Emptied

February 19, 2006

By Randy Mantik

A number of years ago, as we were bringing groceries into the apartment where we lived, we dropped and spilled a gallon of milk just inside the front door. Not just part of a gallon, mind you, but the whole thing! There was nothing left in the jug but a few drops; the rest of the milk was completely absorbed into the carpet. We immediately began to try and sop up the mess with bath towels. After about 10 of them, we gave up.

We were blessed to have some friends who owned a carpet-cleaning business, so after our “10-towel sop job” we called them. We thought we had soaked up the majority of the milk. It didn’t seem there could be a whole lot left in the carpet. But, surprise, as the huge, truck-mounted machine did its work, we could see there was an unbelievable amount left.

And so it is with our humanity. God, through His mercy and through the work of the Holy Spirit, is always at work using everything in our lives to empty us of ourselves. If we hadn’t gotten every bit of milk out of the carpet, it would have ended up smelling really bad. If we are unwilling to be emptied of ourselves, someday the rotten humanity we have not allowed God to extract will manifest itself in carnality, selfishness and stinking pride!

Christ came that He might make himself known through us. Paul says we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10, NIV). How might that come to be? By daily being emptied of self and filled again with the Spirit through intimacy of relationship and communion with God. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

You may feel like you have been on a never-ending extraction process as far as dealing with sin and putting away self. I want to encourage you to let the Spirit continue to do that work. Don’t give up on the process! You may be really discouraged and say, “After all this time, I feel like I should be seeing a lot less of self in me, and it seems like I’m seeing a lot more!”

I’m saying you will see more selfishness, you will see more pride, you will see more self will and vindictiveness in yourself as you grow in Christ! Not because there is more of it in you, but because you are becoming more aware of the last vestiges.

Even the apostle Paul near the end of his life says, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15). In saying that, Paul was not trying to stir up some rhetorical modesty. He really considered himself to be not just a great sinner, but the greatest one and the one most in need of God’s grace. How could that be? Because Paul discovered, just as we must, that the closer he got to God, the more inferior and unimportant everything else became.

I think that is why, as Paul sat in a Roman jail reflecting on his life, he wrote these words: “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7). And then he goes on to say, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13,14).

Until the day we cross the line into heaven’s glory, we will always be emptying ourselves of self. It may seem like a long, arduous, often unsuccessful process, but that is an indication work is being done. Real effort causes real pain, but it also ends in real results!

When you’re discouraged, remind yourself of that glorious, eternal result — when we are finally like Jesus and we see Him face to face! That will be the final emptying of self and the forever filling up of God allowing us to become the new creation He has been working on during all these years of difficult training here on earth.

Emptied to become full, never to be emptied again. It will be worth it all!

Randy Mantik is senior pastor of Crossroads Church of the Assemblies of God in Pembine, Wis.