Emptied, tested, and trusting God
Surrender and trust
Short reflections to be still with, drawn from Bible passages in Philippians 2:6-7, Matthew 4:1-2, 2 Kings 6:5-6 and Jeremiah 36:23.
☀ Morning moment
who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:6-7
Notice what is missing from the sentence. "Emptied himself," and then no object. Emptied himself of what, exactly. The Greek verb behind it, kenoo, usually needs something to finish the thought. It is the word used for a jar poured out until no wine is left, or a sack shaken until the last grain falls. Paul leaves the sentence open on purpose. There was nothing held back to name.
This is the only place in Scripture where that verb describes God. Everywhere else it describes ordinary emptying: a purse, a container, a life drained of hope. Paul takes a word from the marketplace and hangs eternity on it. The One who held every right to glory chose to be poured out like water on the ground, not forced, not robbed, but poured, by His own will.
That changes what emptiness can mean. Some mornings you already feel poured out before the day begins, tired before the first task. Christ did not avoid that low place. He went into it first, all the way down, past what any of us are asked to carry.
You do not start today from a full jar pretending otherwise. You start following One who emptied Himself and was not lost in the pouring.
Today
Before you leave the house this morning, take one bag or pocket and empty it completely onto a table. As you set the last item down, say out loud: "Jesus emptied Himself for me."
✦ Lunch moment
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.
Matthew 4:1-2
No bread for forty days, and the wilderness gives nothing back but silence and stone. The text does not rush past the hunger. It waits until the end of that long stretch to even mention it, as if the writer wants us to feel the full weight of the number before the ache sets in.
Forty shows up again and again in Israel's story: forty days of rain that undid the old world, forty days Moses stood on the mountain without food, forty years of wandering until a whole generation had died to its old assumptions. It is not a magic number. It is simply long enough. Long enough to strip away the shortcuts, the props, the things we quietly lean on instead of God.
Jesus enters that same span. Fully human, fully hungry, He does not shorten it or explain it away. He lets the forty days do their work before He answers the devil at all.
You are not in a wilderness today. You are probably at a desk, in a break room, glancing at the clock. But lunch is its own small span, a pause carved out of a working day, and it can ask the same question the forty days asked: what are you actually depending on right now.
Today
Before you eat, put your phone face down, take three slow breaths, and say quietly, whatever I am missing today, He is still enough.
◐ Afternoon moment
But as one was cutting down a tree, the ax head fell into the water. Then he cried, and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.” The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” He showed him the place. He cut down a stick, threw it in there, and made the iron float.
2 Kings 6:5-6
A borrowed tool, lost in murky water, changes nothing about the debt owed.
The young man's cry is not embarrassment, it is dread. He belonged to a company of prophets so poor that iron for an axe head was too costly to own outright. He had borrowed it to build a shelter by the Jordan, and now it was gone, sunk somewhere he could not see, and he would still have to pay for it.
Elisha does not lecture him on carelessness. He asks one plain question: where did it fall. Not how, not why, not whose fault. Just the place. Grief has a location, and Elisha wants to stand in it before he does anything else.
Then he throws in a stick, ordinary wood, and the iron rises. Scripture does not explain the how of it. It simply lets the poor man get his tool back.
This is not a lesson about God fixing every mistake we make on a Thursday afternoon. It is narrower and stranger than that: even a debt this small, this specific, this embarrassing, was worth Elisha's attention. Not every loss gets a floating axe head. But the question still stands, aimed at whatever sank today.
Today
Name one thing that fell today, a wasted hour, a harsh word, a small failure you are carrying quietly. Write down where it happened, and say out loud, 'Where did it fall?' Leave the paper somewhere you will see it again before evening.
☾ Evening moment
When Jehudi had read three or four leaves, the king cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
Jeremiah 36:23
Baruch had spent days with pen in hand, writing down every word Jeremiah spoke, column after column on stitched sheets of parchment. It was careful work, the kind that could not be rushed, because a scroll like this was meant to last, to be read aloud in the temple courts, to carry weight for years to come.
Then the king took it, and cut it apart piece by piece with a small knife, feeding each strip to the fire in his winter room. Not torn in one furious motion, but sliced slowly, deliberately, as the words were still being read aloud. He wanted the message gone before he had to answer it.
Some days end like that scroll. Things were said, things were done, and by evening you would rather cut the day apart and burn it than look at it again. The urge to erase is strong.
But the word Jehoiakim burned was written again. Jeremiah dictated it a second time to Baruch, and more besides. What God speaks is not undone by a knife or a fire; it outlasts the hand that tries to destroy it.
You do not have to burn today to be free of it. You can hand it over instead, failures, words, regrets and all, and let God keep what He wants to keep and forgive what needs forgiving.
Today
Take a small piece of paper now. Write one honest line about today, then say quietly, "I give this day to You," and set the paper aside instead of throwing it away in anger.
Read these passages in the World English Bible (WEB)
Tap a passage to read the full text right here.
6who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.
1Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
2When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.
5But as one was cutting down a tree, the ax head fell into the water. Then he cried, and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.”
6The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” He showed him the place. He cut down a stick, threw it in there, and made the iron float.
23When Jehudi had read three or four leaves, the king cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
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