Hagar, what are you doing here?” And Hagar said, “My mistress oppresses me; therefore I flee.”
God said, “Go back. Submit yourself. And you shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Ishmael, and he will be blessed.”
God appeared to Hagar by a well. So Hagar called that well Beer-lahai-roi. That is the well of the living God Who reveals Himself, or the well of the living God Who sees.
That is the name of that place: Beer-lahai-roi, the well of the living God Who appeared Himself, or Who was seen.
So when Isaac began his own life—before that he lived with his father, but when he began his own life—he began at Beer-lahai-roi. In other words, he made that the beginning of his own life.
In other words, it means that he saw that he had to begin his life with a living God. He had to begin his life with a living God Who reveals Himself. He had to draw all his resources from God. And how did he draw his resources from God? He drew when God revealed Himself to him.
So, brothers and sisters, spiritually speaking, this is the place where Isaac began his life. And is it not true that it is where we ought to begin our own lives too?
We have to begin our life with a living God. We have to begin our life with revelation that comes from God. Without revelation, if God does not reveal Himself to us, we are dead. There is no life.
But when God reveals Himself to us, we find that He is a living God, and in Him we find life. And this is where life must begin.
If a person has never seen God, if a person has never received revelation from above, he is dead. Just as the Lord Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” Or as the Scripture says, “Ye were dead in trespasses and sins.”
Without revelation, without knowing the living God, being separated from the living God—that is death. That is spiritual death. And that is what we were before. But thank God, one day it pleased God to reveal His Son in us.
When the revelation came to us, we saw the living God, and we received that life in us. This is where our real life begins.
Remember: if you do not begin with revelation of the living God, your life has not begun. But if you begin with that revelation of the living God—if God reveals Himself to you—then remember, you have to continue living in that revelation.
It does not mean that only once upon a time you had such a revelation. You saw the living God and drew life from Him, but then you stopped. No, we have to continue to drink out of that well. We have to continue to draw life-water from God.
Every time we draw life from God, remember, it is through revelation. Is it not true? Whenever God reveals Himself to us afresh, we find life again and again and again. That is where Isaac began.
Then you find that Isaac was tested. Our life on earth will be tested. Abraham was tested, and in the same manner you find his son Isaac was tested.
There was famine in the land, in the promised land. And you know how Abraham went down to Egypt to escape the famine. And so did Isaac. Is it not strange that the son always follows the footsteps of the father? What a responsibility for the father. Remember, your son is following your footsteps.
So Isaac, when the famine came, was thinking of going to Egypt too. God warned him. God said, “Do not go to Egypt. Stay in the land I promised.” So Isaac did not go to Egypt, but he moved to the south country—in other words, into the land of the Philistines.
Now, the land of the Philistines still belonged to the land of promise, but the Philistines occupied that place. So Isaac went down to the land of the Philistines, to Gerar.
Now, he did not go to Egypt. Thank God for that. But he committed the same fault as his father Abraham. He told a lie. He told his wife, “Do not tell people that you are my wife. You are my sister.”
He was afraid of the people of the Philistines. He thought they did not know God, they did not fear God, and probably they would do something to him because of his wife. And for this he was rebuked by Abimelech, the king of the Philistines.
Now, that was a fault. But anyway, when he was in the land of the Philistines, he began to sow; he began to plant. Isaac was a farmer. He was also a herdsman.
Because he was a farmer and a herdsman, water was the most important thing, especially when he dwelt in the southland near the desert. That is the reason why he had to dig well after well, because he needed water physically speaking. He needed water because he was a farmer and a herdsman.
But of course, we know there is spiritual significance there, not just physical supply. There must be spiritual meaning to these wells. That is what we are trying to find out.
So when he was in Gerar and planted, God blessed him and he had a hundredfold. He became great, and greater, and very great. And the Philistines envied him.
You know who the Philistines were. The Philistines also came out of Africa, just as the children of Israel came out of Egypt.
The children of Israel came out of Egypt. They had a Passover lamb, they crossed the Red Sea, and they entered into the promised land. But the Philistines also came out of Africa. They did not have the Passover, and they did not cross the Red Sea.
As a matter of fact, they went to Canaan by dry ground. So they occupied that place between Egypt and Canaan, in that southern part, and they dwelt there.
So the Philistines in the Scripture represent the flesh, while the Israelites represent the spirit. That which is of the flesh came first, and then came that which is of the Spirit. So the Philistines got to the promised land before the Israelites.
Then came the Israelites. But the Philistines did not have the Passover lamb; they did not cross the Red Sea. In other words, they did not know God. But the children of Israel had the Passover lamb, they crossed the Red Sea, and it was God Who brought them to the promised land.
