Cherise and I co-founded a church called Overflow Ministries. We believe “overflow” is a promise from the Lord that we can live a life overflowing with the Holy Spirit. And this overflow of the Spirit is used to fill others, so that we’re never empty.

It’s like a multi-tiered fountain, where the water pours out of the smallest bowl at the top, overflows to the next level and fills it up, and then the next level and fills it up – without ever being empty. An overflowing 8 oz. cup can fill up a swimming pool if given enough time. So it is with us: even if our capacity isn’t super big, if the Lord is overflowing in us and through us by His Holy Spirit, then others around us will be filled up

Jesus Overflowed to People

I believe this principle is how Jesus operated. And I think this principle is the key to our lives as well as our ministries.

How do we live the abundant life that Jesus promised, filled with the Holy Spirit and fire, and operating in all the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our lives? How do we get the close, vibrant and growing relationship with the Most High God that we so deeply desire?

I believe Jesus showed us the way. Remember, He is The Way. He is the Gate. And He is the Door (John 14:6, Matthew 7:13-14, John 10:1-10).

The Unclean Leper

Let’s look at an example from Mark chapter 1, verses 40-45.

“And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.” (Mark 1:40-45 ESV)

Leprosy the Incurable Disease

Back in this day, from what I understand, leprosy was an incurable disease. What’s fascinating is that God in the Old Testament made provision for the healing of this incurable disease in Leviticus 13-14. The priests were given various procedures on how to handle it.

Again, my understanding is that they had not experienced this. They had not seen leprosy get better. So when Jesus healed the leprous man, he told him, “go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” (Mark 1:44 ESV)

Not only was Jesus interested in healing this man, He was also interested in healing the jaded view of the priests. How do I know they were jaded? Well, Jesus had many run-ins with the priests, correcting their theology. In fact, Jesus likely had insight into the priesthood, because his cousin, John the Baptist’s dad, Zechariah was one of the priests that served in the temple. (See Luke 1)

So we see Jesus interested in correcting the mindset of “healing doesn’t happen.” Healing does happen, and Jesus proved it by His works and words.

Jesus Broke the Rules

Back to the story in Mark 1, we actually see Jesus break the rules. It says in Mark 1:41 that Jesus, “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’” (Mark 1:41 ESV)

This one act was revolutionary. Why?

Based on Leviticus 13:44-46, leprous people were considered unclean as long as they had the disease of leprosy. Since it was incurable, and this was basically a death-sentence, the people who had it were unclean for the rest of their lives until they died, a lonely and painful death.

“He is a leprous man, he is unclean. The priest must pronounce him unclean; his disease is on his head. The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Leviticus 13:44-46 ESV)

This one act by Jesus of stretching out his hand to touch the leprous person appeared to be a violation of the law in Leviticus 5:3, which states that when a person touches “human uncleanness,” they are considered unclean. Furthermore, it goes on to say that this is actually a sin (Leviticus 5:5-6)!

Did Jesus Sin by Touching the Leper?

So we must ask ourselves, did Jesus commit a sin by touching this leprous man? By no means! Jesus never committed a sin (Colossians 1:15-20, 1 Peter 2:21-25, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15).

So what actually happened? Let’s read it again:

What we actually see is Jesus reaching out, touching the man, and imparting His own cleanness to the leprous man. The man had faith that Jesus could make him clean, both ritually and physically clean.

Because Jesus imparted His own cleanness to the man, He didn’t touch anything unclean. By the time His hand reached the leprous man, the man was clean, in an instant.

It’s the Kingdom

The Kingdom of God, the spiritual Kingdom that is in the spiritual dimension, came through the person of Jesus, bringing physical healing and spiritual healing to this man.

We see Jesus living in the Overflow of the Holy Spirit.

And this is the big principle I want to communicate to you: Living out of the Overflow means the outside environment around us is affected by the internal environment inside us – the Kingdom of God.

Cleanroom Example

For the majority of my working career, I’ve been working inside of a cleanroom. I’ve been in at least 10 different cleanrooms, in various US states and in the country of Ireland. Through all the various designs and sizes, every cleanroom needs to have clean air. For example, a class 1 cleanroom can only have 2 particles between 0.3 and 1.0um in size and 0 particles greater than 1.0um within a cubic meter of air volume. For comparison, a human hair is typically 70um or so in width. In other words, the air circulating in a cleanroom must be very clean.

But people have to work in cleanrooms, and people are generally very dirty. Flaking skin, makeup, hair, even smells emit particles. And the buildings that house cleanrooms are very dirty in comparison.

There’s one particular principle I want to point out that’s required for cleanrooms in terms of airflow. They must have positive pressure compared to the outside building. So, whenever a person opens the door to the gowning room, a rush of clean air comes out. It’s like a wall of air that helps prevent external contamination from rushing inward to the cleanroom.

The purity of the cleanroom starts dumping pure air out into the environment around it, making the environment cleaner. Or maybe I could say it this way: the internal environment of the cleanroom affects the external environment when the door gets opened.

The Kingdom is the Cleanroom

This is the way Jesus operated. The internal Kingdom environment that He operated in came out through the door of His life and affected people around Him. What happened when people opened up the door of Jesus through faith? Healing, the casting out of demons, revelation of the truth of the Kingdom.

