Filling the Empty Cup

Sometimes I feel like a empty cup, yearning to be filled.  I realize that this a symptom of my shallowness, and not a sign of unfathomable depths.  David's cup ran over, and he was a man who lived deep and wide.  He knew that the inexhaustible riches of God's grace could never dry up.  There is no moment in David's life where he truly lacked confidence in God's provision.  Even in the moments where David appears to express doubt his immediate response is to call himself to renewed trust.

I can think of a few reasons we might feel "empty."  The first reason that springs to mind is grief.  It is natural to the human condition to feel a sense of emptiness in the face of a loss.  This feeling of emptiness is not sinful in and of itself.  If permitted to turn into despair of bitterness, it can become sin.  The second reason we might feel empty is that we have labored long and hard with very time for rest.  In these moments, feelings of emptiness are mostly likely symptoms of exhaustion.  The last reason for feeling empty is a failure to commune with God through prayer and Bible study.  The less time we spend with God, the emptier we feel.  Other reasons for feeling empty may exist, but I would like to look at the third reason a little farther.

There is a temptation to live in the shallow end of faith.  Because we lack self-discipline, we find Bible study to be dull and boring.  Often, Bible reading can take tremendous amounts of intellectual energy and yield meager results.  This experience generates frustration which in turn creates a pattern of neglect.  However, reading is a skill that diminishes with neglect.  The old expression, "If you don't use it, you lose it," applies to the skill of reading and its sister discipline, thinking. We read through passages without any sense of their historical setting, their relation to other Scripture, or how we should respond to these timeless truths.

Prayer is little different.  Most of our praying barely moves beyond the rote prayers of childhood.  We have lost the sense of majesty that prayer should instill in our hearts.  He have the privilege of speaking to the Creator of the Universe, our gracious heavenly Father, and yet we treat it like is inconsequential.  We reason that we don't really need to pray, because God knows what we are thinking anyway.  Although he does know our every thought, he still commands us to pray.

I think most people want to only want to wade into the mercy of God, because they are afraid that if they jump into the deep end of faith they'll lose themselves.  To a point, they are right.  However, it is only in losing their lives that they will find them.  The solution to this feeling of emptiness is to fill ourselves up with God.  Or rather, to allow God to fill us up with himself.  We do this by staying in the Word, not to learn about God, but know him.  Along with the diligent labor of studying God's Word, we must also make much work of prayer.  We must become the kind of people who move past simplistic praying, and who are instead transformed through prayer.

What about you?  Do you feel empty?  Are you spending time each day with God in his Word and in prayer?  If your cup is empty, pray: "Lord, here is my cup. Please fill it up."