Are You Empty?

​Are you empty?  Good.  You are completely normal.  The things happening to you should deplete you.  The pressure of this moment reveals your natural limits.  You are finite.  You only have so much to give and then the vessel is empty.  No man is God. 
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But emptiness is not an easy state.  It leaves you:

Dejected.  “I am a complete failure.”

Angry.  “Why can’t I accomplish what I want to?  Why can’t I do what I used to?”

Humbled.  “My inadequacy is painfully evident.”

Are you empty?  Good. 

Jesus’ earthy ministry always led him toward empty people.  He was a magnet for the depleted.  The blind and deaf, the lame and demon possessed.  But when he encounters the empty, they find themselves full.  Not with food or money, but something more fundamental and real. 

Your emptiness is the only state in which God fills you. 

Cup your trembling hands and extend them to receive.  

Pray:  Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.  Melt me.  Mold me.  Fill me.  Use me.  Amen. 
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“For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.”  (John 3:34)

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”  (II Cor. 4:7)

“For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself . . . But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”  (II Cor. 1:8-9)
 
"I am the vessel.  The draught is God’s.  And God is the thirsty one."   -   Dag Hammarskjold