So in typology, the Philistines represent the flesh, the natural, while the Israelites represent the Spirit, the supernatural, the spiritual.
Here you find Isaac in the land of the Philistines. Because God was with him, he prospered, and the Philistines envied him. Now, that is always the story: the flesh always envies the Spirit, and the Spirit lusts against the flesh, as we find in Galatians 5.
The flesh and the Spirit can never be at peace. You will find that when the Spirit begins to be blessed, the flesh has envy. As a matter of fact, Abimelech and his people really hated Isaac because he was blessed of God.
For this reason, Isaac moved out of Gerar and went to the valley of Gerar. Now, Gerar—that word means rolling country. It is a rolling country, and from the root it also means to drive off roughly. It also means to ruminate, to chew the cud.
Isaac dwelt in the valley of Gerar, in that rolling country, and he was going to dig the wells that his father had dug before.
You know, Abraham was in the land of the Philistines before, so he dug many wells. But after he left, the Philistines stopped all these wells with dirt. They did not own these wells; they filled them up.
So Isaac came and re-dug these wells, opened up these wells that his father had dug, and he called these wells by the names that his father had called them, because he needed water.
Our spiritual life must be sustained by the supply of the Holy Spirit. We have life, but this life of the Spirit needs the supply of the Holy Spirit. If it is not supplied with the Holy Spirit, our life will become thirsty and weak.
That is the reason why you find that you have to dig wells in order to receive more supply. Isaac dug all the wells that his father had dug before. Now, what does it mean?
Every one of us must have our own spiritual experience. We must dig wells. We must clear dirt. We must empty ourselves in order that we may experience the filling of the Holy Spirit. We may experience the Spirit of life.
Our forefathers, our fathers, experienced the life of God. They had experiences of the Holy Spirit. And oftentimes you find that we have to rediscover these wells that they had already dug before.
If we had to experience all our spiritual experiences originally—that is, from scratch—I do not know how many spiritual experiences we would have in our lifetime.
But thank God, those who have gone before us have experienced God in many ways. Even though these wells have been filled by the Philistines, it is much easier to re-dig a well than to dig a new well.
In other words, how often you will find that either by reading or by hearing the experiences and revelations that our fathers—those who have gone before us—have seen and known, they begin to relate these things to us. We hear about it. We read about it.
And when we are doing that, the Spirit of God helps us to rediscover and reopen these wells. Thank God, we enter into the experiences that they had experienced, but in a much quicker and easier way.
Now we thank God for that. In one sense, we are not original. We receive from all those whom God has given. This is our Christian heritage.
We receive from Peter, we receive from Paul, we receive from John. We receive from Augustine, we receive from Martin Luther, we receive from Wesley, we receive from T. Austin-Sparks, and we receive from all those who have gone before us.
They dug. They found the wells. They found the living water. But unfortunately, the Philistines filled them up. Thank God, we rediscover them.
And when we rediscover them, remember, we need to do a little digging too. In other words, it is not just a matter of hearing and reading that will give us their experiences.
As we read and as we hear, the Spirit of God begins to work in us, and we begin to cooperate by digging, by clearing up the dirt that has filled in our hearts. As we do, we experience what our forefathers experienced firsthand.
It is true that it is handed down to us, but we experience it firsthand. It is not just secondhand hearing. It is a firsthand experience, but it is a much quicker and easier experience. Now, thank God for that.
But remember, that is not enough. Isaac not only re-dug all the wells that Abraham had dug and called them by the names that his father had called them, but you remember that in the valley of Gerar he dug new wells too.
In other words, what we have received from our forefathers is good for us, but it is not enough. We have to have new experiences.
Every generation should add something more. Our generation should be richer than the former generation, and the generation to come should be richer than we are. That is what it should be.
In a sense, we are still reading books written maybe in the sixth century, or in the sixteenth century, or in the eighteenth century, or in the nineteenth century. We are still receiving much help from them, but at the same time we find lots of things that are out of date.
We have to dig new wells.
So Isaac dug new wells. But every time he dug a well, the Philistines quarreled with him and said, “This well is ours.” They took it away from him.
So he called this first new well Esek—quarrel. Then he dug another well, and they quarreled over it again. He called that Sitnah, meaning opposition.
But because he met opposition, he did not stop digging. No, he had to continue to dig. So he dug a third well, and they did not contend over that well. He called its name Rehoboth—broad places.
