Fill Me Lord!

I think we'd all agree it's been quite a year, and a lot of us may be feeling spiritually stagnant about now.

Nancy Guthrie has a prescription for us. Maybe you're angry with God and you've just set your Bible aside, or maybe you've tried opening it and you think, OK, that's not speaking to me today, and besides, I can't even understand it. Don't think that you can somehow move through this on your own.

I'm telling you, you need manna, and the manna you need is to hear God's word, to take it and to chew on it and to digest it and let it work into your life, and it will begin to change your feelings, which is what we need so desperately. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapeen. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Could you use a spiritual realignment?

I think a lot of us could about now. We'll get one today from Nancy Guthrie. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. There have been times in our marriage, times in raising our kids, where I have felt like on top of things, like I felt, OK, we're in a groove. Things are going good. I got this. It's working.

How long did that last? That's a great question, because there have been plenty of times where I just am like, I got nothing here. I am empty.

I don't know what I'm doing. This is not working, where you just feel depleted and you wonder, how do I rally in the midst of all of this? I think that word empty is something many of us feel. I think most of us feel it at some time, probably all of us. And it's a hard place to be because it feels like there's an emptiness of your soul. You're not sure how to get out of that. I'm not sure my husband has felt that often, though.

What are you talking about? I feel like you're always full. I think I pretend. You don't want to go to empty. If your car is near empty, pull on a gas station, let's fill up.

You want to live at least three quarters full, if not completely full. And so when you're in a state in your life as a husband, as a dad, and you're feeling real empty, I think you cover it up, because that's not a place you want anybody to know. That's where you're really deep down in your soul living.

I hate to even go here right now. Why are you smiling right now? Because you brought up the car, and this is just something Mary Ann and I are dealing with, okay?

So I need your help on this. I think the best time to fill up the car Oh, no. Is when the light comes on.

This is my husband. Because this means you have to fill it up less frequently. You wait until it's down. You're more efficient in the use of your time. You wait till you're down to the last gallon or two.

Here's the question. Have you run out? Wait, wait, wait. Ever? Well, if I've run out, it was when I was a teenager. In our married life, we've never been on the side of the road looking, because I ran out of gas. There have been some times when the red light's been on, and it's been a long time, and I've been praying a lot. And there have been times when I've been driving along, and I'll act like it's out of gas, because Mary Ann is worried about it. Oh, my.

You've done that. That's terrible. Mary Ann thinks we'll be in her car, and she'll go, oh, I need to fill up my car. And I'll look, and I'll go, it's just under half.

And she goes, yeah, it's under half, so it's time to fill it up. I wish I could say I'd never run out of gas since I've been married, but I have. We were on a freeway in California, six-lane freeway.

We had gone to a wedding, high-heeled shoes. Midnight, we ran out of gas. And this has happened many times. No, it has not. It's happened once.

That's the only time. I'm sorry I got us off on this. Why are we talking about this? We're talking on this because you brought up empty, and you brought up filling up the tank and because Nancy Guthrie is joining us again on Family Life Today. Welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you.

So glad to be here. I think she's run out of gas before. I think we need to take a break for some marriage counseling around here. That's why you're here, Nancy. You have written a book called God Does His Best Work with Empty, and the emptiness you're talking about is not our gas tanks. It is not. It's the emptiness that we experience in our soul from time to time.

Absolutely, as Ann was talking about. It was interesting to me as I was writing this book, and I would tell people the title, most often the most common response I got from people was that sense of identification, like maybe haven't used that word, and yet that seems to capture how I feel in the deepest part of my soul. What prompted you to write this, Nancy?

Well, the way this began was my husband and I hold weekend retreats for couples who have lost children, and so we began those about 11 years ago in 2009, and at one point in that weekend, sitting in that circle, it will be me with 10 or 11 other couples, and I look around in that circle, and I have done this for these 11 years. I say to them, I know that right now your world is full of emptiness. There is an empty bedroom at your house. There is an empty place in your schedule, an empty place in the family photo, an empty place at the dinner table, and you are so aware of the emptiness, and you look at this empty place in your life, and you see it as your greatest problem. What I want you to know is that that's not how God sees it, that when God looks at your life and he sees the empty place, he sees it as his greatest opportunity, because God does his best work with empty.

