Made To Be Worn Out

As a teacher, I have come to the contented acknowledgment that my knees were made to be worn out. They have no other purpose. They are to serve me in kneeling beside a crying child when nerves have given him a tummy ache; to hold a reticent child when she is making her best effort to rejoin the group, but would still like comfort; to catch one of my “live wires” when he’s sitting on me before I even have a lap! Were my knees not used and wearied, they wouldn’t need to exist.

So often, we as Christians convince ourselves that we must maintain some semblance of reserves, as though holding back would make us more useful in service. We assert that, were we completely drained, we’d bear no witness; we’d be of no usefulness to others. Perhaps we would only justify our holding on to those last vestiges of “self,” that we might see our service as a reflection of who we think ourselves to be.

Yet we are not called to resist being ‘poured out.’ As Paul writes in Philippians 2:17, “But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice…” In 2 Timothy 4:6, he echoes his submission to that call: “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering…” And Philippians 2:6-7 points us to the supreme Example: “Christ… emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant…”

The issue isn’t whether we are willing to invest in what we know our calling to be. The question is only how willing we are to see our “selves” ended as the hindrance to His ministering through us.

For we were made to be worn out.

He never intended that we would have resources upon which we could rely; He never beckoned us to trust our own reasoning (Proverbs 3:5; Psalm 37:5). And even now, He wouldn’t maintain that we should hold out, sparing our last fiber of strength to use for Him. Instead, the beauty of His call is that, were we not used up, drained out, poured down, broken apart, we wouldn’t need to exist. We are only here to be offered up, a “drink offering” to the service and sacrifice of others.

Depletion, in its splendor, offers the humble joy of living as we were intended: vessels through which He manifests that the ‘surpassing greatness of the power [is] of God and not ourselves’ (2 Corinthians 2:7).

To the One who was never ashamed to live transparently ‘drained,’ we are called to dedicate our lives. Or rather, we are creatures who are meant only to be hollowed out, that we might be filled up with Glory Divine, who would humbly entreat entry in order to display Himself through us.

We are not here for ourselves, or to serve any purpose which stems from such thinking. As Acts 20:24 words it, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus…” We are brought to our only useful state when all within us cries, as one song prays it, “Take my time on this earth; let it glorify all that You are worth, for I am nothing, I am nothing, without You.”