Do you feel empty? This old story may help you to live filled.

Once a professor went to visit an old monk famous for his wisdom. The monk graciously welcomed him in and offered him a seat.

As soon as the professor sat down, he sat down and began to tell the monk all about his own accomplishments, ideas, and opinions.

The monk quietly listened for awhile and then asked, “Would you like some tea?”

The professor nodded and smiled, but kept right on talking. The monk handed him a tea cup and began pouring from his teapot. The tea filled the cup, but the monk kept right on pouring while the professor kept right on talking. Eventually the professor noticed the tea overflowing onto the saucer and shouted, “What do you think you are doing? Can’t you see the cup is full?”

And the monk replied, “This cup is just like your mind. It can’t take in anything new, because it is already full.”

Sometimes when I come to God, I come full. I am filled to the brim with my own ideas of how my life should go. I am overflowing with opinions of how God should answer my prayers. There simply isn’t room for God to work in me because I am too full of myself.

God wants to fill all the desperate little corners of our souls with Himself. To totally satisfy our hearts by saturating them with His love and peace, but we won’t experience that if our hearts are full of something else. I have found that when my heart is full of my own expectations, saturated with my own desires and demands I have no room for what God wants to pour into my spirit.

I try to avoid emptiness, but every empty spot is a potential vessel for God’s fullness. So the more empty places I give God to fill, the more space I make for Him in my life. God wants to fulfill all our longings and He does that by giving us Himself. Psalm 16:11 says,

“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

As we empty our hearts of our own ideas, demands, and expectations, God will fill us with His presence. He will pour in His joy until our hearts are overflowing.