How to be Filled

You know that feeling, where you feel kind of empty inside? A kind of loneliness that doesn't really go away, but it isn't REALLY loneliness because you can feel it even when you are surrounded by the ones you love the most? Where there is a place that you want to be filled but isn't? You try to fill it with more social activity or more study, or any manner of things, but it just doesn't quite work? Well sometimes I feel that way, and sometimes there are times when that part of me is completely filled and I am simply happy. A inner happiness that does fill that part of you.

Recently in my Book of Mormon class we have been studying how the Book of Mormon teaches the Doctrine of Christ, namely Faith, Repentance, Baptism, partaking of the Sacrament, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End.  As I have been doing the reading I have noticed something that I absolutely love about the scriptures relating to these different parts of the Doctrine of Christ. What I love is the word 'fill'. In so many scriptures it talks about how these simple principles and ordinances will FILL you, for example . . .

Alma 36:20 "And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!" This is what Alma described feeling after he had excercized faith and repented.

and...

3 Nephi 19:13 "And it came to pass when they were all baptized and had come up out of the water, the Holy Ghost did fall upon them, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost and with fire." ***

I love the fact that there is a part of me that is just waiting to be filled by the Holy Ghost, that I can literally have a member of the Godhead with me at ALL times. I know that by striving to adhere to the simple teachings of Jesus Christ and growing in our faith in him, we will be filled. We don't have to be empty or lonely and having the gentle influence of the Holy Ghost filling us makes everything more bearable. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I am so grateful that he inspired so many of his Prophets in the Book of Mormon to teach His simple truths so that we may have a more perfect fullness of joy in life.

*** for more scriptures about being filled through the Gospel of Jesus Christ see...

3 Nephi 18:9
Alma 29:10
Alma 19:30
3 Nephi 26:17
3 Nephi 12:6
3 Nephi 20:9
Moroni 8:17
Mosiah 21:28