Empty

A couple weeks ago I had a real "LOL" (trying to relate to the hip younger crowd) moment. What made it even better was that I LOL'd at myself. Truly out loud. Why? I will recap the incident for you.
I have a dirt bike that I use as my main mode of transportation. I love it. It is fun, fast and I wouldn't choose any other way to get around town. However, it is also finicky...and can be high maintenance. In fact, Carolyn once said, "Your bike is more high maintenance than I am." (I will go on record that I never said that Carolyn is high maintenance...which she isn't :-). So a couple weeks ago I had an awesome team here from Hong Kong. They were a group of 27 from an international school and contributed greatly to our work in Cambodia. Since they were such a large group I had them split up into 3 separate service teams. It worked out great, but it meant that I was driving all around Phnom Penh visiting their ministry sites to check up on them. It was toward the end of one of these particularly long days that I noticed my bike "acting up". It is hard to explain what it was doing but suffice to say  that I just knew that something wasn't right.
On may way to one site, my bike just stopped. I was in a time crunch and didn't have time to figure out what was wrong. I rationalized that it probably needed to just "rest" since I had been driving it so much. I decided to hail a tuk tuk. I explained that I needed him to drive to our guest house. As I held on with one hand and had him pull me along, I felt as if my arm would be pulled out of socket but luckily it didn't. I successfully lasted the mile to my desired location and left my bike. I continued on with my day not thinking much of it. Later that night, one of our volunteers had an incident where her purse was stolen. I had to quickly go and meet her down at the police station, which I did not know exactly where it was. However, I got some partial directions and jumped on my bike to head that way. It started up just as I thought . It just needed rest. However, 2 minutes into my ride, my bike began to make the weird sounds again and then just quit. Late at night, I had no where to park my bike. So I hailed another tuk tuk and tried to give him the directions to the police station that I didn't know directions to. Sound complicated? Yep, it was. Well, I grabbed on again and through rain and several phone calls and conversations, we made it to the police station.
Things at the station were sorted out as best as possible and I decided to find somewhere secure near the station to leave my bike. I successfully found a place that was also near my bike shop/mechanic, parked my bike and headed home. The next morning, I checked on the teams and went to retrieve my sickly property. I I got to the place where I had left it and it started right up again. I drove it directly to the shop. I explained to them the problem (luckily it was making the crazy noise as I drove up) and they got it right in. I decided to wait around for a bit to hear the bad news. With my description of the problem, they accurately decided to begin their diagnostics at the fuel pump. They checked the valve and quickly isolated the problem. They looked up at me and told me I WAS OUT OF GAS. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at myself. I was embarrassed but also relieved that it wasn't more serious.
As I drove off, I reflected on the whole process. My gas tank was running on empty but I was still trying to do life as normal. I would get part of the way to my destination and then just quit. It reminded me of times that I would try and do life successfully without being filled up with God's Word. It just doesn't work. I try to live my life successfully but I am not running on the fuel that God created me to run on. God has designed our lives to work successfully ONLY when running on the strength of Him and His word.
But then I thought, how lucky I am that I HAVE HIS WORD. How selfish of me to think that God was trying only to remind me to fill up on His Truth's each day. This is important but it was not the only thing that God was trying to tell me. This thought came to mind when I saw our neighbor bowing continually in front of his altar of incense to the spirits of his ancestors. His hope is in dead relatives and their spirits. He doesn't have the Word of God. He can't fill up on the only thing that will satisfy him because he doesn't know about it. Neither do 90%+ of all of Cambodia. That is roughly 13,000,000 Cambodians. That is why we are here. To bring His word to those who have never heard. To fill up their tanks that are empty...when they don't even know what is supposed to fill them. To love on the sweet people here and help them to understand that they are filling their tanks with things that will not only not help them but will keep them empty and eventually lead to death.
Thanks God for the great reminder!