Holey Vessels

"We are either a continually filled vessel or a leaky cup."

THE FLESH IS A LEAKY VESSEL. If you fill a cup made of notebook paper and set it in the sun, both the heat of the sun and the flimsy material will cause the water to evaporate. The fleshly body is not made to properly contain the power of God. Not made to contain His holiness. Our bodies are cleansed and made holy upon salvation, and then we can go boldly into His Presence where He delights to spend time with us.

Jesus’ body after Resurrection was of a different materiality. The apostle Paul said Jesus’ body was fashioned as a “glorious body.” Jesus said to His disciples, “Behold my hands and my feet … handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” His blood was poured out upon the altar of heaven. The blood had served its purpose in the body, to cleanse and redeem. He has been made better than our earthly vessel.

We partake of His redemption and obtain all the benefits of His work. He desires us to be whole. New in spirit, healthy in body, and peaceful in mind. Redemption is a completed work. Nothing else needs to be done and nothing that was done in it has been annulled or put aside. But we live in these leaky bodies, in a world full of death and decay. The power of death to defeat us has been removed. Sickness and disease have been placed on the cross and have been lifted in the Resurrection. We need not fear any of it. But to be strong in our inner man, we must refill ourselves daily.

Time spent seeking the Holy Spirit is what fills us. Time spent in the Presence of God is what changes us. We are cleansed by the continual washing of the Word. To stop thinking of the problem we face and react instead with the answer requires our time and a persistent hunger. Anyone can repeat the same phrases and memorize them, but in order to change our thinking, God’s truth must become a part of us. Like God’s Presence, His Word fills us. God’s Word never returns to Him void. His Word before our eyes, in our ears, and on our tongues will do what it has been set out to accomplish when mixed with our love and confidence in the nature and goodness of God.

Here again, we are either a continually filled vessel or a leaky cup. And to be filled, we must yield our ways to His. A yielded vessel, one surrendered to God, one who spends time in God’s Presence, will hear things in the Spirit, and know truths from the Word that an unyielded vessel will not. We become like what we focus on.

God rewards those who seek Him. We do not simply set aside our plans as a boring ritual, but we grow to love our time with Him. He becomes what we would rather do, and so His thoughts become our own. In Him, our vessel is sure. God’s Word is sure. It is reliable. It is Truth. We can lay all our weight upon it, and with Him as our foundation, we become the image of Him, something solid and sturdy, which combined with those He has placed around us, becomes a house for His Presence on this earth.

We are His house in an individual sense, and His house corporately, together. Vessels filled with His mercy and goodness, overflowing into a world lost in sensuality, ungodliness, and humanism.

The only filled cup is God’s. The only overflowing one is in His Presence. And what spills out of us from there changes those around us. Change the people, change the family. Change the family, change the city. Change the city, change the state and change the nation. We’re waiting on Him to work. He’s waiting on us to exchange our leaky vessel for something eternal, something steadfast, holy, made higher than the heavens.

“For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;” (Hebrews 7:26)

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter Heaven’s Most Holy place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us.” (Hebrews 10:19-20 NLT)

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com