RUNNING ON EMPTY

There are times in my life when I feel the wear and tear of my body as it is being depleted of energy, when my emotional, spiritual and physical resources are drying up and I begin to run on empty. I think most people can relate to feeling that way as well, at times. All around us, people are living lives on empty. They have nothing to fill them; no purpose, no drive, they’re just running on fumes. Have you ever been in a car that’s running on empty and were totally unaware that it appeared to be running on the gas fumes because the gauge showed it as empty? Have you ever found yourself pushing it to the limit, to try and make it to the next exit, while saying to yourself the whole time, “why didn’t I stop and get gas when there was an opportunity to do so?”. How about running out of gas on a hill? When that happens you find yourself going backwards and there is nothing that you can do but apply the brakes and cost to safety on a prayer.

 

Lately the Lord has been reminding me to be, Mary, and I am not talking about the kind of merry that is attached to being happy. I mean, making a direct purpose to pause and sit at the feet of the Master as Mary did, allowing His word to wash over me, cleansing me from all the things that beset me and take over my attentions by distracting me away from my time with the Lord. No one is going to make me bath spiritually on a regular diet of His Word. I must do it for myself. I must set aside the time needed to seek truth for myself and bath in it, to refresh myself from the daily grind of life and you must do the same for yourself as well my friend. We all must choose for ourselves, to stop and fill up, when all the urgent things around us tell us we don't have time. For some of us, our gas needle reminds us of how often we approached life, our physical engines knocking, hands on the steering wheel of our lives sweating, blood pressure rising in our body’s radiator, only to succumb to a blow up or blow out, and in either case it’s not good.

 

Recently, I found myself in one of these situations. My emotional storehouse was depleted. My spiritual bank account was being drained, to which I could barely even feel a spiritual pulse. I had nothing to draw from and was just about to blow. Things were getting done but I was emotionally and spiritually, exhausted. Mentally, I was wanting to just shut down, when a ray of light shined through as I opened up God’s word only to be reminded, that which Jesus said to Peter, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean…” John 13:10.  You see while I may have been getting bites here and there in God’s Word with my devotions, I had not allowed the Word to wash over me. I know this because when a situation arose that flustered me, my attitude triggered by the condition of my heart revealed that while I may have been getting bites here and there from God’s Word, it was not soaking in, to the dry parts of my heart, or I would have responded in a different way to my frustrations.

 

 

Here I was trying to wash other’s feet and serve them and I needed it myself. In John 13, Jesus rose from the dinner table during the meal, girded himself with a towel in a manner similar to the way in which a servant would gird himself as he sought to do a menial task, walked over to Peter, bent down and started washing Peter’s dirty feet. It was common at that time for people to wash their feet before dinner, as feet in sandals would often get dusty on unpaved roads. While it was customary hospitality for hosts in Jesus’ day to make provision for guests to wash themselves or, as a sign of honor and respect, to even provide a servant to wash the guests’ feet, it was certainly outrageous for the host himself to engage in the washing of his guests. So in a cultural sense what Jesus was doing, was truly radical. At the time Peter did not understand the deep significance of what was happing at that moment, but as Jesus was explaining to him, it began to soak in and Peter thought that maybe he needed a good washing all over, which Jesus explained that he did not.

 

As a believer in the truest sense of the word, I am washed in the cleansing blood of the Lamb. I no longer need a spiritual bath. But, I do need to dust off the dirt that attaches itself to me as I live out my daily life on this earth where strife and sin still abound. It is because of this struggle with sin, that I must remember, that the burden falls on me alone, to take responsibility for investing in myself to keep my feet washed. I must do what is necessary for replenishing my energy, make rights wrong, tend to the upkeep of my soul according to Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." I must go myself, in order to re-direct my emotions and to achieve control over all these unwanted feelings that seemed to bubble up from time to time in those murky depths of my weary heart. Life is not an idealized parade of lovely attitudes and well-balanced ministry and family. With time and experience, we can learn to prioritize and master the art of keeping our feet washed by sitting at the master’s feet, so not to become completely depleted, overextend physically, emotionally and spiritually; during those times where we give, work and serve until we find that we are running on empty.

 

Hold Fast,

Bren