For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. John 1:16
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:23
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:19
Some people think it means we must have this fullness in order to bring healing and deliverance to others. Still others think it is more a transformation of our nature than just an ‘anointing’.
Egypt and The Wilderness
I see a ministry of deliverance and healing as equal to Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. It is the Holy Spirit doing the works of God, but this does not necessarily require a pure soul through whom these things can be done. I think this fullness of the Holy Spirit (like that which came at Pentecost in the upper room to the 120 disciples), was the Holy Spirit given to do the work in the wilderness.
In the wilderness the people lived on manna from heaven, and water from the rock, their sandals didn’t wear out all those 40 years. But the purpose of the 40 years was to wean out those who had faith to go into the promised land. Those without faith had to die out first. Then would the rest have qualification to cross the Jordan and enter Canaan to overcome the enemies in the land.
Delivering someone from demons is a vital part in their Christian/spiritual growth, because little, if any growth can be had without it. You’ve heard it said though, “You can take the man out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of the man”. Man’s deliverance, or being brought out of Egypt, this is his Passover.
After one’s ‘born again’ experience they have now been brought out of the figurative Egypt and into the figurative wilderness, shortly after which (2 years for the Israelites), they experienced Pentecost, Moses delivering to them the 10 commandments on tablets of stone.
In our wilderness, being born again and “filled with the Holy Spirit”, this is our time of learning God, knowing God, the preparation time of having His laws, that are written on tablets of stone (outside of us as religious laws, do’s and don’ts) progressively written on our hearts which is what Israel refused when they said they wanted Moses to speak to God and find out what He wanted to say, and for him to relay that back to the people. Sounds very much like our Christian church system where the people show up every seven days to hear what the Pastor, Reverend, or Father heard from God.
In the wilderness place, our lives, where we are to be communing with God in our spirit, learning His will and His ways, His heart, love and compassion, grace and mercy, this isn’t the fullness. It is the fullness (infilling) of the Holy Spirit as our teacher unto all Truth, but this is still just preparation. Even if we should heal hundreds and deliver thousands, this does not cause us to take up our cross and die daily. And until we are fully ‘dead’ we can’t have the ‘fullness’.
The learning of God’s love, heart, compassion, these begin to work the death to self in us, because we have to give up our natural inclination in order to do as God desires. In this process we learn to recognize the flesh and where it tends to draw the boundaries and the Holy Spirit directs us to tear down those boundaries of the soul and remove it’s territory, submitting all through a sometimes very lengthy, even painful, learning process that all must be submitted to the spirit.
Through this process, by the “fullness of the Holy Spirit” God is preparing us for the “Fullness of Christ”. Christ is the crowning perfection, the new nature, the true anointing of who we are in Him. Perfected, we are the pure bride without spot or wrinkle.
Being delivered of demons and healed, physically, emotionally, mentally, this does not make us Christ-like. Christ alone makes us Christ-like. The Holy Spirit teaches us, in our spirit, by the spirit, to live by faith in the spirit while we are in this world that we are no longer ‘of’.
Scripture is given for our teaching and our edification. Let’s learn from His Holiness what the Spirit is saying to the church. He who has an ear, let Him hear. Jesus the Christ was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. His sacrifice is mirrored in the lamb slain at Passover in Egypt before the Israelites left the land of their captivity.
Jesus is the rock of living water in the wilderness and the manna from heaven. We lean on Him, we look to him, He is the pattern Son. What Would Jesus Do? You’ve heard this, right? In doing what your carnal mind would surmise a perfect man like Jesus would do, is incorrect because you are leaning on the understanding of your carnal mind. The carnal mind is to die, it is the flesh (mind, will and emotions ruled by the soul) that must die daily. Also, to mimic someone else, even Jesus, does not make us perfect in the heart and it is the heart upon which God looks. Right? Being a good mimic is not being Christ. The laws of the nature of Christ have yet to be written on our hearts.
The Promise Land
The Israelites were not perfect before they actually did enter the promise land where they had to learn to overcome their giants. But they had to have a measure of faith in order to be qualified to enter. If the Holy Spirit has been permitted to prepare us, if after great and long trials and periods without ‘garlic, leaks and quail’, we’ve hung in there anyway, we probably have some measure of faith and God begins to lead us through the Jordan.
It is in this promised land where the faith we were to have built up (which is the faith OF Christ, not IN Christ), stands it’s tests. 
Often people suffer a dry and silent time in their walk with God, sometimes a deep dark night of the soul, just prior to entering this time in their spiritual growth. This is God’s testing of our faith. Will we run in fear like the Israelites did the first time they spied out the land of promise, or, like Job, not even knowing the outcome or having an understanding of what is truly happening, will we say “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21), “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15)
If we are not prepared in the wilderness to be willing to slay our ‘selves’, or rather allow the Holy Spirit to slay us (which are the giants in the promise land – pride, lust, ambition, etc), instead of becoming overcomers, we will be overcome. Many there are that turn back from this difficult way without the manna and the water from the rock, without the sandals that never wear out. In this land fighting our giants, we are cold, weak, hungry and naked!
Those willing to lose it all, even their very lives, that the promises of Christ be fulfilled, will fight to the death. The death of self, the death of religion in their lives, the death of the ways of this world in us, all so that the Kingdom of God may come in the earth like it is in heaven.
“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” Matthew 11:12
Tabernacles. That’s what this is. The promised land is the time of God indwelling us (His tabernacles) and by His life within, fulfilling the promise of the “fullness of Christ”. It is here we grow unto the full measure of the stature of Christ. This is the race Paul ran that he spoke about in 1 Corinthians,
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 1 Corinthians 9:24
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, Hebrews 12:1
This is glorious! This is exciting! This is what it is all about, folks. Anything short of this is a crying shame. It should all be about this. It’s about Christ in the earth, Christ in fullness, that many more may be saved! But HIS GLORY is in our achieving the crown, winning the race! He is GLORIFIED IN US!
He wants, desires and intercedes for our growth, our overcoming, our learning the ways of the spirit, the building of our faith and the transformation of our character and nature into His! Have Faith. Press on!
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Romans 8:31
until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:13
This is how I see it, anyway. Please share what you think the Fullness of the Holy Spirit and the Fullness of Christ is.
