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God as our Potter has sovereignly created us to be His vessels, His containers, to contain Himself according to His predestination—2 Cor. 4:6-7; Eph. 4:6; 3:19b; Phil. 2:13; Heb. 13:20-21; 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:20-21; Eph. 1:5, 11:
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God’s purpose in creating man was to make man His vessel, His earthenware container, to contain and be filled with Christ as life for the building up of the Body of Christ as God’s great corporate vessel for His expression—Gen. 2:7; Acts 9:15; Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7.
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The basic teaching of the whole Scripture is simply this: God is the very content, and we are the containers made to receive the content; we must contain God and be filled with God so that we can be vessels unto honor, sanctified, useful to the master, prepared unto every good work—2 Tim. 2:20-21.
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If we do not contain God and know God as our content, we are a senseless contradiction—Eccl. 1:2-3, 14.
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All of Paul’s fourteen Epistles can be summed up in two words—open vessel:
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The degree to which God can dispense Himself into us depends on the degree of our openness; God wants us only to love Him and to keep ourselves open to Him—2 Kings 4:1-7; Matt. 5:3; John 1:16; Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2.
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Decadence starts from self-complacency; progress starts from hunger and thirst—Deut. 4:25; Luke 1:53; Phil. 1:25; Rev. 3:16-18.
Morning Nourishment
Acts 9:15 …This man is a chosen vessel to Me, to bear My name before both the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.Eph. 3:19 …That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
Luke 1:53 The hungry He has filled with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.
God created us to be His containers in order to contain Himself. We are only empty containers, and God intends to be our only content. To illustrate, bottles are necessary to contain beverages….If we look at the bottles made for beverages…, we will realize that these “peculiar” containers are quite specific articles; they were made for a particular use. We people are also “peculiar” containers, for we too were made for a specific purpose….If the bottles never contain a beverage, they…would become meaningless. Man was made purposely to contain God. If we do not contain God and know God as our content, we are a senseless contradiction. (CWWL, 1964, vol. 3, “The Economy of God,” pp. 183-184)
Today’s Reading
All spiritual progress begins when God initiates a good work in a person through the Holy Spirit by creating a longing within….The Holy Spirit makes us feel that our present condition is wrong and that our spiritual life is too shallow. The first work of the Holy Spirit is to give us a sense of dissatisfaction and to create in us a desire to be better….This is the beginning of spiritual progress. Putting it another way, all failure and decadence is the result of self-complacency….Our feelings of dissatisfaction with ourselves indicate that the Holy Spirit has begun His work in us and that it is the time for us to go forward….Decadence comes from self-complacency, whereas progress comes from hunger. This is a fact, and it is true throughout our Christian life. Invariably the Holy Spirit first creates a desire in us for more, and then God comes in to satisfy us and fill us. In order to perform His filling work, He must first carry out His emptying work. When we are empty, God will fill us.This is a principle which the Lord has shown us: spiritual progress is a matter of being continually emptied out and continually filled up….Do not think that as long as we have been emptied once, we will not need any more emptying. The work of the cross in us is ever-increasing and ever-deepening.
God is waiting for us to empty ourselves. If there is an infinite emptiness in us, the Holy Spirit will grant us an infinite filling. Whether or not we will receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit depends on whether we have empty vessels. It depends on whether or not we have reserved room for the Holy Spirit and whether or not we have provided Him a place to work in us.
We need to pray and ask the Lord to dig more deeply in us and make more room in us so that the Holy Spirit can fill us. The filling of the Holy Spirit depends on our emptiness. I will repeat: our emptiness ought to be a continuous state. If we cannot empty ourselves, God cannot fill us. The Holy Spirit is waiting for empty rooms within us. The more empty rooms we give to Him, the more He will fill us. If there is empty room, it means that there is more filling by the Holy Spirit to come. Therefore, we need not seek for the filling; all we have to do is to empty ourselves. The Holy Spirit alone is responsible for the filling; our responsibility is to empty ourselves. If we can empty ourselves, we will have the filling. We may not be conscious of the filling, but the fact of the filling will certainly be with us.
God wants to fill the hungry with good things. If God has already created a seeking heart within us and if He is digging and emptying us, we ought to believe that He will certainly fill us. God will only send away empty those who think that they are rich. (CWWN, vol. 37, pp. 132-133, 138-140)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1964, vol. 3, “The Economy of God,” ch. 5; CWWN, vol. 37, ch. 22; CWWN, vol. 47, “Authority and Submission,” ch. 9