Filled to be emptied

As melodramatic as it sounds, I feel empty. Literally, I feel like a pitcher of water whose contents have been poured out and is now sitting on the table. Empty. My quiet times with God are not what they use to be. I feel like I’m communicating more with Him now than ever before, but I just can’t seem to do my Bible study homework. I just end up sitting and staring at the wall.

As a youth leader, I feel inadequate. I can sit and talk and listen and pray, but I have no advice to give. No answers to the questions my favorite students inevitably ask. How can I pour into them when I have nothing inside of me that can be poured out? The words of Hillsong’s “Desert Song” have never ringed truer for me, “I know I’m filled to be emptied again.” I was filled and now I’m empty.

I had coffee with some of my best friends/sisters in Christ/fellow youth leaders last weekend and they emphasized that this is why we as Believers need to be a part of a local ‘body’. We need to be in relationship with other Believers so that when we are empty, they can fill us back up.

There have been many times over my more than a decade of being a follower of Christ that I have had the opportunity to fill others up. I’m very good at filling others up. Being filled myself?

Not so much.

It’s a very humbling experience to allow others to come alongside you and pick up where you are lacking, and to others help fill the holes that are in your spirit. I’m learning, however, that it’s a beautiful thing.

When the body of Christ functions the way it was intended to, lives are changed. Relationships are mended. Spirits are restored.

My advice: don’t fight it. Let the Believers around you do what they are supposed to do. Except their encouragement, their friendship, their love. Let yourself be cared for.

I Corinthians 12: 18, 24b-26

"¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.²⁴  But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."