Useful Vessel
by Rich Farm
“The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness” ~ Bruce Lee
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” ~ Matthew 10:37-39
I’ve been reflecting on the above quote from Bruce Lee for some weeks now. As I reflected, I thought about Paul’s many references comparing us to vessels for God’s use. So, if we are vessels to be used by God, and a vessel is only useful when it is empty, we have to ask ourselves some questions. First, why is a vessel useful when it’s empty? Second, how do we become empty vessels? Before we answer these questions let me say what this is not. This is not some mystical, ethereal emptying of our mind or spirit. We are going to look at this from a very practical perspective.
First, let’s just look at the imagery of this cup. Why is a cup useful when it’s empty? Simply because it can be filled with something. It is meant to hold or store whatever you are intending to put in it, so if it is not empty it is limited in how much you can pour into it. A watering can is another good example. Its purpose is to be filled up to bring water and nourishment to the plants around the house. You would fill it up at the faucet and go pour it in the plants until they are sufficiently watered. If the can runs out, you would just go back to the source of water and refill it to continue what its intended purpose is.
How does this apply to us? If we are vessels in the hand of God, we would need to go to Him being the living water and be filled by Him. Ok, look at it this way. Whatever position you have in life, executive, laborer, stay-at-home mom, teacher –the list can go on and on—if you are a Christian you are meant to glorify God and share his truth in your sphere of influence. Those titles or positions (our assignment) may change over the course of our life but the ultimate purpose is still the same, to glorify God and spread His truth and reality to the world around us. Something our world could use more of considering the massive amounts of lies and manipulation and deception we are seeing today.
So first we need to make ourselves available to be used. We need to recognize that without going to the source we will have nothing to give to begin with. It’s kind of hard to water plants with an empty watering can. So how do we make ourselves available? We remove the distractions in life. My mentor in Minnesota spoke of narrowing down. It’s really hard to hear God with a bunch of noise and clutter in our lives. This can be anything from sin to even the well-intentioned things in life, such as hobbies, careers, and relaxation time. In and of themselves many of our daily activities are not bad but without the proper heart posture toward God they can be a distraction to our growing in our calling, and quite possibly an idol.
We have been placed in this season of time for us to intersect with the people we encounter on a daily basis for a reason. It is not an accident you are living at this very moment in history. Just like Esther, you were born for such a time as this. She was born in her time period to be used by God to save an entire nation from being annihilated. What then is our reason for being? We see the world in the chaos it is in at this moment in time, what could our purpose possibly be? Could it be to be an instrument in the hand of God to save a nation? Your nation, where ever you may reside.
We are to be kingdom builders, not an earthly kingdom, but a spiritual one. We are called to be influencers to a godless culture to help them be reconciled to their creator. It is therefore incumbent on us to figure out our passion and assignment. It is also worthy of mention that it doesn’t matter how insignificant we may think our assignment might be, to God it is not insignificant. I speak to this in more detail in my other articles “Rise Up: Engage” and “You Are Not The Only One”. So how do we do this?
First, you must acknowledge that you are important and that you have a purpose in this earth. The humanistic philosophy of today has trained many to believe that we don’t matter. We live, we die, and that’s it, nothing else, so live for the pleasures of today. It has no eternal perspective. When we first understand that we are created we then will understand that we have purpose, because nothing is created without purpose. Once we have determined we are created and have a purpose, we need to pursue a relationship with that creator because it is He who determines what your purpose is.
The screwdriver doesn’t define what it is meant to do, the one who created the screwdriver can only do that. Once we acknowledge the need for relationship with the creator, we then need to follow His game plan for development in our lives. This process is called discipleship. This process will also help narrow out our lives and remove or severely limit the unnecessary. I will leave you with this, are you willing to become a useful vessel to serve your creator for the purpose He created you for? Are you willing to empty yourself out for His purposes and not your own? Are you ready to be a history maker for this next season God has for your country and generation?
An Instrument to Restrain
by Susan Snelling
The Preamble to the Constitution begins with We the People. What the Framers were saying is that the people have the power. Our rights do not come from the government but from nature and nature’s God; our Creator. They are not endowed by man so man cannot take them away. In establishing the Constitution, a number of things concerned the Framers, and one of them was the executive branch becoming tyrannical.
When debating the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention, Gouvenoir Morris, one of the Framers, in comparing our government to that of Great Britain, said, the president is the equivalent of a prime minister, not the king. He said the people are the king. The Framers wanted to give the people a way to protect themselves from the federal government.
Jefferson said, “[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”
Patrick Henry made it clear who and what the Constitution was an instrument for when he wrote: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”
The Constitution sets up the framework for government in a way that the Congress is the most powerful branch, and you will notice that the Congress is mentioned first in the Articles, indicating its preeminence. Then the Executive, then the Supreme Court. And of the Congress, it is the House with the most power since they are closest to the people. But the only legitimate fountain of power, as James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers in 1799, is the people. He says, “” …it is from them that the constitutional character, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.”
Even though the Constitution gave limited powers to the federal government, there were those who thought it did not go far enough in expressing this. The federalists thought the Constitution as it was protected the people, but the anti-federalists disagreed and feared the government would not be constrained from power grabs so they wanted certain rights specifically mentioned. This gave us the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights, which is the first ten amendments to the Constitution, did not cover all those rights and this is mentioned in the Ninth Amendment that there were more rights the government has no business infringing upon.
Some of those unalienable rights that the anti-federalists specifically mentioned in the First Amendment are freedom of religion and speech. [Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.]
The Constitution is to protect us from the government. It would behoove us to get to know it in its original intent without the flux and flourishes of modern-day antagonists who want to change it into something living, breathing, and forever evolving depending on the shifting sands of whatever ideological thrust is popular.
Popular governors these days are those who push back against the federal government’s unconstitutional encroachments on states’ rights. They fight for the people of their state and in effect set an example for other governors to follow and make it easy for other states to get on board. Not only are these brave governors fighting for freedom of religion and speech but for the national sovereignty that the current administration has failed to protect. The governors say you are not doing that in our state!
It is up to the states to take their rights back and push against an ever-expanding and the encroaching federal bureaucracy. Governors should refuse the edicts of bureaucrats in DC who overturn the will of the people and act like tyrants. The latest is the federal government’s move to appoint a board that acts basically as a “Ministry of Truth” through the powerful Department of Homeland Security. This is clearly unconstitutional and something found in dictatorships.
It should cause every American no matter which side of the aisle you are on to fight back with everything you’ve got. Some in the national Congress plan on taking action against it and at least one governor, DeSantis of Florida, has said it will not happen in his state. One can imagine there will be more as well. If there ever was a move from the federal government out of their enumerated powers, and there have been many over the decades, this one is so evil and bizarre and screams of fascism so loudly that it’s a no-brainer even for the most Constitutionally illiterate.
It’s up to all of us to be aware of these unconstitutional actions by the federal government and make sure our elected officials fight back both at the national and state level. It’s America itself we are fighting for, the very idea of freedom and liberty. It’s for those who went before us and those who follow.
I think we have all witnessed in the last couple of years just how important the local and state government is, especially with a corrupt federal government (and some states) run by self-serving power-hungry bureaucrats and tyrannical elected leaders with dangerous ideologies who hate America as it was founded and want to see it “fundamentally transformed.” It begins in the state. It begins with We the People and that blessed “instrument to restrain.”