As God-shaped Containers we’re Open Vessels Emptying ourselves to be Filled with God

The basic teaching of the whole Scripture is that God is the content and we are made as vessels, containers (even God-shaped containers!), to receive God, be filled with God, and be vessels unto honor; not being filled with God is vanity of vanities, making us a senseless contradiction.

On one hand, we need to realize that God is sovereign – He is the Potter, we are the clay, and He has the absolute right to mold us according to His desire.

On the other hand, we are vessels to contain God, and God is the content that we need to be filled with.

On one hand, God is our Potter and has the absolute right over us; according to His sovereignty and foreknowledge, He chose us and made us vessels of mercy to be unto honor and glory.

On the other hand, however, we need to keep our vessel open to the Lord and seek to be filled with Him, not being filled with anything else besides Him.

We are not like any other container in this world – we are not an “inanimate container” that has nothing to say concerning what he contains or receives into him; rather, we have a free will, we have desires, choices, and preferences, and we need to be open vessels to the Lord and closed vessels to the enemy.

Satan knows that we are vessels, and he provides all kinds of vanities for us to try to fill ourselves with; the world is filled with all kinds of things that seem to fill us but never satisfy us, and the more we “drink of this water” (John 4:13) we are still thirsty, still dry, and still very empty.

We may try to fill ourselves with sports, with knowledge, with entertainment, or with music, and granted, there is some sort of a temporary satisfaction, but all these things perish, never last, and are empty, vain, non-satisfying.

God gave us free will and He will never force us to choose Him, neither will He coerce us or deceive us; He never sugar-coats what He wants from us but rather, He is quite upfront about it: He wants us to receive Him as life.

Right after He created man, He put man in front of the tree of life; at the end of the Bible, similarly, He still calls man to eat of the tree of life and drink of the water of life.

God is the content, we are the God-shaped containers, and we were made in His image and according to His likeness to contain Him and be filled with Him!

God Created us to be His Vessels, God-shaped Containers, to Contain and be Filled with God as Life

As the Potter, God has sovereignly created us to be His vessels, His containers, to contain Him according to His predestination (see 2 Cor. 4:6-7; Eph. 4:6; 3:19b; Phil. 2:13; Heb. 13:20-21; 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:20-21; Eph. 1:5, 11).

We may think of ourselves as being something more than a container, but this is what we are.

For example, a glove is a container, and when you see a glove, you immediately realize the purpose a glove was made: to be a container for the hand.

Without the hand, the glove has no meaning; when the hand fills the glove, the glove is filled with meaning and fulfills its purpose.

A glove is a hand-shaped container; similarly, man is a God-shaped container.

This is not something we come up with; rather, Blaise Pascal, a 17th century philosopher, once said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

We are God-shaped containers and within us there’s a God-shaped vacuum which nothing on this earth can fill but God Himself in Christ.

According to Rom. 9:21-23 and 2 Cor. 4:7 we see that we are vessels to contain God Himself, and God intends to be our content.

There are many containers in this world that are designed to contain specific things; if we see a glass, we realize that it is meant to be filled with water or a liquid.

We may fill the glass with money, with dirt, or with other things, but we all know that its meaning and purpose is to be filled with water.

We are not an inanimate container like a glass of water; it’s easy to put water in a glass for the glass has no will or mind, but it is not easy to put something into us for we have a free will.

Each container is designed for a particular use, to be filled with something; we were designed to be filled with God.

Man was made purposely to contain God; we were created in the image of God and with His likeness to contain God, and if we don’t contain God or know Him as our content, we are a senseless contradiction and our life is vanity of vanities.

We may try to fill our vessel with our job, our career, our family, money, etc but nothing can satisfy us nor fulfill the void within us.

God’s purpose in creating us was to make us His vessel, His earthenware container, so that we may contain and be filled with Christ as life for the building up of the Body of Christ as God’s great corporate vessel for His expression (Gen. 2:7; Acts 9:15; Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7).

Individually, we are a vessel to contain God, and each one of us needs to choose to open to Him and be filled with Him.

Corporately, as we individually contain God and are filled with His life, we are built up together to be one great corporate vessel, the fullness of the One who fills all and in all.

The basic teaching of the whole Bible is that God is the content and we are the containers made to receive the content; we must contain God and be filled with God so that we can be vessels unto honor, sanctified, useful to the master, prepared for every good work (2 Tim. 2:20-21).

We are made in God’s image and we have His likeness; our human virtues were made to contain the divine attributes, and unless the divine attributes fill our virtues, we are still empty.

Our emotion is created to be the container for God’s emotion, our will is a container to choose and be filled with God’s will, and our mind and intellect are made to correspond to God’s mind and intellect.

Furthermore, we have a spirit, which is both an organ and a container for God the Spirit.

Even our body is a kind of a container, for we have to put food and water into it, and we need to breathe all the time.

We are a tripartite God-shaped container; every day we need to take time to empty ourselves out of anything else and ask the Lord to come in and be our unique content in every part of our tripartite being.

