You probably didn’t love that title. I didn’t necessarily love it either. Just being honest. Which I figure is better than pretending I have it all together and am superior and you should be like me.
I just got super intrigued by a new thought I had when reading a story I have heard at least a couple hundred times. There is a widow who is in so much debt that they are coming to take her sons into slavery to pay it. (2 Kings 4)
The prophet asks her what she has. (Sidebar – It would be wrong not to ask you right now – what is it that YOU have that God wants to use? You might think it’s nothing worth mentioning. Or maybe you were even holding it back. But what is it? I know there’s something. There’s something with each one of us.)
She has a LITTLE oil and he tells her to collect VESSELS. Empty vessels if she can get them. And trust God to give her what she needs to pour into them and fill them up. She doesn’t have what she needs to fill the vessels. But God tells her to do it anyway.
You might think you don’t have anything to pour out into anyone else because….why? Maybe you’re young, you’ve failed, you’re inexperienced, you’re in over your head, it’s your first time around parenting, new at being in a relationship – whatever!
BUT…
God doesn’t listen to WHY we can’t pour out. He just tells us to pour out. Into empty vessels. Empty means they have nothing to give back to us folks. Doesn’t look like any upside for us in this game. But looks can be deceiving.
We don’t feel like we have anything to pour out. And gathering empty vessels (empty people) and pouring out into them doesn’t benefit us anyway.
That’s Our Thought
But you have something to pour out. Love, time, encouragement, a helpful hand, experience at something, a gifting that you may be minimizing. You have something to pour out.
But if you aren’t pouring. If the widow hadn’t have poured. If the widow hadn’t gone through the trouble of collecting the empty vessels, she wouldn’t have experienced the blessing.
Are you wondering where the blessing is in your life right now? Ask God to speak to your heart about what He wants you to pour out. How He wants you to serve in life. And watch as you see the miraculous hand of God pour out blessings to you in ways you didn’t know were possible. (Luke 6:38)
The blessing you are to someone else by pouring your life out for them is the very thing that can activate the blessing of God in your life you have been looking for.