In other words, dear brothers and sisters, you find that the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh is continuous. Is it not true that after we have received life, the living water, the Spirit of life in us, we find that there is a conflict going on in our lives between the Spirit and the flesh?
The Spirit wants to receive more abundant supply of the Holy Spirit, that it may live before God. But the flesh always comes in and tries to drag the spirit off roughly, as it were. There is a rolling country. The flesh comes in and tries to drag you off and deprive you of the supply of the Holy Spirit, trying to starve you and dry you up.
Is that not true? We find that conflict is going on all the time in our lives. We discover some old wells of our fathers, and how happy we are; but then they come and try to stop them up. Or we dig new wells, and how joyful we are; yet they try to quarrel with us and take them away from us.
The Spirit lusts against the flesh, and the flesh lusts against the Spirit. You find a continuous war between the Spirit and the flesh.
Brothers and sisters, I do not know how often you feel you are being roughly handled and dragged off, as it were. But do not be disappointed. Do not despair. Why?
Because at the same time, Gerar means to ruminate, to chew the cud. In other words, when we are going through these painful experiences of being dragged off roughly and all these conflicts, remember that this gives us the opportunity to chew the cud.
That is to say, through all the experiences we begin to ponder, we begin to meditate, we begin to think, and we begin to chew the cud. We begin to learn the lessons that we need to learn.
Now, how will you learn the lesson if you have never been roughly handled? Thank God for that. Because of that, you will find that you get stronger and stronger.
Do not give up. Continue to dig. If you continue to dig, you will come to a day when it will not be contested. In other words, the Spirit gets stronger and stronger until the flesh says, “Well, it becomes impossible.”
You come to Rehoboth, to the broad place. And that is an experience that we must have.
Dear brothers and sisters, are you still in that stage of being roughly pulled off? Do you find your life a conflict between the Spirit and the flesh?
Now, one thing I would like to tell you is this: in Galatians 5 it says, “The Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, that ye may not do the things that ye would.”
Now, this is very different from Romans 7. In Romans 7 it says, “What you want to do, you cannot do; and what you do not want to do, you do.” In other words, you find that the flesh is just too much for you.
As Melanchthon, that reformer, said, “The old Adam is too much for young Melanchthon.” How often we find that the flesh is just too much for the spirit. The spirit wants to do, and the flesh says no. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The spirit does not want to do, but the flesh does it.
Oh, how we find we are in trouble. But remember, Galatians 5 is different.
Galatians 5 says, “The Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, that ye may not do the things that ye would.” What does it mean? It means that what the flesh wants to do, the flesh cannot do, because the Spirit has overcome.
Glorious!
It is true that there is a conflict between the Spirit and the flesh, but do not give up. Keep on. Keep on digging. Keep on seeking for the supply of the Holy Spirit, and you will find the flesh will be weakened as the Spirit gets stronger and stronger.
That should be our experience.
But Isaac did not stay in Gerar. Why? Because Gerar was still the land of the Philistines. So here you find that Isaac afterward moved again. He moved from Gerar to Beer-sheba.
Beer, as we have said, means “well”: the well of Sheba.
We do not know whether Isaac was born at Beer-sheba—no, I mean Jacob. We do not know whether Jacob was born at Beer-sheba, but we know that when Jacob left home, he left from Beer-sheba.
So we find that Isaac moved and stayed in Beer-sheba, the well of Sheba.
Here you find again that Isaac experienced what his father had experienced before. Is that not strange?
Abraham had the same experience. He sojourned in the land of the Philistines. He became great. He moved to Beer-sheba, and Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, came to him and made a covenant with him. He said, “We know that you are blessed of God. God is with you. Therefore, we want to make a covenant.”
So the place is called Sheba, which means oath. While they were taking that oath, that covenant, Abraham put seven ewe lambs by themselves. They asked, “Why do you do that?” He said, “Because I dug a well, and these lambs will be proof that it belongs to me.” So Sheba also means seven.
Now, that happened with Abraham. Now it happened with Isaac again. See that? Isaac moved to Beer-sheba, and God appeared to him. God said, “I will bless you. I will bless you. You will be great.”
There Isaac built an altar. That was the only altar Isaac built. He pitched his tent there, and his servants came to him and said, “We found living water—a well.”
So you find three things in the life of Isaac: the altar, the tent, and the well.
The altar, to put it in New Testament terms, is the cross. The tent is the house of God. The well is the Spirit of the living God.
He has the cross, he has the house of God, and he has the Spirit of the living God.
There Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, came to him. Isaac said, “Why do you come? You hated me. You drove me away.” Abimelech said, “We know that God is with you. Therefore, we want to make peace with you. Let us be at peace.”