In fact, that's always what he has done. If you think about the Bible, let's begin quoting the whole of the Bible. I'm sure you can do it with me. At least you can do the first couple of verses right. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and it was formless and void, empty. Is that a problem for God?

Not at all. We read the rest of Genesis 1, what happens? He fills it with light and life and beauty and abundance and relationship and purpose and meaning. So from the very beginning of the Bible, we see God does his best work with empty as he fills it. And as you continue the story of the Bible, you get to this very important point that God has called this one man, Abraham, Abram at that point to himself.

But just before we meet Abram, we read about him, there is a problem. His wife Sarai, it says she is barren, shed no children. Her womb is empty. And we hardly know how to make sense of this with when we think about the promises that God has made to Abram that they're going to have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky. But once again, God does his work in emptiness of that womb. At 90 years old, her womb is filled with a child they named Isaac, which means laughter. So what does God do? He works in the emptiness, this good work and fills their lives with so much joy. But in a sense, this promised child in her womb is really just a shadow of another womb. It's empty, not because she is old, but empty because she's never been with a man. And an angel comes to her and just as the spirit hovered at creation, the angel says to this young woman, Mary, that the Holy Spirit is going to overshadow her.

And what's going to happen? Her womb is going to be filled with the very life of God. And so just over and over again in the Bible, we see that God works in empty.

Here we are thinking that it's up to us to gather up some stuff to bring to him that he can work with. But he is a creator God. He creates something, everything out of nothing.

He works with empty. And so I remember the very first time I said that at one of our respite retreats and afterwards, my husband, he's just like, I don't know where that came from, but that's a book. And so for 11 years it wasn't and now it is. And so what I've done in the book, I've just traced the story through the Bible because I've given you kind of a couple steps into it. But don't we see again and again that this is what God does. God's people are out in the wilderness and they're hungry. Their stomachs are empty. Is that a problem for God?

No. He rains down bread from heaven. They're thirsty and he opens up a rock for them to drink. The story of Naomi and Ruth, she uses this word if you remember, do you remember that? Naomi comes back and when she left, their stomachs were empty, but her family was full and she returned. She's lost her husband and two sons and she can't even see the gift that she's been given in this daughter-in-law Ruth who has come home with her. But she says to her friends, you know, don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara.

You know, my life is so bitter. She says, I went away full and have come back empty. And then we start getting these hints of how God intends to do his work in her emptiness. Ruth goes and she comes home with her scarf full of grain. And once again, then when she goes to the threshing floor, she comes home with a scarf full of grain and the story ends and there is Naomi who was so sure that her life was only empty, only call her bitter and her arms are full.

Her arms are full with a descendant and one who's going to be, it says that he is Obed and Obed is going to be the father of Jesse and Jesse is going to be the father of David, the king who's going to fill the need of this nation for a leader, the kind of leader that God wants for his people. So I could go on and on, but there's just so many pictures throughout the Bible that we realize God keeps on doing his work in the empty place. When you and David were grieving the loss of your daughter and then the loss of your son, your kids lived for less than a year, both of them. I can't imagine the emptiness that must have been there for you and the wondering if there would ever be joy or life again in your soul. Before that loss, I had been filling my life with God's word because we don't have that.

If you don't have that to hold onto when everything is so hard and so dark and so empty, you can feel hopeless. So I feel grateful that I came into that with a foundational understanding of who God is. And for me, that meant the key things about who he is in that situation was that he's sovereign.

So this didn't happen to me somehow outside of his control. And then secondly, that he loves me. I need both of those because if he's sovereign, he doesn't love me.

I don't know, he's out for my good. And if he loves me and he's not sovereign, then how can he cause all things to work together for my good? That solid sense of who he is, but then on top of that, just like those Israelites needed manna every day in the wilderness of the world. So we need manna every day to feed on as we make our way in the wilderness of the world.

