The only reasons for the believers’ failures and lack of growth before God are (1) not knowing themselves and (2) not knowing the fullness of the Lord. At a Keswick Convention, one anonymous Christian said that all the failures of believers are from these two reasons.
The only condition for God’s blessing, spiritual growth, or the experience of the fullness of the Lord is to be empty. We have to constantly realize our own fullness, and we should also constantly empty ourselves of our own fullness. We should constantly empty ourselves. Only those who are hungry will be filled with good things (Luke 1:53). All God’s spiritual grace is only for the hungry ones.
The order of the Holy Spirit’s work in us is first to create a desire in our heart so that we become dissatisfied with our present life. The beginning of regression is satisfaction, and the beginning of progress is dissatisfaction. The Holy Spirit first does the work of emptying and then the work of filling. God empties us in order to fill us. The emptying is God’s means, while the filling is His goal. In order to empty us, the Holy Spirit puts us against a wall and allows us to encounter crises. All the difficulties are arranged by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of making us pursue in a deeper way. The victory at Jericho cannot be relied upon for the battle at Ai. We cannot apply the big victory of yesterday to even the small battle of today. Past experiences cannot meet present needs. God never asks us to eat the manna of yesterday. Thank God that we have crises! Through the Holy Spirit, God has created crises for us in our environment and in our lives. He allows us to fail when we try to meet present crises with past experiences. The failure creates a need and a fresh desire in us. Faith never copies the things of the past. We cannot imitate the works of faith of the believers in the past; we can only imitate their faith. Since the disciples saw the Lord feeding the five thousand with the five loaves, and the four thousand with the seven loaves, they should have known further that He could fill them even if there were no loaves. They did not know the Lord in a deeper way. This was why they said, “It is because we did not take bread” (Matt. 16:7). God arranges the environment for us that we might know the Lord more, know ourselves more, and know the vanity of the self. He allows us to fail so that we could realize our emptiness and uselessness. Our person has already been nullified by God on the cross.
Second Kings 4:1-6 says, “Now a certain woman from among the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared Jehovah. And the creditor has come to take my two children to himself as servants. And Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in your house? And she said, Your servant has nothing at all in the house, except a jar of oil. And he said, Go and borrow vessels outside, from all your neighbors, empty vessels, and not just a few. Then go in and shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour out into all those vessels; and each one you fill set aside. So she went away from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons; and they brought the vessels to her, and she poured out into them. And when she had filled the vessels, she said to her son, Bring me another vessel. But he said to her, There is no other vessel. And the oil stopped.”
The woman became a debtor because of the poverty of her husband. But she had a jar of oil. This jar of oil was the basic ingredient. It was this jar of oil that allowed her to pay her debt and that supplied her daily needs. She needed empty vessels. Elisha ordered her to prepare empty vessels, and not a few. Through Adam we have become poor. But praise the Lord, we have the Holy Spirit. What is lacking are empty spots for the Spirit to fill. The fact is not that we cannot be filled, but that we do not have the empty spots for the Holy Spirit to work into. The Holy Spirit will only fill the empty spots. For spiritual progress we must be continually empty to be continually filled. It is not to be emptied once and then remain full forever. Time after time we need further emptying and further filling.
One has to deal with the Holy Spirit secretly in the hidden place. The flesh has to be locked outside, and the Holy Spirit locked inside. Whenever one encounters problems, he has to go to the hidden place to deal with the Holy Spirit. When we deal with the Spirit, the problems in our lives are solved.
The oil ceased because there were no more empty vessels. The filling stops when there is no more emptiness. If there is unlimited emptiness, there will be unlimited filling. Esau was the first self-satisfied person. In the end he became an empty person. We should continually empty ourselves, instead of emptying ourselves just once. We should continually empty ourselves so that we can be continually filled. We are responsible for the emptying, and the Holy Spirit is responsible for the filling.
(Morning, January 23)