Running on Empty

Do you ever feel like you’re running on empty?

Maybe you started out with a full tank, but you have a leak that has been slowly draining your resources.  Perhaps it’s a relationship, your health, your job, your finances, a bad habit, an addiction, or a combination of one or more of these.

Or perhaps something hit you out of nowhere, and the life was sucked right out of you in one fell swoop.  You lost your job.  Your spouse announced they wanted a divorce.  You or a loved one received diagnosis of a serious illness.  You suffered the sudden loss of a loved one.  And so many other circumstances that seem to instantly drain the life out of us.

Perhaps your circumstances are beyond your control, or perhaps your circumstances have developed out of negligence.  Sometimes we can become so preoccupied with other things that we ignore the warning signs and don’t stop to refill our tanks until we’ve run out of gas.

Regardless of whether our circumstances exist out of our own doing or of no fault of our own, or a combination of the two, the result is the same.  We can all find ourselves feeling like we’re running on empty.  We may breakdown.  We may crumble under the weight of it all.  We may start to question God.  We may start to question our faith.

And that’s okay.  We’re only human.  We are going to question and doubt things.  We are going to stumble.  We are going to be overcome with circumstances beyond our control.  The key is where we focus our attention in these moments.

If we fix our eyes on our circumstances, we can feel defeated.  But if we fix our eyes on God, we can find new life.

As Christians we are called to empty ourselves and fully surrender our lives to God, but sometimes it takes our circumstances to bring this about.  When we use up all of our fuel reserves, where else do we have to turn?  What better time for us to realize that we can’t continue on our own?  What better time to realize that our circumstances aren’t under our control and never were to begin with?

When we are finding it hard to breathe on our own, what better time for God to breathe new life into us?

I love the way it’s stated in these lyrics from the song “Fall Apart” by Josh Wilson:

…Blessed are the ones who understand

We’ve got nothing to bring but empty hands

Nothing to hide and nothing to prove

Our heartbreak brings us back to You

And it all seems upside down

‘Cause my whole world is caving in

But I feel You now more than I did then

How can I come to the end of me

And somehow still have all I need?

God, I want to know You more

Maybe this is how it starts

I find You when I fall apart…

The best life we can live is a life fully surrendered to God.  When we are finding it hard to carry on and can only take one step at a time, what better time to rely on God to carry us and to direct each step?  That’s all He ever asks of us anyway.

“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” – Psalm 37:23-24 (NIV)