Pipe or Reservoir or...?

“It’s easy in ministry to live more as a ‘pipe’ than a ‘reservoir’. That is, it’s easy to live merely as a conduit to others of the transforming truths of God’s Word, rather than as a changed and transformed reservoir who overflows with lived-out gospel truth” (Taken from Cross Talk by Michael Emlet, p.8).

Honestly, lately I haven’t felt like either a pipe or a reservoir but a hard piece of ground that the water can’t penetrate.

It’s a yucky place to be. A convicting place. A frustrating place.

I understand the warning of this quote and I’ve experienced the ramifications of living as a pipe and not a reservoir. When I came back to the states from Southeast Asia, I drank up the Word like a thirsty sponge and thoroughly enjoyed filling up that reservoir once again.

And for the first several months that I was back, I loved being a conduit of the gospel to others while simultaneously being filled up myself.

But something has happened in the last several months. I’m realizing more and more how little I’m sharing the gospel with others, how little I’m intentionally seeking opportunities and conversations in which I can share gospel truth.

And I hate it.

While I’m not being that conduit of the gospel, I also feel like I’m not soaking it in myself. Honestly, I look at my heart and mind and see far more unbelief than belief.

My pastor opened his sermon this past Sunday with an illustration showing that as we get older and see greater depths of our sin while also seeing greater glimpses of God’s holiness, the cross and the gospel also become greater to us. As I get older, I definitely see my sin in increasing depths and God definitely keeps showing me greater depths of who He is (and who I’m not), but that cross element has been missing in my thought pattern. I have a tendency to focus on how terrible and filthy and unworthy I am while forgetting what Christ has done.

All that to say, I don’t feel like a pipe or a reservoir right now, but a piece of hard ground that the rain of the gospel isn’t penetrating. God, help my unbelief and cause that rain to gently soak and permeate and consume all of me that it may also overflow to others that I’m with every day.