Emptied

"I'm just so tired, Lord. I feel so weak and empty...like I have nothing left in me." I buried my head in the pillow, tried not to cry and talked to the only One who knew. 

"Good," I heard Him speak to my heart, "You're finally at the end of your own strength. Now you are ready. Now you can walk in My strength." 

I sat up, I could feel God working on my heart.

"But God, this is so hard!" I argued inside with Him. "This is not what I thought it would be. Why is this taking so long? Why do I feel so out of place? When will You show Me what you're doing? I feel like I can't do this much longer..."

"You can't," I heard His still, small voice again, "But I can. Do you want to do this in your own strength or do you want Me to do it through you?"

I looked down. We both knew the answer.

The next day, my daughter needed help with her homework. "Why do I have to do this?! It's so hard!" She crumpled into her chair with tears in her eyes. I looked at her little face and my heart felt for her. "Well," I said, "if we only did the easy things we know how to do, we wouldn't learn anything new, would we?" 

She looked down. We both knew the answer. 

"I know, I know." I said in my heart. It was glaringly obvious what God was trying to show me.

I know I learn my best when I am pushed beyond my natural limits. When I'm out of my comfort zone. But I hate that feeling. That feeling of being unqualified, not enough, or less than. I grew up feeling that so often, why would I purposely embrace it and walk right into it again? Why would God want me to? 

For two very important reasons:

1. To identify my weakness. 

2. To acknowledge and rely on His strength.

If I think I can do it on my own then, naturally, I don't need His help and I won't ask for it. "Don't worry God! I've got this one!" A recovering master "do-it-yourselfer," I have finally learned the painful truth: I need to ask for help from time to time. I've also learned that asking for help does not mean I'm weak, it means I know my strengths and I also know my limits. 

But even if it did mean that I'm weak, so what?! Why do I feel like that is the worst thing ever? Why do I feel that no one can ever see my weaknesses? Why do I feel compelled to cover a weakness instead of openly admit it and ask for help? 

Because I'm human. 

But I wish I were more.

I think deep down inside we all want more. We want to be important. We want to make a change in our world. We want to leave our mark. God put those desires in our heart for a reason. He wants us to do amazing things for Him with the gifts and talents He's placed inside of us!

But what if He asks us to do things that are out of our  skill level? Or even worse, out of our comfort zone?

Maybe, just maybe, God wants us to do things for Him that we are not able to do in our own, little, natural, confined, limited self.

Maybe, just maybe, God wants us to do the amazing, the miraculous, the unexplainable, the supernatural.

And maybe, just maybe, He wants to use fools like you and me.

God isn't looking for the most educated, most talented, most qualified, most beautiful, most perfect people to carry out His will. He's looking for the most yielded, most surrendered, most willing people.

Our will sure can be a hard thing to break, though. I'm finding it's a slow, painful process of dying to selfish ambition and desires. I must willfully lay down my own desires to go where He is calling. It's a daily dying to my own will. Some days are better than others. While still other days are, well...not very blog worthy to say the least. 

I feel things being purged from my very being. I feel I'm being emptied, so to speak. Every false comfort or idol is slowly being peeled away...and it hurts. It's no picnic to watch things being pulled away from you; things you didn't think brought security or comfort—until they are gone. At the very core of my being I feel I'm in the fire, tested for impurities. Everyday a new one surfaces and I must deal with it if I am to continue on this process of purity. I am sure He is preparing me for something. I know I'm at the cusp of a breakthrough...but I continue to squirm under the discomfort of this season. 

I must empty myself of me to be truly filled with all of Him. I must choose to lay myself down at the foot of the cross, to give it ALL to Him—my fears AND my dreams, my strengths AND my weaknesses. I need to start at ground zero and be built up through His strength and His strength only. Anything else will crumble in the face of storms and trials. But His strength stands the test of time. 

It's okay to be weak...because I know where my strength comes from.

And it's okay to feel empty sometimes...because it only reveals that I have spaces for Him to fill. 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

(Philippians 2:5-8 ESV)