Avoiding Emptiness

"In order to kill the self, we must be ready to endure all the wounds of life, exposing ourselves naked and defensless to its fangs; we must accept emptiness. Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
                    ~ Simon Weil

When I think of the above quote I think of how we are called to empty ourselves of our egos, attachments and illusions and fill ourselves with God through the lifelong process of sanctification; of transforming our hearts to be  more and more like Christ. In Romans Chapter 6, the apostle Paul relates the truth that when we accept our blessed Savior we die to our old selves and are raised anew in Christ.

As God renews our hearts and minds through His Spirit they are transformed in His love and mercy. How often, though,  through the pursuit of our own pleasures and desires, do us humans neglect this call God has for us? How often do we also avoid this call because it forces us to look at how things really are, it makes us face our true characters and flaws and encourages and prompts us towards change?  Nobody likes to feel "naked and defenseless" to the truth.  Reality and the need to change can be very uncomfortable. Instead of dwelling in the presence of God we dwell in the pleasure of our own transient and fleeting pleasures to avoid such truths.  Instead of emptying ourselves so God can fill us we fill ourselves with trivial and meaningless things that distract us and keep us from the full revelation of God's glory and the realization of our shortcomings. This is where I start to think that perhaps, indeed, sin does have a role to play in the avoidance of emptying oneself.

Our avoidance of the presence of God in filling our hearts, in order to pursue our own pleasures could very well be considered a sin, for it separates us from God in a way that is unnecessary but created entirely by us. We create the barrier that blocks us from our Creator.  Our inability or unwillingness to shed our old skins so that we might be transformed by the glory of God is our choice and to deny a God, who gave us His all, to work through us to magnify His glory and manifest His Kingdom here on earth because of our own selfish attachments...well how could that not be a sin?

Not only could the means at which we use to avoid empyting ourselves so Christ could fill us be considered a sin, but it also creates a great disservice to ourselves as well. We fail to experience the most beautiful precious gift there is-

John Piper puts it this way:

“Every sin is the failure to treasure God above all things.”

How can we be treasuring God above all things when instead of opening our hearts to Him we are closing the gates of our souls to Him and opening it to other things?

It's not always comfortable when  we get rid of the clutter of our false egos and scatter the  illusions we have about our lives. These illusions can make things oftentimes seem a lot better than they really are and bind us to the attachments that feed them and obscure us from really seeing the reality that surrounds us. Let's go back to part of the passage:

"...we must be ready to endure all the wounds of life, exposing ourselves naked and defensless to its fangs..."

When we take away the things in life that obscure our view of who we really are and what are lives truly consist of, it's often a view that is unsightly, filled with perverseness. Us humans have a great way of implementing "escapism" to protect our egos and keep us on plateaus that are comfortable, yet don't encourage positive change and certainly don't propel us down the path of sanctification. We fill our time, thoughts and attention with things like movies, the internet, alcohol, drugs, sex and other pursuits that might not be all too bad or immoral but when we use them to avoid God and growing in our relationship with Him and developing in our identity in Christ, that's when they start to become stumbling blocks (or sources of sin) that keep us from fulfilling our full potentials.

David Adam describes sin this way:

Sin is living below par when it is within our power to alter it. Most often this happens when we have lost our vision and no longer see where our true riches lie.

When we avoid emptying ourselves of the trivial things that steal our affections from God, we lose our vision of our identity in Christ.  When that happens we take our eyes off the most precious treasure there is: experiencing the presence of God and letting Him work in our lives to His glory. We lose out on experiencing the richness and fullness that there can be in our spiritual walk and instead accept the shallow and superficial road that only leads to temporary pleasures and ultimately a sense of restlessness as our purpose can never be totally realized and fulfilled. Our souls will only feel satisfied when resting in the heart of our Father and that comes about by emptying them so that He might fill them.

May we all find a moment today where we can come before God in silence and open our hearts to Him, emptying them of all distractions, and simply welcoming Him into our hearts.  God will do the rest. He will reveal to our innermost selves the areas that need to be changed and with compassion and mercy He will provide our hearts with the healing, encouragment and strength for the journey onwards.

Any thoughts? I'd love to hear them! Please leave them in the comments Section!