leave it all on the field

If you have watched any amount of sports in your life you have many times heard coaches use this line. "Leave it all on the field." Letting their players know that if you truly want to win, if you truly desire to make big things happen you need to play like it's your last game. Play every play like you may never get to play again, and walk off the field knowing you did all you could.
One of my favorite quotes is "the biggest gap in the world is the gap between I should___________ and I did." In other words there is no greater feeling when you lay your head on the pillow each night than knowing that you did everything you could do that day. On the flip side, there is nothing worse than trying to go to sleep knowing that you could have done so much more.
Lamentations 2:19 "Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord."
Man, what a statement. We are to pour our hearts out like water in teh presence of the Lord. Think about that, what that sentence is saying. When you pour out water, it's gone. When you pour a drink out in the sink, in the grass or wherever you know that it is forever gone. But we put a little bit of our hearts into what we do, leaving more for later. That is exactly what God does not want. If we half heartedly worship, half heartedly witness and half heartedly live for God we will never fully know the power of the Holy Spirit. There are two wonderful feelings in ministering to people. One is pouring everything you have into something like a sermon, event or whatever. Second, is knowing that you have exhausted every ounce of energy and heart in doing that for God, and feeling the Holy Spirit hit you and keep you going.
I hear runners talk about the "runner's high", it's that moment when you have run so far and the second wind is kicking in and you feel like you could run for days and weeks on end. That is nothing compared to the feeling of having the Holy Spirit empower you to not only accomplish all that you can, but to actually still feel energized when you are done.
So pour it all out, give it all you have for God and rest better knowing that you did indeed pour your heart out before God, and His people in each and every day.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!