“Let there be an oath, let there be a covenant, that you will not do anything against us, as we have not done anything against you.” So they made an oath; they made a covenant.
And on that very same day Isaac’s servants came to him and said, “We have found living water.” So he called it Beer-sheba—the well of oath, or the well of seven.
What is seven? The number seven is a number of completeness, as the number twelve is eternal completeness. Number seven is completeness in this age.
So I do believe that here this well of Beer-sheba, which is the well of seven or the well of oath, speaks of the fullness of the Spirit.
In other words, first we experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As we believe in the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into us and dwells in our spirit. He bears witness with us that we are children of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, we who believe in the Lord Jesus have the Holy Spirit within us. But because the Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit, you find that there begins to be that civil war within you.
You find the spirit and the flesh begin to strive with each other. And thank God, gradually the spirit gets the ascendancy. Then you move on into a life of the fullness of the Spirit.
Fullness of the Spirit is a state of life. In other words, it is not just a special experience; it is a continuous state.
As Ephesians 5 says, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” In other words, be constantly, continuously filled with the Holy Spirit, in the state of the fullness of the Spirit. That is sevenfold.
This is what God has promised to us: that we should have a life full of the Holy Spirit, maintained in the fullness of the Spirit, being filled all the time. By that it means being controlled and ruled by the Holy Spirit all the time. Our whole life is under the rule of the Holy Spirit.
That is what Beer-sheba represents.
When you come to that point, you find that the spirit and the soul begin to make peace with each other.
In our spiritual experience, there must be the division of the spirit and the soul. In Hebrews 4, we find that the Word of God is living, operative, powerful; it penetrates, separates, and divides the spirit and the soul.
The spirit and the soul must be divided. Why? Because in our spirit is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is the life of our spirit. While in our soul is Adam, the self-life. Self is the life of the soul.
Therefore, in our spiritual experience, you have to go through a stage where the spirit and the soul must be separated. If the spirit and the soul are not divided, they are so mixed up together—so mixed up together.
That is the reason why you find that all our spiritual experiences, spiritual services, and works are so mixed. There is something of God and lots of ourselves in it. It is very, very mixed.
That is the reason why you have to see the spirit and the soul divided. Just as the holiest of all is separated from the holy place by a heavy veil.
But one day, when the spirit gets into such fullness, then the veil is rent. The glory of the Lord will not only fill the holiest of all, but even fill the holy place.
In other words, the soul will come and make peace with the spirit. The soul will lay itself at the feet of the spirit and say, “I am Your servant. I am willing to do what You want me to do.” There will be cooperation.
And you know, this is the fullness of the Spirit. When we enter into the fullness of the Spirit, it does not mean that the Spirit is confined within our spirit. No, the Holy Spirit is able to penetrate and permeate our whole soul and transform our soul.
So the result is that we will have the mind of Christ. We will be constrained by the love of God, and we will choose the will of God: “Not my will, but Thy will be done.”
There is a covenant. There is a union of the spirit and the soul—a reunion.
Brothers and sisters, the spirit and the soul must be divided. But after they are divided, they will be reunited. When they are reunited, the soul will keep its place.
Instead of trying to raise its head to rule over us, the soul is willing to be the steward under the rule of the master, the spirit, and to cooperate and work for God.
So here you find that in our experience of the Holy Spirit, we have to enter finally into that stage: the fullness of the Spirit. The soul becomes so obedient, so willing to carry out the will of the Spirit of God.
Glorious. This is the life of Isaac.
Therefore, in Galatians we are told that, after the pattern of Isaac, we are children of promise.
But even like Isaac, he was first mocked by Ishmael. That which is born of the Spirit will be persecuted by that which is born of the flesh.
But what does God say? “Cast out the handmaid and her son, because he cannot inherit with the son of promise.”
In other words, here you find that the flesh will be cast out, and the Spirit will be in ascendancy. And that is after the pattern of Isaac.
So may the Lord help us. Shall we pray?
Our heavenly Father, we do praise and thank Thee for what Thou hast done in the life of Isaac, and through him to show us what Thou art doing with us today.
Oh, how we praise and thank Thee for these wells. How we praise and thank Thee for the living water that Thou hast given to us.
Oh, Father, we do pray that we may learn how to dig, and to dig, and to dig deep. We do desire to so empty ourselves that Thou mayest fill us to the fullest. We pray that Thou wouldst fill us unto overflowing.
We pray that we may not only know the Holy Spirit, and may not only know His power, but that we may know His fullness. Oh, that we may really live a life that will do Thy will.
We commit ourselves to Thee for this day. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.