You can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s so cliche, yet cliches arise for a reason.

Because it’s true: you can’t keep giving and giving and giving. To God. To others. Not without refilling. Even my children know this. We’ve talked about ministry burnout often enough.

I think most of us know this truth and even accept it. We have to be refilled by God. Jesus modeled this for us.

But what we don’t always recognize is that we all have different cup sizes. We pour out at different rates, and we refill at different rates. Nobody is the same, and we can’t compare our public ministry or private refilling needs to anyone else’s.

So how big is your cup? How long does it take to pour out, and how long does it take to refill? These are things only you can discern. God asks us to pour ourselves out for others, yes, but He also longs to pour Himself into us. 

We aren’t useful to anyone if we’ve poured ourselves out so completely that there isn’t even a drop left. So let God fill your cup, in His own time and in His own way. He made your cup and gave it to you, and He knows how much time it takes to refill you.

Then walk out your front door and pour it out for Him. He promises to be there when you come back for more.

Because we weren’t meant to hoard all that goodness for ourselves. We were made to share it with others. 

When we don’t, we become like the Dead Sea, with freshwater inflow and no outflow. We become too salty, too concentrated and astringent to sustain life. Always taking and never giving — like a metaphorical black hole.

I’ve used way too many analogies here, and now it’s time to stop.

But before I do, I want to help my fellow low-energy moms out there. Ten years ago Brandy Vencel wrote a blog series called The Low-Energy Mom’s Guide to Homeschooling. Even if you’re not homeschooling, several of the articles might still apply.

Because we all have different sizes of cups. We all have different rates of pouring out and refilling. But we also all have the same God, a good Father who longs to pour into His children and watch them pour into others. We were never meant to keep the goodness He gives us—we were made to share it.