And if there's anyone listening to me who's experiencing the emptiness of grief or something like that, I would just say to you, you know what? Don't think that you can somehow move through this on your own, that somehow maybe you're angry with God and you've just set your Bible aside, or maybe you've tried opening it and you think, okay, that's not speaking to me today and besides I can't even understand it. I'm telling you, you need manna. And the manna you need is to hear God's word, to take it and to chew on it and to digest it and let it work into your life and nourish your soul and shape your thoughts. And as it shapes your thoughts about who God is and what he's doing in this world, it will begin to change your feelings, which is what we need so desperately. It doesn't mean that the pain goes away instantly. It just means that in the pain, God is there with you and brings something to it that fills it back up. One of the things we know about God is God is a healer. And we can expect as he does a healing work in our lives, in the interior of our lives, that the grief doesn't have to remain as heavy as it is.

That God goes to work healing these deep wounds and deep sorrows. And we find as we feed on his word with that manna every day, and as he's shaping our thinking and changing how we're feeling, that the heaviness of grief begins to lighten. I've been preaching through John 6, where Jesus says, I'm the bread of life.

And that's an allusion back to the manna in the wilderness. And in John 6 35, when Jesus says, I'm the bread of life, he who comes to me will never hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. And Mary Ann said, what does that mean?

Never hunger, never thirst. Does this mean that when we come to Jesus, we're never empty? Does it mean that when we come to Jesus, there is never any lack or want on our part?

What do we do with that? Well, that's a beautiful passage that we would tie to this story in the wilderness, right? Because those people on the hillside did that day, they're immediately, they remember, oh, this is kind of like what happened with Moses in the wilderness. And Jesus says to them in a sense there in John 6, yeah, you're right, you're thinking along the right lines. But here was the problem with those people that day.

And it's the problem with you and me sometimes today. And that is, they wanted bread from Jesus and not Jesus as bread. Because they're on the hillside that day, what he said to them, I am the bread of life. I am the bread the Father has sent from heaven. And then when he begins to talk about what it's going to mean for them to, in a sense, eat this bread, remember what it's like, they're all so excited, we're going to get free meals.

And he says, no, you're going to need to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And all of a sudden, most of them are out. It's a very sad scene, isn't it? It says about them that many of them walked away.

It was too much for them. And that's at the point where I just love this. Jesus says, are you going to leave too? And Peter says, but where would we go? Only you have the words of eternal life. But I think you're getting at something important here, Bob, because it gets to the essence of what it means to never hunger and never thirst. We must, in a sense, eat this bread of life, which means feed on Jesus's atoning death and resurrected life.

That's what it means that we begin to feed on it now. And we begin to sense that God is at work in our emptiness, not yet perfectly, not yet completely, but genuinely, and know that the day is coming when we'll never feel hungry or thirsty again. And it makes me think as I listen to you, you know, empty is a word and a state of being you run from. I don't want to ever feel empty.

Tell me if this is true. Can a person really experience the fullness and intimacy of Christ without ever being completely empty? It's like, you can't really, can I be healed if I've never emitted or felt the real sense of brokenness in my life?

Oh, I think that's so important, Dave. When we reckon with this emptiness and when we refuse to turn to the world to fill it, because isn't that so much of what we do? We fill it with the internet and we fill it with alcohol and we fill it with food and we fill it with busyness and we fill it with accomplishment, another person, exactly. But instead when we come to the place, we go, wow, I feel empty. So where am I going to turn for the filling that I know that I need? And as we allow that emptiness to turn us upward, to focus us into God's word and focus us up on Jesus Christ and say, you know what, there's so many other things I can turn to, but I want you to fill my emptiness, your kindness, your love, your grace.

I need you to fill my life with meaning, not something I can make happen on my own. I think my greatest sense of emptiness, that same feeling was when I lost my best friend and sister. She was only 45.

She had four sons that ranged from 11 to 20. And by the time she was diagnosed, she passed away within five months of lung cancer. And I was devastated. I had never experienced an emptiness like that. And I remember I was angry with God. All the prayers that I was praying that she would be healed on this earth hadn't happened. I felt like he had abandoned me in so many ways and her kids and her husband. And so in my emptiness, I had cried out, but I was so angry that I started filling my life with other things, exactly what you were saying.

