We Are Masters At Funneling

Have you ever seen a funnel?

It's wide on one end and then

it tapers down to a narrow opening.

It can be a very useful item

when pouring liquid into a small opening.

It's useful to keep liquids 

we don't want to spill

anywhere than beyond where

we are pouring.

Funneling.  

It's something us human beings

do often.

We get tunnel vision,

or we can call it funnel vision.

We funnel all our energies 

toward one particular thing.

We feel God leading us 

to a certain country.

And we funnel our whole life

into getting to that place.

We get tunnel vision 

and when it doesn't work out 

like we planned,

we are lost.

We ask questions like,

"Why God?"

"Everyone else seems to get 

what they want in life."

"Why don't things work out for us?"

We pour ourselves into the funnel

and find the end has been capped.

And the great big God 

who created the universe 

by His very breath

is calling to you.

"My Beloved.  Put the funnel down.

Look up and stay in union with me."

We do it all the time.

That ministry we have poured 

ourselves into

and don't read the signs 

because we aren't going to relinquish

what we have worked so hard to attain.

We are always looking to settle,

to stay in one place,

to give ourselves to that one thing.

But for some reason,

that thing we want to pour ourselves into

is too narrow.

We use the funnel to pour 

our own efforts into whatever it is.

But God wants YOU to be His channel.

He wants to pour THROUGH you

in wherever or whatever it is.

It was never that ministry 

or that location or thing you want

and feel that you can put 

your efforts into.

It is never the means to the end.

God is the end

and you, His vessel,

are the means.

Stay open to Him.

Don't settle.

Don't funnel all your own efforts

into something that will take and take

stuff you were never built to give alone.

Be His vessel and He will flow

HIS never-ending Source 

of Living Water

for ALL to partake.

Keep that in mind each day

when things don't go as planned.

Let the loss be what it may.

It is only a loss of something 

that will only pass away.

But God's eternal refreshment 

to weary souls will never,

no never, pass away.

Trade that weary funneling

of all that is your own

and lay yourself down 

for His use alone.

"The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, "God called me there." If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us. We have deliberately shifted the ground of His call to fit our own conception of what He wants." --Oswald Chambers, in The Psychology of Redemption from Quotable Oswald Chambers