Thank You God for sovereignly creating us to be Your vessels, Your containers, to contain God and be filled with God as life according to Your predestination. Thank You for making us Your earthenware container to contain and be filled with Christ as life for the building up of the Body of Christ as God’s great corporate vessel for His expression. We open our vessel to You, Lord, and we want to be filled with You. We empty out anything that is not You and we seek to be filled with God as life! We give ourselves to You to contain God and be filled with God so that we can be vessels unto honor, sanctified, useful to the master, prepared for every good work! Amen, Hallelujah, we are God-shaped containers made to receive and be filled with God!

Cooperating with the Spirit to Empty Ourselves to be Filled with God – Open Vessels to His Dispensing

If we were to summarise Paul’s fourteen Epistles in two words, these would be, open vessel.

When the Lord called Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9, He sent Ananias to go meet him, and He told Ananias, This man is a chosen vessel to Me, to bear My name before both the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.

Paul was an open vessel to God; God selected him, predestinated him, and then in Acts 9 He called him.

All of Paul’s fourteen Epistles reflect this aspect of Paul, and he also encourages us to be open vessels.

God created us to be His vessels, God-shaped containers; however, the degree to which God can dispense Himself into us depends on the degree to which we open to Him.

God wants us only to love Him and to keep ourselves open to Him (2 Kings 4:1-7; Matt. 5:3; John 1:16; Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2).

We may say that such a matter of “being open to the Lord as a vessel” is quite elementary and basic, but it is not really true; it is not easy for us to really be open to Him, for once we acquire some spiritual knowledge or have a consecration and prayer, we may immediately want to do something for God.

But God simply wants us to be open vessels to Him; He doesn’t need our work or our natural zeal – He wants us to be a vessel absolutely open to Him.

He made us as peculiar containers, specific articles, to contain Him; a container is not for work but for containing and being filled.

We need to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit who gives us a sense of dissatisfaction with our situation and our emptiness.

The Holy Spirit invariably creates in us a desire for more – we desire more and more God, and as we open to the Lord, He comes in to fill and satisfy us.

In order for the Spirit to perform His filling work, however, He must first carry out His emptying work; when we’re emptied of ourselves and anything apart from Christ, God can come in and fill us.

Spiritual progress is a matter of being continually emptied out and continually filled up; don’t think that as long as we have been emptied once, we will not need and more emptying – rather, we need a continual emptying to be continually filled!

The work of the cross in us is ever-increasing and ever-deepening, and as we cooperate with the Spirit’s inner work, we are emptied and God fills us.

If there’s an infinite emptiness within, the Holy Spirit will grant us an infinite filling; but if we only open a little, if we only cooperate with the Lord a little to empty ourselves, the Lord’s filling will be limited.

May we cooperate with the Lord’s emptying work by digging and making more room in us so that the Spirit can fill us!

Our vessel is filled with so many other things, things which the Lord wants thrown out so that He may fill us!

If we can’t empty ourselves, God can’t fill us; if we empty one room or two rooms in our being, God can fill us.

Our responsibility is to empty ourselves and be open vessels; God’s responsibility is to fill us!

Decadence starts from self-complacency, but progress starts from hunger and thirst (see Deut. 4:25; Luke 1:53; Phil. 1:25; Rev. 3:16-18).

If we think we are full, we lack nothing, and we don’t need to be filled, we are complacent, our vessel is not open, and the Lord can’t fill us.

The hungry He is filling with good things, but those who think are full and are rich, He sends away empty.

If we think we’re rich and in need of nothing, we are in degradation; if we cooperate with the Lord to be freshly emptied, He fill freshly fill us with Himself, with all that the Triune God is.

Lord Jesus, we want to be open vessels to You; come and fill us with Yourself as our unique content! We open to You, dear Lord, and we want to cooperate with Your emptying work. Empty us from anything that is not You. We open all the rooms and aspects of our inner being. Uproot, remove, and empty anything that takes space in us and is not of You. Increase our degree of openness to Your dispensing. We love You, Lord, and we desire to keep ourselves open to You. Save us from self-complacency; save us from thinking we are rich and full and in need of nothing…keep us hungry, thirsty, and open as vessels for Your fresh infilling!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 37, ch. 22, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 5, God as Our Sovereign Potter Making Us His Vessels, His Containers, to Contain Him.
• Further reading on this topic: chapter 5 in the Economy of God (by Witness Lee – you can also get this book via Rhema as a free book).
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Oh to be but emptier, lowlier, / Mean, unnoticed—and unknown, / And to God a vessel holier, / Filled with Christ and Christ alone! / Naught of earth to cloud the glory, / Naught of self the light to dim, / Telling forth His wondrous story, / Emptied to be filled with Him. (Hymns #589)
  – Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me, / A clean vessel in Thine hand; / With no strength but as Thou givest / Graciously with each command. (Hymns #268)
  – Earthen vessel I was made, / Christ in me the treasure laid; / His container I must be, / As the content He in me. (Hymns #548)