I was eating more. I didn't even want to listen to Christian music at first. And yet the emptiness then became so excruciating that I knew like, I need to turn to my father. And it's so interesting when we come to the father and we say, I have nothing.

I have nothing. And I was honest with saying, God, I feel like you haven't answered me. I feel like you haven't talked to me.

I feel like you've been distant, but I need you so desperately that I can go nowhere else to be filled because the things I was doing, they were not filling me in the least. In fact, it made me feel worse. I felt fat. I felt shame.

I felt like, oh, this is terrible. If you take a sponge and it hasn't been used or had water put on it in a long time, you can scrape it with your thumbnail or finger down here and I thought that's what my heart felt like. But then I take God's word and if you like a drop of water on it once a week, it doesn't do anything for a little drop. And sometimes that's what we do at church. Oh, I got a little word at church.

But when you start to put a drop and a drop and a drop, suddenly that sponge kind of fills back up and it becomes soft. And I realize, oh, my heart is coming alive again. God's word is filling me. I still don't have all the answers. And yet I felt a fullness that I had never really experienced before. And so Nancy, you're saying when we go to God and say, I have nothing, he's saying, I can do my best work in that.

Absolutely. He says, this is not the end. This is the beginning. Now as you open yourself up to me, I will fill you with the very best things. As you refuse to allow yourself for your life to be filled with all of the less than the best things, I will fill you up. I will come in. I will work. I will show you my grace. I will show you my kindness.

I'll fill your life with meaning and purpose and faith and joy. And the reason we know he can do that is because as we work our way through the scriptures, we see that he's done it again and again and again. And you get to Philippians 2 and you find out the reason God can do that in us is because Paul tells us Jesus emptied himself. I mean, he takes that same word and says, I'm going to let it all go so that you can be full. He poured himself out on the cross, didn't he? And even now, he intends to pour himself into us. I think there are probably folks listening to this conversation, if we were with them and ask them, what's the empty part of you right now?

They'd be able to point quickly to it. And I'm guessing that for a lot of them, it's around broken relationships, damaged relationships in marriage with children, with extended family members, where we're grieving, where there is a hole, where there should be something full. And Nancy, your word to them and to us is God does his best work in the midst of acknowledging this emptiness and turning to him and saying, Lord, I need you to fill that hole and I need you to cure the emptiness, the longing that's in my soul. You know, walking through the valley with Ann when her sister died. And it really was the woman that led her to Christ, her best friend, probably talked every day. I watched her be empty. And we both were.

We'd go to church and weep when we sang worship, couldn't even sing, just wept. And I remember getting to a point maybe nine months and a year in after she died thinking, I don't know if my wife will ever come back to her full self. And then I watched what she just told you. I watched her dig in the Word. She knew God. She just needed to see him again and know that he was good and with her. And I remember one day I was in the kitchen, she was out in the garage and I heard her laugh and I remember, I can feel it right now. I just remember going, I haven't heard her laugh in two years. And it was a belly laugh. And I'm like, she's going to make it, you know, God's going to get her through this.

And she has. And I would just say, if you're in that valley, God is going to bring laughter. And I think this would be too a great time if you're feeling that emptiness. Sometimes we just need to cling to God, but also to cling to his Word. And what if we just committed like, God, I'm going to be in your Word every day so that my heart is soft, so that your Word comes alive and His Word will never return void. It will always take root in our hearts and it will fill us. And Nancy, one of the things you say in your book, God Does His Best Work with Empty is, it's amazing how heavy the weight of emptiness can feel, how much pain can be caused by something that isn't even there.

And I think there are a lot of us at the end of 2020 who are feeling the emptiness, the loneliness, for a lot of reasons. And this is a book that will bring not just comfort, but help for a lot of people. The book is called God Does His Best Work with Empty by Nancy Guthrie. You can order the book from us online at familylifetoday.com or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get your copy. Again, the title is God Does His Best Work with Empty by Nancy Guthrie.

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