My dad is a Folgers’ man. He’s the kind of guy who is best given a wide berth until he’s had several cups of coffee. When I was a kid, it was often my job to bring him that first cup. Knowing how much he needed the caffeine, I would fill that cup as close to the top as I could. Then I would walk, ever so carefully, from the kitchen to the living room, eyes glued on the sloshing liquid, worried it would overflow and burn my hand.
How often are our lives like that cup of coffee, so jam-packed that we walk a tightrope struggling to keep it all together?
The lie of a careful life is the illusion of control. If we just make good choices, if we just do A, B or C, we can ensure we’ll have a happy little life. Then no sorrow or hardship will come our way. We’ll be safe. But if we believe our good choices can save us from the sorrows and trials of life, we’re buying a gospel of works. There’s no good news in that because our experience testifies that it just isn’t true. Our good choices can’t save us. Awful, terrible, unfair things happen to unsuspecting, undeserving people. Life overflows for all of us.
Recently, we hosted a party. Eleven kids ran riot through the house. It was loud and it was wonderful. After everyone went home, the guest toilet overflowed. Water (thankfully clean water!) seeped over the rim and quickly spread over the floor. Turns out one of the guests had dropped a glow stick into the toilet and tried to flush it away. Turns out a glow stick is more than our plumbing can handle.
The glow stick. That one more thing that’s more than we can handle and causes us to overflow, to drop it all, to recognize that we’re never going to have enough to keep it all together because we weren’t meant to do life on our own. God will give us more than we can handle so we recognize we need Him.
No, a well-managed life is not what God intends for us. He invites us to live large through trust in Him. As we do, we are stretched. We are pulled out of our original shape. Our hearts expand. And God pours into our lives, filling us. Not just half way or most of the way, but all the way to the brim and over it.
I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!
Malachi 3:10 (emphasis added)
Enlarge your house; build an addition; spread out your home! For you will soon be bursting at the seams.
Isaiah 54:2-3 (emphasis added)
I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 (emphasis added)
God can always point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness toward us, as shown in all that he has done for us through Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:7 (emphasis added)
My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.
John 10:10 (emphasis added)
Do you see it? His desire for us is His abundance, not our carefully managed control. Jesus came to give us life that is wide, expansive, full, and complete. God desires to pour so much into our lives that we can’t handle it all and we overflow with His abundant goodness.