Are You Ready To Be Poured Out As An Offering?

    From My Utmost for His Highest

I am already being poured out as a drink offering . . . —2 Timothy 4

In Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” The Anchor Bible Commentary on this Scripture says, “The cup (Greek poterion) is not only the cup of divine wrath and judgment, but it was also an expression common in the ancient world as a symbol for destiny or fate.”

Chambers, in today’s devotional asks, “Are you ready to be poured out as an offering?” I’m linking these two Scripture together because being poured out sounds so very impossible, until we see the path ahead and the path back.

See, the thing that’s poured out is not typically our lives. More often, it is a willingness to take my destiny—the things that I’VE dreamed for MY life—and pour them out for God. One constant throughout the Bible is that God blesses those who take something they should love, something that should make them significant, something that should give them security, and put it on an altar to pour out for Him.

I am mid-pour. Sometimes I...

...pour fast and sometimes slowly—trying to keep as much of my dreams in the cup as possible—but the best kept secret of Christianity is that the minute that you begin to load your things onto that altar, the Light there shows me how cheap and worthless they really were. And God begins to replace it (like a reverse pawn shop) with even better things from His side of the counter.

If you believe this, the path ahead looks great. But some will be spurred on by the path back.

Imagine a big dinner with your beloved. You’ve brought all your stuff; everything is on the table in front of you. After small talk, you begin to tell your beloved how much they are loved.  One at a time, you pick up your things (your home, money, your future, your children, your wit or humor, everything) and say, “I love you more than this.” Then you hand them over to your beloved. There’s that one thing, you know what it is, that you pick around—trying not to select—until you’ve given everything you have to your beloved EXCEPT that one thing.

Sitting there, at the end of the night, peering around that one thing left on the table, do you think any of the other things you’ve given your beloved matter? Or would it feel like there was only one thing, that thing, left in the world?

If your beloved is the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth, Who holds the universe with His Word, and Who has already given up His own most beloved for you, then you/I/we have put a target on that very thing we're trying to protect.

It’s not exactly that God will take or withhold that thing from you (although He has done it before at great cost to Himself), but you/I/we will begin to make choices/bargains that will put our loves in peril. Try to keep a child at the center of your life and you’ll either make them so dependent on you they will cease to be or they will be suffocated and push you away. Try to make a fortune the center of your life and it will either make you a slave to it or the fear of losing it will endanger you both.

In the end, the question should be this: How bad do things need to get before we’re ready to pour out our choices and dreams in exchange for God’s?

Right here, now, it’s enough to pray the prayer I prayed last night, saying “No, but I WANT to want to be poured out.” It’s enough, for now, to truly ask for that thirst. Then it’s God’s absolute pleasure to lay that preference on your heart “and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.”

I love you.

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