Something is Missing

After a long Monday, my husband and I picked up some groceries at our local supermarket. By the time we got home, it was about two hours past our usual dinner time. Exausted, I said to my husband, "It's a pizza night." My husband and I quickly unloaded the grocery bags and I preheated the oven to "pizza temperature." I opened up the freezer, only to discover a lone salmon staring back at me (he didn't even blink).

"Adam!" I called out into the other room. "Can you check to see if we left the pizza in the trunk? It's not in the freezer."

My logical husband asked, "Check the receipt to make sure it got scanned."

I fished the receipt out of the bottom of my purse, and sure enough, our $3.99 pizza was in the middle of the itemized list.

Adam checked the trunk, only to find nothing.

Letting out a sigh of frustration I announced, "Hope you like salmon!"

Adam pulled out his cell phone to call the manager at the supermarket to explain the case of the disappearing pizza and get a credit next time we came in.

After we ate our last-minute dinner of salmon pasta, Adam turned on praise and worship music. I began to feel that our seemingly trite pizza incident carried a much deeper spiritual meaning.

I began pondering the emptiness that often attacks one or both spouses at different points in marriage. When you feel empty, there is a gnawing hunger and longing for something to fill it. Human nature tells us to look to our partner to fill the spaces in our hearts.

I have learned that somehow in relationships, we lose all sense of logic. Two empty people cannot possibly fill each other. In math, we know that zero + zero = you guessed it, zero.

And yet, we invariably seek what we can receive from our spouse rather than what we can give.

I thought about what a waste it was to pay for a pizza that we could not enjoy. It is so easy to recognize waste in the natural. Then a chord was struck deep inside of me, "What are we wasting spiritually?"

God paid the price of sin in full when He sent His perfect Son from heaven to die on the cross to save us. However, many individuals and marriages walk though each day empty and broken.

How do emerge from our beggarly state? We must call forth the riches of the kingdom. When we noticed our grocery bag was empty, Adam had to call the manager to claim our credit. In the same respect, we must call on God for His mercies to fill our lives and our marriages.

The fruit of the Spirit is always available to us at any given moment. Galatians 5:22-23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." (NIV)

If there is no law against such things, there is no restriction, or limitation. Jesus is our Tree of Life, Who we can call upon at any moment of the day. Whenever something feels like it is "missing,"  all we have to do is call upon His Name. Perhaps it is our old wineskin that leaks the continual flow of blessings in our new prophetic season. Mark 2:22 says "And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." (NIV)

Many of us our sitting on promises and prophecies that God is longing to fulfill. God wants our emptiness to be translated into expectation. God wants us to shed the old wineskin, which is based on the law, and give us a new wineskin that is based on grace. Our old wineskin is filled with holes that are marked by strife, condemnation, and performance. The new wineskin is shaped only by grace. Praise God, we are REDEEMED!!

Only He can create something out of nothing. He is faithful to fill your heart with everything you are longing for. Ask God to shed the old wineskin in your life and in your marriage so that He can give you new life in overflowing abundance.

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