The Cup You Can't Fill
By Pastor Justin Cooper
You know the feeling. It's late, the house is quiet, and you're still awake doing the math on a problem that won't add up. The bill that's bigger than the paycheck. The phone call you're afraid you'll get. The marriage that feels like it's running on fumes. You've tried, you've planned, you've thought it over from every angle — and you've hit the wall where you finally have to admit it: if God doesn't do something here, it's not going to get done.
That's not weakness. That's the exact place the Bible loves to start a miracle.
At a wedding in Cana, the wine ran out — and in that culture, that was a disaster, an embarrassment that could follow a family for years. There was no fixing it. The cup was empty and staying empty. But that emptiness became the very thing Jesus filled. And it started because one person refused to carry the problem alone.
"It'd be better never to broadcast it. Just bend a knee and go to Jesus about it because he's the one that can turn your water into wine."
Here's what we usually do instead. We tell everybody but the One who can actually help. We vent it, post it, replay it to ourselves at 2 a.m. Pastor Cooper put it bluntly on Sunday — do that and you'll just "get you a cesspool of people just like you, and you can drown together in it." Talking about the problem feels like doing something. It isn't. There's only one place the burden actually gets lifted.
The Bible says it plain: "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." — 1 Peter 5:7. Not managing your care. Not narrating your care. Casting it — throwing it off your shoulders and onto His. That's what Mary did. She didn't run to the caterers or the wedding planner. She went straight to Jesus, because she'd known Him long enough to know He could be trusted with the things she couldn't handle.
So here's your Monday morning: take the one thing you've been carrying — the specific need, the one with a name — and before you tell another living soul about it, tell Him. Out loud if you can. Put it in words: "Jesus, I can't fix this. I'm bringing it to You first." Not last, after you've exhausted every other option. First.
Gospel Light Baptist Church · Walkertown, NC · glbcs.org · unsubscribe
