Empty Me

Empty Me of the selfishness inside,
Every vain ambition and poison of my pride.
Any foolish thing my heart holds to,
Lord, empty me of me so I can be, filled with You.
Chris Sligh – Empty Me

How many times a day am I guilty of putting me ahead of Him.
It’s rhetorical people, but the answer is more than I can keep track of.

There have been some amazing amounts of stress-ish things that have been dropped on my plate in the last week…actually felt more like repeated blows to the head and heart.

Now the issue is that I am stressing about stressing. I really need to not be stressing; so I stress about the fact that I am stressing and man that is stressing.

So, during the course of the last week - another where I spent my time running around like a chicken with my head cut-off (though there is a petition to change the phrase to “running around like RG” – darn chicken advocates), a non-descript email arrived on Wednesday inviting me (and others who participate in the Valparaiso Christian Ministerial Association) to a prayer meeting that Friday.

How could I make time in my busy schedule to do that? Then it dawned on my, how could I not make time in my “busy” schedule to do that?

I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with Pastor Rich Schmidt (Living Hope – www.livinghope.info – check it out, check it outers) at Evelyn Bay prior to the meeting. It was nice to learn and talk about some ways we can work together. It was positive, it was rich (caught myself in a pun) and it was energizing.

Then Pastors Mike Sutton (Liberty Bible – www.lbchurch.org) and Mike Eddy (Valparaiso Community Church - http://mysite.verizon.net/mikeeddy2/index.html) joined the conversation and we spent time talking about life concerns, family concerns, work concerns – prayer concerns. Then we prayed. It was powerful. It was humbling. It was emptying. It was filling.

It was exactly where I needed to be; it was where I was supposed to be.

There is immense amount of stuff out there to beat us down, make us question why – stress.

Thankfully, if we are paying attention, there are plenty of nudges, signs and blessings all around us to pick us up, keep us on track and focused on what we need to be focused on.

Is all the world a better place – gosh no. But the reality is; my frame of mind is; my focus is on the right things and I’m not wasting energy stressing – at least until I slip up and start putting me in front of Him again.