The Greatest Thing About Being Empty

When you feel lonely where you go you turn to yours Nancy Guthrie sounds like an ethereal answer, but I think it's God saying to you know what I want our relationship to be so intimate that you won't always be expecting other people to meet all of your relational needs. In fact, you'll stop demanding so much from other people. And when you feel those tinges of loneliness instead of you, causing you to pick up the phone to call someone. Maybe you realize phone out of touch with you. God the this is family life today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson about the pain. You can find us online@familylifetoday.com God tells us in the Bible that in our weakness.

He is made strong for them to be the case, we have to turn to him talk more about that today with Nancy Guthrie stay with us and welcome to family life to. Thanks for joining us.

How many times have you been speaking of a weekend to remember marriage get away and have a husband or wife come up to you and just say I feel like there's nothing left like the marriage is dead, that it's empty and I don't know what to do and they they lost hope for their relationship.

Too many to count every single conference of spoken and I would say I felt I think when you're married and your sleeping and daddy are beside the person that you made your vow to I can remember thinking and having three kids in the house sleeping. I can remember thinking how I feel so empty and alone and I think a lot of women can do that.

In fact, any help you, and I think we can do this as women especially I can think how I think the problem is I think he's not doing and I come up with my list soundlessly, think in life is wonderful and you know it's interesting because the loneliness that single people feel is real and profound. There is a loneliness that exists in marriage that I don't say it's more profound to different kind of profound.

Surprisingly, there is something point when you're married, with the expectation of oneness and intimacy and it's not there. That's a different kind of loneliness a profound sense of loneliness and and we hear from blisters all the time who tell us this is what I'm dealing with and you guys are a lifeline to help me think biblically, to help me realign my thinking and know that God is still with me and that there is still hope in my life, you're so right Bob and we love hearing from listeners, and we recently had a listener say this family life is change my life forever. I'm always talking about the podcast I heard that day with everyone I come in contact with. I know my family gets tired of hearing me say what I hear on family life to those of the things that just make us smile because we know that were making a difference in people's life that it's truly amazing as we sit here in the studio to think what we do here is a lifeline for people living in youth sometimes you don't connect the dots that when we give help practical help and hope it points people back to to gotta tell you the thing that everyone needs right now is hope.

We lived in a year that felt pretty hopeless and there's isolation and pain and we get to step into family rooms and kitchens in radio who and bring the life of Christ to people and I'm Tonya. I don't know if you understand this, that does not happen without you, you the listener say and I'm not just going to be a spectator and watch and listen.

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The family like today.com and thanks in advance for whatever you're able to give now as I said we been talking about the theme of emptiness this week and this is something that we been prompted to talk about because of a new book written by our friend Nancy Guthrie was joining us again on family life to Nancy. Welcome back. Thank you so glad to be with you. Nancy is an author or a speaker. She is a friend of this ministry. She's somebody that we look to for wisdom and guidance and counsel on so many things and has written a book called God does his best work with empty and and we been exploring this theme of the emptiness that all of us feel at different points in our lives you've run into married couples, especially as you work with couples were going through grief that often leads couples to isolation from one another as they don't know how to grieve well together and there's the emptiness over the loss of a child and then now you feel like you're losing your spouse at the same time.

I often tell couples who come to our respite retreat for grieving couples that if you were to put grease into a pot on the stove and boil it down to its essence, that what I think you have left in the pot is a little pilot plumbing and that loneliness is inherent to grief but I'll also say I can't imagine that there is anyone listening today who doesn't experience loneliness I mean I'm writing the book. Sometimes I feel lonely and that I feel a little bit ridiculous for saying so, because I look at my life and I think I got these great friends I have a fabulous husband. We enjoy a fabulous relationship and yet there is there something inherent to life in this world that loneliness is just a part of it. But you know I suggest in this book on does his best work with empty is that I asked the question, maybe loneliness isn't a problem to be solved. I think we think of it that way now.

Yeah, maybe loneliness is something God intends to use to woo us to himself. No boy you better lay that out but hypersensitive is to think if I feel lonely that it's a problem with my vertical relationship exactly I expect for this loneliness problem to get solved.

