Are You Willing?

 Living on old family land has given us some great treasures - both physically and emotionally.   We get the great, sentimental aspect of living in a house that once belonged to grandparent's, that once housed veterans, parents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins that needed a place to go.    We get to walk down the same dirt road that they walked down; and we get to sit in rooms where they once sat.

We also get to find their old "castaways" (or garbage to some), buried in the horse pasture or the front yard or hidden in bushes.    You just never know what you will dig up around here.

Over the years we've found all of these old bottles.   All different shapes and all different sizes; but all useful at one time, then cast aside to become buried under the dirt; not of use anymore.

One by one, as they were found and brought in for cleaning up, I thought about them and what they might have been used for.  

None of them are broken.   All of them are still useful.   However, to the "user", they were empty and therefore, of no value.

Is that how you feel?  Are you empty and feel as though you've been cast aside, never to be useful again?

Maybe it's been a long, hard year.   Maybe you've poured out so much more than you've been filled.  

Maybe you feel used up and not appreciated and have started to believe that you have been put on a shelf, no longer useful to anyone.

But, I am here to tell you that God doesn't see you that way!

God doesn't see a useless, empty vessel.  No!  He looks at you and sees your capacity to be filled and used again. 

God doesn't cast us aside when we're empty.   He may give us time to rest; time to sit for a season.  But all the while, he is waiting for you to be willing, that he may fill you back up and use you to do a work for him again. 

There are no useless vessels to God.

He takes the unsightly, the used, the broken, the cast aways and he uses them, as long as they are willing. 

Are you willing?

You don't have to be shiny and new.   You don't have to be the new and improved.   You don't have to be anything - but willing.

If you are still here - then God is not done with you.    He has a purpose for your life, for your last days, months and years.   

Don't count yourself as useless and empty.  Count yourself as ready to be filled and ready to be used.

"Make use of me, my God.

Let me not be forgot.

A broken vessel cast aside,

One whom thou usest not."

(Horatius Bonar)