Empty 
It took over 4 years and 225 editions of How’s The Viz?, but it has finally happened…
I don’t have anything to talk about.
That’s right – I’m tapped out. I have sat here for a couple of hours and I can’t come up with anything that I believe the Lord wants me to give to you.
I have been asking the Lord for a number of days what He would have me give to you this week, but I wasn’t hearing much of anything. “Oh well, I will get something close to the day.” But it’s now the wee hours of the morning prior to when I have to load up this week’s visional and I am coming up empty.
I looked back at my week and realized that in the midst of all that filled my time, I didn’t really set aside any time to study God’s Word. Sure, I walked with Him and prayed throughout the days, but I didn’t intentionally set aside time to focus on His Word and ask the Holy Spirit to help me understand the Father’s heart through scripture.
As this realization began to dawn on me I thought of the scripture in Jeremiah 2:13:
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me the spring of living water and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
What the Lord is saying about His people is that they have not gone to Him for life and they have gone looking for it somewhere else. They have turned their backs on the source of real life – the spring of living water – and instead they have tried to find life for themselves. And what they are looking to for life and sustenance ‘can’t hold water.’
Have you ever found yourself wondering why you feel so empty? So lifeless?
Perhaps like me in the busyness of life you have neglected the source of your life, the spring of living water. Perhaps you haven’t been feeding on the Truth of God’s word and you have been going elsewhere to find life – none of which can satisfy. Anytime we go looking for life outside of God we’ll come home hungry. Perhaps not at first, but eventually it always ends the same…feeling empty and lifeless.
There is only one source of life and that is God Himself. Jesus said that He is the way, the truth and the life. He also said that anyone who trusts in Him will have a river of living water flow up within them.
I remember years ago late one night, during a difficult time, sitting alone on the floor with the lights off thinking about how I would be better off just leaving all this God stuff – it was too hard. In the midst of my plotting how I could ‘run away’ from God’s refining, He whispered into my heart, “See, you still believe that you will find life outside of me.”
I needed to come to the point of believing, of knowing, that there is only one source of life – Jesus. The very life we are thirsty for, and perhaps looking for in myriad places, is found in only just one.
Jesus.
So my emptiness this week, my inability to come up with an encouraging Word for you, has helped me to recognize my need to continually drink deeply from the spring of living water so that I can offer life to you.
Perhaps this can be an encouragement for you to keep choosing to continue to seek God for your source of life and do not neglect time with Him in the midst of the busyness of life. If you are feeling empty, perhaps you are seeking life from the wrong source.
Jesus is life, and He has plenty for you.
John 14:6
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 4:14
“but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 7:38
“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”