You know I got a create better community.

I got it get things going with my husband a little bit better or differently or I get a friend to get together with so first of all, I see it as a problem and I see it as a purely human relationship issue be loneliness is something that God allows us to feel to innocence not just in his direction to woo us in his direction. Because this is one of the ways that God works in our loneliness, is he draws us into a more intimate relationship with himself that we said in our intermarriage book, if this is where you're going, so my people think they married the wrong person because I feel the emptiness and loneliness is not feeling but we say they're looking in the wrong place.

What I think is beautiful in the Bible is that from beginning to end. It is a story of God, intending to enjoy intimacy amongst his people. I mean that's what he had Anita he was there in the presence of his people and from the time they get sent out of the garden, God goes to work to restore this relationship with them. NEC states his intention in Exodus he keeps repeating it throughout the whole of the Old Testament.

He keeps saying I'm to be your God and you're going to be my people, and I'm going to dwell with you as we traced that story. So what does he do his people. They leave they leave Egypt and their living out in tents in the middle of the wilderness. So what is he he says okay, Moses just to build me a tent and where to see what he want the tent to be in in the center of their camp. I mean is an expression of God's desire to be among his people right there in the tabernacle to come down to dwell among you. They they moved into the land and now their living in permanent homes.

So it's finally time build him a permanent home and once again he comes down to dwell among his people. They go into exile and at he. He gives the prophet Ezekiel, a vision Ezekiel. This one who wanted to be working the temple, but he's gone up in exile.

First he sees his vision of the glory of God that had come down to be in the in the temple that it's leaving the temple and is heartbroken but then where is it going. It's moving east of the people of God are so you can think of that kind of story is just being something theological you don't think it is. I think that reveals something to us about the heart of God. And this aspect of who God is, gets to the hearts of the way God intends to work in our loneliness, and that is his intention to dwell among his people because we get to the New Testament what happens. Fire comes down to dwell not in the tabernacle and not in a temple at Pentecost words that come to if he comes down unbelievers.

The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within people within those who belong to him and then when we go to the very end of the Bible story we get this final an announcement in Revelation 21 is says behold, the dwelling place of God is now with me and he will be their God and they will be his people, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes until we have that to look forward to. So maybe this sounds like an ethereal answer, but I think it's it it's God saying to you know what I want our relationship to be so vital, so intimate that you won't always be expecting other people to meet all of your relational needs. In fact, you'll stop demanding so much from other people and instead when you feel those tinges of loneliness instead of you, causing you to pick up the phone to call someone. Maybe you realize OMI out of touch with you God because maybe you are wooing me to your self.

Through these feelings I have loneliness when Mary and I were dating, we had dated for about 3 1/2 years and she had gone to to be the nurse at a summer camp that summer and I was living in Tulsa working at a radio station and I got a letter from her and it was a dear Bob letter, it was Bob. I've met somebody here at camp things are over between us. I mean it just knocked the slats out from underneath me. I never expected this to see it, and was really surprised it was her dumping me via letter and she came back from camp.

We got together. I thought maybe I would charmer woo her cajole or do something to get her to change her mind but she was resolute. Though the relationship was done she had met somebody new.

That's probably if I were to trace when was I the empty list in my life that was probably up to you as I thought your essay she met Jesus.

I really thought that's where you're going go. She is usually she had met a guy and an she was moving on that spark something well here's what happened. I remember when when she was removed from my life and I spoke felt that emptiness.

I remember I would get off work and I would go to a friends house and so you have to do something with me tonight because I I need something I can't go home to emptiness and so for Lotta weeks. I was talking to my friends doors and said what are we doing tonight so that I don't have to deal with this in one night. I got off work I do moped back then. Remember moped. Yeah, right.

And I'm thinking I will go see the so and so's my friends over here. Just drop in on them and I was like there was this voice in my your said no go home. I thought okay so I drive to the next light I go you know I should go see I should go see Paul, my friend Paul no go home.

I would like there was something compelling me to go home. The home there was nothing charming about home.

