a broken and emptied vessel

As Grant was making his way home from Guadalajara this morning after dropping Blake & Kris off at the airport (I wrote this on Friday morning), I opened my Bible to II Corinthians 4. Reading just the first verse told me that I should pay close attention to where God would direct my thoughts: "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not." Mornings like this morning are rough. It is easy to faint after a week filled with sweet fellowship and your daughter's first birthday, especially when I think of all the changes, decisions, and growth that the next few months will contain. I've already sent two suitcases with newborn items back to the U.S. with visitors, and there are more to go. We're looking for airline tickets and a place to live, and all the while wondering in the back of our minds how God is going to work everything out for our three months home this summer. And the question marks in front of me right now... today... just seem so huge and overwhelming. Are we fulfilling the purpose God has for us here? Do we need to be doing things differently? Is the support we are attempting to offer to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to our friends, to Roberto, really making a difference? Are we being the parents that we need to be? Was it really a good idea to put myself out there and go forward with the Titus 2 project? Is my daughter going to survive if all she agrees to eat are Teddy Grahams and yogurt for an indefinite period of time? Some questions are big and some are small, but they are all very real.

Unfortunately, it is not just my own emotions and struggles I have to sort through. The older Ivory gets, the more I become aware that the transitions, people, places, insecurities, activities, problems, joys, and trials affect her just as much, if not more. This afternoon she was having a hard time after her nap, and in my dialogue with her I found myself asking her if she was missing Garrett. She looked at me, and the tears stopped for a minute. Then she looked at the infant seat and commenced crying all over again - he wasn't there. I can't say as I blame her! The emptiness that comes after a week of visitors is hard to ignore. It is hard to know what to replace it with. It is not that life is not full - because it is. We have many things here - a growing church, good friends, a cozy little house, a family, and a lot of joy. But we still miss our familiar language, culture, and way of thought sometimes. 

Perhaps a better way to describe it would be to say that its very exhausting to "put yourself out there". Most of you know what I mean. There are days when it seems like each step I take, I open myself up for criticism from others. Whether I'm talking to someone new in church, or planning a church event, or inviting people over to my home, or trying to develop unity and vision for Titus 2, I feel like I live in fear of what others are going to think. And not all criticism is bad, but most of it is, at some point, painful. Where God has me right now, it just seems like I'm wide open for the opinions and thoughts of others to come in and cause me to faint even further, and it is sometimes tiring to combat that all the time. But I realize it is something that needs to be combated, because that pressure to perform is only coming from Satan. 

And yet, "we have received mercy". Really, that alone is enough. I felt like God was saying to me that in each ministry He has me in right now - to Grant, to Ivory, to Roberto, to the Ixtlan church, to Apostolic Christian women - I'm doing it all by His grace, and it will not be more than I can handle emotionally. 

He went on to remind me to let my light shine. "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost" (v. 3). If I give in to that fear, I forsake many opportunities to be salt and light, and therefore am not allowing God to use me the way He desires. It's not about me anyway. I have very little to lose. "For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who hath commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of knowledge to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us".

I've never thought about that verse the way I do just now. The treasure that we have to share with others is the Gospel, and it lives inside of us. The Gospel itself is firm, but we, the news-bearers, are not. I feel insecure in a culture that is not my own, with people who do not think like me. Sharing the Gospel, or just a daily life conversation, with someone who does not totally understand me makes me really vulnerable. I think that some Bible translations use "jars of clay" instead of "earthen vessels", which makes the visual a little bit easier. As those vessels, we are very fragile - easily breakable, easily offended, easily hurt, easily discouraged, easily tired. If you drop us one day, we might never go back the same way again. But why is that? So that the glory goes to God. Only our Great God could take those broken pieces when we get dropped and put us back together in a way that makes us even more beautiful than before, and in a way that allows us to be even more effective for him. 

And so, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (v. 8 - 10)

The Gospel message - death bringing life - is so timeless and so applicable to my everyday. When I die to myself, Jesus can raise me up, and God can be glorified. "Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. (v. 14-15) It is for God's glory and for my own benefit that I cannot do this on my own. Ministry in any capacity is not about me. And that is why I will not faint - because God is the source of it all, and He does not tire. 

"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (v. 16-18)

"Oh, to be nothing, nothing!
Only to lie at His feet,
A broken and emptied vessel—
For the Master’s use made meet!
Emptied that He might fill me
As forth to His service I go;
Broken, that so unhindered,
His life through me might flow.

Oh, to be nothing, nothing!
Only to lie at His feet,
A broken and emptied vessel—
  For the Master’s use made meet!

Oh, to be nothing, nothing!
Only as led by His hand—
A messenger at His gateway,
Only waiting for His command;
Only an instrument ready
His praises to sound at His will—
Willing, should He not require me,
In silence to wait on Him still.

Oh, to be nothing, nothing!
Painful the humbling may be!
Yet low in the dust I’d lay me
That the world might my Savior see!
Rather be nothing, nothing!
To Him let their voices be raised!
He is the fountain of blessing,
He only is meet to be praised!

Oh, To Be Nothing (Georgiana M. Taylor)