Empty Me

I have a bunch of jumbled thoughts that I want to try to get down, but I am not sure how coherent they will be. I feel that God has been teaching me so much in the past 2 and 1/2 weeks as a new mother. I always knew things would change once our daughter arrived - I just didn't know how or what would change (other than sleep deprivation... which is definitely the case). Anyway, over the past few weeks I feel that God has been speaking to me through His Word, through a book I'm reading, through Sunday School & Church, through friends, through my husband, and through my beautiful Kirsten. The theme that I am hearing from God is His desire to fulfill my every need - His desire to be everything to me. He desires that I empty myself of all the stuff that I've tried to find fulfillment in and fill myself with Him.

In Sunday School we are studying Ecclesiastes. Not the most exciting book to read, but there is a lot to be learned. Essentially it boils down to this - you can search for fulfillment in all areas of life, but you will not find it except through a relationship with God. And the book I'm reading, I believe it's called "Tender Mercies" (from my dear friend Amy), is all about how God wants us, especially as mothers, to find our strength and our source of everything by being filled up with Him. However, we so often look to other things - our husbands, our children, our work, our friends - to give us a sense of value or importance in this life. We want to be praised for all we do. We want to be recognized and valued as a person. I don't think that's there's anything inherently wrong with that - it's just that we should instead be relying on Christ to give us our value and sense of importance in this world. It is only because of Him that we can even do the things we do every day. And without Him, without His love, we would be nothing. All the things we do do not really matter unless they are done with a heart that is honoring Him. And ultimately, it's more important that we KNOW Christ and have a relationship with Him than doing all the wonderful things we might do in our lives. If we know Him and are filled up by Him, then that will spill over into every other area of our lies, and I believe, those areas will be more blessed because of that.

As I am learning these things and trying to implement this concept of being filled with Jesus, I recognize that there is no magic formula and it doesn't happen overnight. But my prayer is that He would empty me of myself and fill me with Him, as this song states:

Holy Fire burn away,
my desire for anything
that is not of you and is of me,
I want more of you and less of me, yeah.
Empty me,
Empty me, yeah,
Fill, won't you fill me,
with you, with you, yeah.