Home was a bedroom, living room, kitchen combination, it was up there was a furnished apartment $95 a month bills paid. It was my mom cried when she saw it was a dump. Okay so I get home on Friday night at 8 o'clock and fix a camo soup and I sit down and I go okay I'm I'm home now what and I would say if there's been a night in my life where there was a wrestle with God moment that this was that night of wrestling with God and the things that came out of just the prayer that I was happening that night was, I will remove anything that becomes an idol so if you're filling up your life.

If you're finding your joy if you think ultimate joy and satisfaction is found somewhere else, I'll take that out because I am a jealous God and will have no other gods before me and it wasn't. It was just this is gonna be us or you can keep looking for friends or other people or girlfriend or whatever else to be where you find life and where you find hope and I realized that my relationship with Marianne. I had put her ahead of God. I'd cared more about what was pleasing to her than what was pleasing to him and God said, we want to have that the rest of the story coming out you can get to the story where two months later she calls me and says, could we get together and talk and we got together and talked and she realized the other relationship was not what she thought it was and she missed me and we got together remove it so is a happy story we get married and always work that way but I it was a learning lesson for me in that emptiness. God said if you're in go somewhere else to get it filled. I am a jealous God.

I can remove those things take them out of your life you will have no other gods before me. And I think sometimes God introduces emptiness into our lives to say you know where to go to get filled backup you in the Gospel of John.

I think there's a story of just such a woman. It says that Jesus had to go through Samaria and of course we read it we know, no, I didn't really have to go through Samaria and he goes to this well and this woman comes out to the well and she's coming that time of day because can't face all of the other women in town because she's probably slept with some of their husbands and she meets this man at the well and asked her to give him some water and as they talk about the water. Jesus seemingly any points to the water in the well and he says you know this bases as you drink this water can be thirsty again if anybody who drinks of the water that I give a limit order. Never be thirsty again and throughout the Old Testament. This idea of well water out of the well we get a sense that it's about desire and relationship. I've always thought when he says to this woman that you know, I know you've had five husbands before because he says go get your husband and of course this is not even had five husbands and the man you're living with now is not your husband.

I've always thought to myself, oh these were bad men and they were all using her right that could be not necessarily the point assortment could also be that all of these men she had been expecting them to be her living water and you with a lot of pressure on a person to try to be someone else's living water right. There's only one person who can be our living water and the good news of the gospel is that he offers himself to us and he says you drink this water and you'll never be thirsty again, and he offers himself to quench those deep desires that we have for satisfying meaningful relationship.

We begin experiencing that now and then the day is going to come when we will experience it perfectly, eternally, you walk us through in your book, the ways in which God meets our emptiness feels are emptiness with his presence with his grace, his kindness with his life with meaning. With faith, and ultimately with joy. I as as I was reading that I thought this almost feels sequential, like like first he meets us with presence and then he meets us, what were you thinking sequentially, as you wrote this not so much the sequence is working my way through the Scriptures so look at the children of Israel in the wilderness and then the story of Ruth and Naomi and then stopping in the wisdom books and then going to the prophets, and protected love to tell you about the prophets that yeah so if during the story the prophet back in just those three chapters, and what we know about him is living in a time when he is so frustrated about how the people of God are living. He looks around he sees injustice and violence and he's been crying out to God got you got to do something about this and by the way does that not sound like our date right now I want to say God do something about all of this violence and injustice and didn't he speak to him, telling ways into what he doesn't like what you hear that, because what God said is what you know those really bad people over there. The Babylonians and bring them over to judge my people to purge them of all this sin, any thousands of Habakkuk knows that's not what I had in mind, and… Doesn't even sound like you.

How could you use a more evil people to somehow work in the lives of your less evil people as Israelites and then God begins to reveal to him what he's done in the past and what he's going to do in the future as one of my very favorite verses in the Bible where he gives Habakkuk. This vision of the future where he says that the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and begins to fill Habakkuk with hope and we get the last chapter of Habakkuk and it doesn't say it's a song. But kindness is the song because of the beginning of the chapter is is according to shaggy and off so it's saying here's the tune you should sing this with 19 of the team to shake me.