Is there anything else that happened when the Kingdom of God came through Jesus? Exposure! Jesus steps foot into a synagogue on a quiet Sabbath Saturday and a demon manifests in a man. What does he do? Jesus casts it out (Mark 1:21-28).

Jesus Imparted Cleanness

When Jesus touched the leprous man, the man became clean, pure, holy, and healed. This is actually an amazing picture of New Covenant salvation: in our old life, we were wasting away with a slow disease of the soul leading to death. But after we are touched by Jesus Himself, we are now declared clean, pure, holy, and healed (Ephesians 1:2-14, 1 Peter 2:24). We get the righteousness of Jesus imputed to us (2 Corinthians 5:17, 21).

The leprous man, after an encounter with Jesus, became like Jesus. Afterwards, he was free to go about in a new life. Guess what life he chose: evangelism! Based on this man’s testimony alone, Jesus was not able to openly enter into the small towns, because people were coming to him from everywhere!

The Application for Us the Church

Now here’s the application for us, Church!

We are privileged to operate out of the Overflow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. As the church, we pour out the Kingdom of God that’s swirling around in the temple of our 3-part beings. When the door of our lives opens, the clean and pure air of the Spirit flows out!

We expect the external environment around us to improve. We expect the Kingdom of God to manifest around us. And what is the Kingdom again?

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 14:17 ESV)

Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit is meant to come out of us, just like it came out of Jesus. People are meant to be positively affected by our lives. The negativity of the world is not supposed to be internalized, but the exact opposite should happen: the negativity of the world is neutralized by the pure air of the Holy Spirit flowing out of us.

Jesus is Our Example

Jesus is our example. We are meant to be conformed to the image of Jesus. We are meant to walk in the works of Jesus, and do even more than Jesus did. Impossible? No way; it’s more than possible, because with God, all things are possible. Remember what Jesus said?

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12 ESV)

We as a Church believe in Jesus and will do the works that He did, and greater works will we do, because Jesus went to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to empower us!

Do you believe this? I do! Is it too good to be true? No way. If you can believe that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus paid for all of your sins, surely you can believe that He gives us the ability to walk in all of His ways. This includes teaching, discipling, healing, casting out of demons, signs and miracles.

Declaration

Let me declare this again, and we can agree with it:

As a Church, we believe in Jesus and will do the works that He did, and greater works will we do, because Jesus went to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to empower us!

We are privileged to operate out of the Overflow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We pour out the Kingdom of God that’s swirling around in the temple of our 3-part beings. When the door of our lives opens, the clean and pure air of the Spirit flows out!

We expect the external environment around us to improve. We expect the Kingdom of God to manifest around us.

Our Heavenly Father desires us to operate out of the Overflow of His Spirit and His power.

Cultivating the Kingdom Inside

How do we cultivate the Kingdom of God inside of us? Well, what did Jesus do? He prayed.

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35 ESV)

Jesus made time for the cultivation of His relationship with the Father. He liked to rise early in the morning, sometimes going up on a mountain, sometimes going out to a desert or desolate place, and prayed.

Do you pray? Do you pray out loud using the voice that God gave you? How often do you pray with other people? There is power in prayer (James 5:16).

Jesus Taught People

Jesus also taught people at large as well as in smaller groups. He poured Himself into 12 men, and He gave special attention to 3 of them. He was a part of this special community of people, and these people in his community actually supported his ministry and helped minister to him as well, providing food and funds. Remember Peter’s mother-in-law, who was healed of her fever? She got up, feeling really good and started serving them all, like she loved to do! (See Mark 1:29-31.)

A big part of living out of the Overflow is having people to overflow into. Do you overflow into the closest people in your life, typically your family? Is your family built up in Christ, washed with the water of the word, and blessed because you’re around them?

A Bar Too High?

Some may think this is a bar too high to attain. And that’s actually the funny part: as a Holy Spirit filled believer in Jesus Christ, you’ve already passed the bar. You just have to come to the realization of what you already have in Christ Jesus.

Don’t take my word for it, just read these two verses.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.” (2 Peter 1:3 ESV)

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 1:3 ESV)

Closing Prayer

My Most Amazing Heavenly Father, help me to operate out of the Overflow of Your Holy Spirit. I desire to be and live just like Jesus did, having Your Kingdom pour out of the gates of my life.

Lord, sometimes I feel empty. Sometimes I can’t even imagine overflowing to other people because I feel so empty and devoid of the Spirit. According to Your Word in Psalm 23, be my Good Shepherd. Make me lie down in Your green pastures, lead me beside Your calm healing waters, and restore my soul! Lead me in Your paths of righteousness for the sake of Your Great Name.

Even though I may journey through Death Valley, I realize that death is only a shadow. Fear becomes the dust under my feet as I am comforted by Your Presence.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of all my spiritual enemies. You anoint my head with the oil of the Spirit, and the vessel of my life overflows with Your Goodness. Your Mercy and Goodness continue to guard and protect me for my entire life, and I shall dwell as a temple of the Holy Spirit forever.

Father God, speak to my heart by Your Holy Spirit. Bless the words which I just read. May they bring refreshment, encouragement, boldness, love, joy, and peace to me. Continue the great work in me and through me, and continue to pour out from me Your Kingdom and Your glory. Let Your light shine in my heart, and may others see Your light in me and bring You praise and honor and glory. In Jesus’ Name, amen!

Living out of the Overflow