Lately, I have found myself returning to a very simple three-part prayer. Perhaps, you even heard it on the Hallow prayer app as I did:
Empty me, God.
Fill me, God.
Use me, God.
There is nothing complicated about it. It isn’t particularly eloquent. But perhaps that is why it has become so meaningful to me.
Each part forces me to examine something different about my relationship with God. What am I holding onto that separates me from Him? What am I lacking that I need Him to provide? And finally, am I actually willing to be used for His purposes rather than asking Him to assist me with mine?
That last distinction took me a very long time to understand.
Empty Me, God
Empty me of all things that keep me from You.
Pride. Distractions. Materialism. Negativity. Resentment. Self-importance. The endless noise of a world competing for my attention.
Empty me of anything occupying a place that belongs to You.
When I was younger, I don’t think I would have understood this prayer. I spent much of my life believing that accumulating things was progress. Accomplishments. Recognition. Possessions. Independence. The approval of other people.
Even my ability to solve my own problems became something I took pride in.
I worked. I endured. I figured things out. When something went wrong, I found a solution. When life knocked me down, I got back up and kept moving.
There is certainly nothing wrong with perseverance. But somewhere along the way, perseverance can quietly become pride.
“I can handle this.”
For much of my life, that was practically a personal creed.
I didn’t recognize how crowded I had become.
There was so much of me that there wasn’t much room left for God.
Scripture gives us a remarkably simple reminder:
“He must increase; I must decrease.”
— John 3:30
I understand those words much differently today.
Asking God to empty me isn’t asking Him to erase my personality, abilities, ambitions, or individuality. It is asking Him to remove whatever prevents those things from being properly ordered toward Him.
Sometimes what needs to be emptied isn’t obviously sinful, either.
Sometimes it is simply noise.
The constant stream of opinions, entertainment, outrage, comparison, possessions, worries, ambitions and distractions can occupy so much of our interior lives that we can barely hear ourselves think… much less become still enough to listen for God.
So I pray:
Empty me, God.
Take away what doesn’t belong.
And make room for what does.
Fill Me, God
But an empty vessel isn’t the goal.
It needs to be filled.
Fill me, God, with everything that draws me closer to You.
Fill me with strength when I am weak.
Wisdom when I don’t know what to do.
Charity when I am tempted to judge.
Empathy when I fail to understand someone else’s suffering.
Patience when Your timing isn’t mine.
Humility when my pride begins whispering again.
And above all, fill me with love.
Not merely the emotional kind of love that our culture talks endlessly about, but the difficult Christian love that requires sacrifice, forgiveness, patience and sometimes putting another person’s needs ahead of my own.
Saint Paul describes something very similar:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
— Galatians 5:22–23
Those are things worth asking to be filled with.
And there is another change in how I pray now.
I don’t simply want God to give me gifts because they will make my life better.
I want Him to give me whatever gifts will allow me to glorify His name.
That changes the question.
Instead of:
“God, give me what I want.”
It becomes:
“God, give me what You want me to have.”
That prayer is considerably more difficult because the answer may not resemble what I had planned.
Which leads to the final part.
Use Me, God
This may be the most challenging of the three.
Use me, God.
Not according to my will.
According to Yours.
Help me discern Your will each day. Keep my path narrow. Correct my direction when I begin wandering. Put people in front of me whom I can help. Give me the courage to act when I should act and the humility to remain silent when I should remain silent.
And when possible, allow someone to see You through something I do.
Jesus tells us:
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
— Matthew 5:16
Notice where the glory goes.
Not to us.
To the Father.
That matters to me more now than it ever did when I was younger.
If I can encourage someone, help someone, forgive someone, show patience toward someone, or perhaps cause another person to reconsider his relationship with God, I don’t want the reaction to be:
“What a wonderful person he is.”
I would much rather it eventually become:
“There is something different about the way he lives.”
And perhaps, through that small opening, someone begins looking toward Christ.
That is evangelization too.
Not everyone is called to stand behind a pulpit. Sometimes the most convincing testimony we offer is simply how we behave when nobody expects Christianity from us.
I Thought I Was Doing It All Myself
Looking backward, I can see how differently I once viewed my life.
For decades, I believed my accomplishments were primarily the result of my own determination.
I was stubborn.
Relentless.
Independent.
If I wanted something, I worked harder. If something broke, I fixed it. If life became difficult, I endured until the difficulty passed.
And when I succeeded, it was easy to think:
I did that.
Age and faith have changed my perspective.
Now I look backward and wonder how many times God was carrying me while I was congratulating myself for walking.
How many opportunities did I call luck?
How many blessings did I call accomplishments?
How many answered prayers did I call coincidence?
And perhaps most importantly, how many hardships did I consider meaningless suffering when God was using them to teach me something I was too stubborn to learn any other way?
I cannot answer all of those questions.
But I can see something now that I couldn’t see then.
It was never just me.
My abilities came from somewhere.
My strength came from somewhere.
The opportunities came from somewhere.
Even the ability to get back up after failure was a grace I didn’t recognize as grace.
Saint Paul asks a humbling question:
“What do you possess that you have not received?”
— 1 Corinthians 4:7
That verse hits differently later in life.
Because eventually you accumulate enough years to look backward and realize how little of life was truly under your control.
A Different Kind of Surrender
I once thought surrendering to God meant becoming passive.
Now I understand it almost exactly the opposite way.
God still expects me to work.
I still have responsibilities. I still have decisions to make. I still need discipline, perseverance and effort.
But I no longer want those things separated from Him.
I don’t want to spend the remaining years of my life asking God to bless whatever plans I have already made.
I would rather ask Him to change my plans if they aren’t His.
That is a much harder prayer.
But it is also a much freer one.
So each day, I return to three simple requests:
Empty me, God.
Empty me of everything preventing me from drawing closer to You.
Fill me, God.
Fill me with the virtues, wisdom, strength and love necessary to become the person You intended me to be.
Use me, God.
Use whatever time, talents, experiences and abilities I have left for Your purposes rather than merely my own.
For most of my life, my prayer (spoken or unspoken) was probably something closer to:
“God, help me accomplish what I’m trying to do.”
Now I am learning to pray something very different:
“God, help me accomplish what You are trying to do through me.”
Maybe that is what I was supposed to understand all along.
