This is just a reminder for those who are struggling with the intense emptying of 2022-2023.
After a while, any process can tend to wear on our views of ourselves and preach.
It can preach - you weren’t ready so you had to be cut back.
It can preach - you failed that’s why God is stripping you back.
It can preach - this is who you are, always empty, always shipwrecked, always wounded, always broken.
But you aren’t broken at all.
In fact, the emptying is the sign of GROWTH.
“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2
God is not emptying you to punish you, but to get you ready for increase.
There is fruit waiting but many of us are holding onto the overripe and rotting fruit of yesterday.
You have camped by that dried up stream long enough and the Father has been trying to lead you to new streams and a new flow.
The emptying is not personal, it’s practical.
When you are holding onto the mindsets and methods of yesterday how can you possibly have the capacity to hold what’s coming?
But this emptying is deeper than methods and ways.
This emptying has been a purging of everything your soul has wrapped itself around for many years - even decades.
The assignments, birthings, and movements that your identity has been emulsified with.
The mentalities, insecurities, and woundings that you picked up along the way.
Like a rare coin collector you have been picking up every penny along the way, but now those pennys are weighing you down.
They are keeping you in bondage when a new season of freedom is calling.
“He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,” Malachi 3:3
That’s why this purifying has been needed. Not to tell you that you are faulty, but to give you back your laughter, life, and breath.
The fresh wind that you have needed is coming.
And He sees you pioneers, depleted, confused, and frozen in a moment.
Tired, and feeling like Lazarus in the tomb.
But you aren’t dead or broken, you have been emptied so you can be FILLED AGAIN!
Let me say this clearer, rock bottom can be your saving grace in an hour of idols and other lovers.
In a time of swirling agendas and heart motives, this emptying is what has come to save you and preserve you so you can last the distance.
And I hear the Father saying, “This is a time I am calling the church to come back into my presence and to be fathered. The road has been long and many have forgotten who they are. They have slipped back into the old lies and old yokes of their past. They have lost their way as sons and daughters and have been living as vagabonds, cast-outs, orphans, and beggars, but right now I am delivering my church and bringing them back into their inheritance!”
So lean into the emptying even if it doesn’t make sense, because soon it will.