I know you know a lot about you think about the very end of the chapter you know it for stringed instruments so we know all of Habakkuk 3 is a song what is he saying about, he says, Lord, we know we heard these reports of what you've done before we know that you judge cases in wrath remember mercy but didn't have the chapter are probably the most familiar verses from the book of Habakkuk where he says and isn't this a determination. He knows this he knows the most evil people in the world Babylonians about sweep in to his land, his people, but I figure he knows to his property and his family maybe soliciting the members. Maybe he's gonna lose his own life and he's looking out at this potentially devastating future and what is he say he says even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there's no grapes on the vine, even of the olive crop fails and the fields lie empty and barren, even of the flocks nine the field and the cattle barns are empty yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. This is an agrarian society so he is facing losing everything and yet as he reviews what God is done in the past and what God has promised to do the future and that's the essence of faith is based on what we can see right now in our circumstances. It's based on what God is in the past we sponsored in the future, and he says something to live by faith and that faith fills him with the joyful confidence as he faces the future and I actually think that Habakkuk's prayer is what we need in these days of Cove 19 because of many of us are facing a really uncertain future for us. It's not olive trees but it's savings account. It's losing a job losing a loved one, losing the plans we had for college this fall at me.

Whatever it is right were facing such an uncertain future. Because of that, I think we can take Habakkuk's prayer and give it our own spin.

Can I tell you what that would be like, maybe we would say okay God, even if my income drives up in my savings are gone. Even if I face a devastating diagnosis and I lose my dignity in the process, even if my integrity is questioned in my reputation is ruined yet. I will choose daily to be happy in Christ. I will smile at the future because I am protected and provided for in Christ. None of these things is the source of my strength or security. God alone is my strength.

Christ enables me to navigate dangerous and difficult circumstances is the prayer of Habakkuk turned into a prayer that we can pray as the Lord gives us grace to do so as we face in on certain future he will fill us with faith to face it and with joy in the midst of thinking of where we started with people who are in marriages where they would say I'm empty where you use the illustration of putting grief on the stove and when it boils off, there is loneliness left and I thought part of what Boyles offers hope. Hope is gone it's evaporated, and we think I've got nothing. I'm I'm empty in these verses.

If you're paraphrasing Habakkuk 3 in a marriage situation and say even if this marriage does not bring the joy that I've been longing for to bring or even if my spouse desserts me or even if we can go through the whole litany of what you're living through right now and say, even if these things happen. I'm still in hope. I'm still gonna trust him so that appraisers still be returned to you and find my sufficiency of my strength there. It sounds crazy but does it really does mean as I was listening to you say then it's in the on the song.

There was a song. It wasn't just said it was saying so there's a sense of real joy in it, with no certainty except vertical.

I know vertically, my God, and I know he can be trusted and something of the person that doesn't know that they really have no hope.

It's like there's a football season all know what to do. Well, there can be best once is like the money will come back with none of that works and you keep going horizontal, horizontal, horizontal, and nothing ever changes enough to bring you joy.

There has to be a well of joy that's available and it is Jesus really is enough. But Mo if you don't know them well enough for him to be the well. It's an empty answer so I mean I think or say in your books and this the gospel is saying turn your eyes to the only source of hope. The only source of of joy and it's real I mean were also here. We've all experienced pain and empty, and we can all I think I'm I'm speaking for all of us, we can say empty is one of the best things ever gone through my life. Even though it was horrific.

It is, it allowed me to sense the death of Jesus real joy. It's real and you gotta turn to him today and that's what you point us to in the book and in the online study you've done for this I I'm grateful that we got a chance to talk about emptiness. I am too. I can't wait to get this book out to my friend Nancy thanks thank you so much for being here. We've got copies of Nancy's books. God does his best work with empty in our family life to the resource center go online@familylifetoa.com to get a copy or call one 800 FL today. Again, the title of Nancy Guthrie's book is God does his best work with empty you can order it from us@familylifetoa.com or you can call to order one 800, FL, today is the number 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today.

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