I Have Nothing...

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39.

For those of you that watched the show Seinfeld, I'm sure you'll remember when Jerry and George were trying to pitch a sitcom to NBC executives.  After many feeble attempts to come up with an idea, trust me, they weren't trying that hard, their idea was a show about nothing.  That's right, the premise of their sitcom was the show about nothing.  Well that's how I've been feeling lately, like I have nothing.  Spiritual tank....nothing, scriptural inspiration....nothing, prayer life......nothing, church life......nothing.  I think you get my point, I have been feeling like I have nothing going on, absolutely nothing.  So guess what you're getting in this post.  That's right.....nothing.  

Most of my nothingness was due to life taking over and not letting anything else in but worldly stuff.  I will not bore you with the details, but will just say, I haven't had much time for my faith and as I write that sentence, it looks even worse in print than it sounds in my mind.  I did find a little time to pray about what my next post should be about and even right up to the second before I started banging on the keys for this post, I was praying for God's guidance.  He has always provided in the past when I've prayed that prayer, but guess what, this time I got nothing.  And then it hit me, He was giving me something in nothing.  

Have any of you ever felt like you were nothing to God, like you weren't worthy of His time, of His consideration, of His love, of Him just knowing who you are?  Have you ever felt like you have nothing to offer, or that the church has nothing to offer you?  Or how about reading the bible.  Definitely nothing there, right?  Well guess what.  I've come to realize that I am not weird for ever feeling any of those things and neither are you.  That's what nothing can do to you.  It can take hold of you, of your spirit, of your thoughts and guess what it gives you back, that's right, nothing.  So, is that the end.  Grin and bear it, accept nothing and move on.  Absolutely not!!  Here comes the cool part of nothingness.  Even when you're caught up in a feeling of nothing, there was actually something there all along.  You weren't alone.  You never were and you never will be.  

One of my favorite credos is to live a God centered life.  I've led Sunday School lessons about it, wrote letters and emails to others about it and talk often about it to people.  If you place God in the center of everything you do, you will never go wrong.  So guess what I decided to do, I placed God smack dab in the center of my nothingness.  In my God centered nothingness I realized He was right there the whole time.  Even when I had nothing, or so I thought, God was just waiting for me to get out my own way.  The fault with us as humans is we almost always want to fix our problems ourselves.  Well guess what, that's another time when you want to live a God centered life.  Yes, if you've got a problem, if you feel like there is no way out, if you're feeling alone or like you have nothing to offer, if life is just too hard, put God right in the middle of all of that stuff.  


God centered life means God in everything, whether life is going good and especially when it's going not so good.  God wants us to take everything to Him and Paul tells us so in Philippians 4:6, which says, "do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."  Please note the words EVERY SITUATION!!

So in closing, I guess even in my nothingness, I really had something all along.  I had God standing right next to me just waiting to offer me His guiding hand, or His shoulder to cry on, or His ear to let me gripe a little, or He was there, ready to carry me when I fell.  He was there, even in nothing, God was there.  We are never alone.  Go back and read the passage that started this post.  It's another one of my favorites.  It says it all.  There's nothing really to add to it.

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