Running On Empty

Are you attempting to fill your life with anything other than God?

1 Peter 1:17-20 And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as “foreigners in the land.”

18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.

20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days.

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The symptoms of the empty life: depression, anxiety, loneliness, unforgiven, hurt and a lack of purpose, that's what the pleasures of this world have to offer you.

“In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

― Carl Sagan

That's a sad way to deal with the emptiness that we all feel, even a follower of Christ can feel empty, the world doesn't have much to offer you. When Jesus came to earth he found a world full of empty people, the government of Israel had been overthrown, the Roman government and the religious leaders were oppressing the people, they all seemed to be like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

Some of the people that Jesus met that needed to be "filled up" include:

✔  The Samaritan woman that needed more than just her jar filled (John1:1-54)
✔  Matthew the despised tax collector (Matthew 9:9-13)
✔  The woman that was healed from touching the hem of his garment, (Mark 5:25-29)
✔  The rich man that wouldn't give so that he could get (Luke 18:18-25)

The reason that life seems empty is because of sin. For those that are still seeking for a way to deal with guilt, those that don't know about grace and forgiveness, it can be very difficult to find meaning and purpose in life.

Jesus saved me from the empty life of sin

Romans 8:31-32  What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?  32  Since He did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won't He also give us everything else?

The good news is that you can get beyond the guilt if you have the right lawyer. God is a fair and impartial judge and there is only one lawyer that can possibly get your past erased, if you don't have him then you are in trouble. (1 John 2:1)

Christ paid a high price to redeem us from our hopeless, empty existence that we had before we came to know him. The sin nature that we inherited from our ancestors is powerless against what Christ has done. The lamb that was put on the altar for our sins was the first and only sinless sacrifice that the world will ever know. It is amazing that God has always planned to send his son for our benefit, there wasn't any last minute change of plans, this is still Plan A. Our imperfections didn't catch God off guard and force him to create Plan B.

We have a lot of potential in Jesus, he has a fulfilling life in mind for every one of us, but we can all experience emptiness when we allow worldly pressures and pleasures to get a foothold. Our life will feel incomplete when we fail to make time for intimate fellowship with Christ or when we put him in a box.

I need to make the time to draw near to God so that I will remember how well he has treated me. (Psalm 103:10-11)