Stretching Our Capacity: Becoming Vessels for His Love

There is an ache that sits deep within the human heart. It is quiet at times, almost hidden, but it never goes away. Some call it emptiness. Some name it loneliness. Others disguise it under busyness or bury it under blame. But the ache remains.

It is the echo of Eden. The hollow space carved out for the breath of God. The shape of love we were always meant to be filled with. Nothing else fits there. No success, no relationship, no possession, no accomplishment. The ache is holy, because it is the reminder that only One can satisfy.

But most of us do not know what to do with it. The ache is uncomfortable. It unsettles us. So we learn to quiet it. We point to our past and say, “It is because of what I have been through.” We point to our present and say, “It is because of these circumstances.” We point to others and say, “It is because of what they have done to me.” And in doing so, we try to tame the ache with explanations that never really heal.

Others try to fill it. They run from one place of worship to another, from church to church, from conference to conference, chasing the moment where the ache finally feels satisfied. And for a moment, it works. The atmosphere shifts, His presence feels tangible, the ache is quieted. But when the moment passes, the emptiness returns. And so the cycle repeats — chasing experience after experience, while the deeper invitation of the Lord waits to be discovered.

Because the truth is this: the ache is not the enemy. It is the invitation. The ache is the signal that points us home, the hunger that draws us to the only One who can fill us. It is not meant to drive us into striving but into surrender.

We were never designed to carry the weight of His presence in our own strength. We cannot hold Him by clinging harder, praying longer, or running further. He alone gives us the capacity to remain in Him. What feels like failure when we cannot “hold on” is actually the beginning of the lesson: that His love is not sustained by our grip, but by His.

And so He leads us into process. Not the glamorous process of conference stages and mountaintop encounters, but the hidden process of learning to trust Him when the ache feels louder than His nearness. It feels so far from the place of love. So far from the place of presence. And yet it is the only path that teaches us how to inhabit His rest.

The ache is everything. It is the proof of our need, the hollow that reveals the lack of capacity within us. Left alone, we would only try to silence it or fill it with lesser things. But with Him, the ache becomes holy ground. With Him, the ache becomes the place where His love drips like living water, one drop at a time, until even the emptiness becomes a vessel for His healing.

When His love first begins to pour into us, it rarely comes as the flood we dream of. It comes as a drop. A single drop of living water touching the cracks of our thirsty soul.

At first, those drops seem to slip right through us. The wounds, the lies, the broken agreements inside us are like holes in a vessel. His love drips in, but it cannot stay. We feel the momentary sweetness, but then it fades. And it is easy to despair in those moments, to believe we are too broken, too empty, too full of holes to ever hold what He gives.

But the Lord is patient. He knows exactly what He is doing. His drops are not wasted. Even as they seem to leak away, they leave a trace. A drop of His love heals as it passes through. A drop of His love binds up the jagged tear. A drop of His love begins to soften the scar that once seemed permanent.

So He keeps pouring. Slowly. Gently. Drop by drop. Not to frustrate us, but to prepare us. If He poured Himself out all at once, our fragile vessels would burst under the weight of it. What we longed for would destroy us. But He loves us too much for that. So He measures His outpouring with tenderness, knowing that each drop is already more than enough to change us.

And in the pouring, something else begins to happen. His love does not only heal what is broken, it also reveals what is buried. The grief we have tried to hide, the pain we have carried like a secret weight, the lies we have agreed with just to survive. As His drops flow through us, they loosen these things and lift them up to the surface. Sometimes it feels like we are breaking apart, but it is not destruction. It is mercy. He cannot fill what is already filled with sorrow and shadows. So His love dissolves what does not belong, drawing it out drop by drop, making room for Himself.

The ache inside us begins to notice. Something unfamiliar rises within, a quiet relief, a strange sweetness. For the first time, the soul that could never hold love begins to feel a single drop linger. And the intensity of that one drop is overwhelming. To taste His love, even in the smallest measure, is to taste eternity.

And then, slowly, capacity grows. Where once we could not hold even a trace, now we find we can hold a fraction. Then a little more. Until the day comes when His love no longer only drips through us, but rests in us. We discover that we can hold a handful. A handful of His liquid love saturating our hearts, our souls, our very being.

And when that moment comes, we are undone. Overwhelmed. A handful feels like an ocean. It is more than we ever thought possible. And yet, it is only the beginning.

Because His love does not just fill us. It heals us. It empties us. It makes space within us so that we can contain more of Him. And in this gentle, drop-by-drop way, He prepares us for what comes next.

The drops become streams. The streams prepare us for rivers. And the rivers flow toward the invitation of immersion. To step into the waters, to let His love be not something we taste in moments, but something we dwell in always.

It is the river Ezekiel saw flowing from the temple, beginning as a trickle and deepening step by step until it became a river that could not be crossed (Ezekiel 47:1–5). So it is with His love, beginning in drops, growing into streams, swelling into rivers that carry us where our feet can no longer walk.

But first, He pours drop by drop. Healing. Emptying. Making room.

To grow in capacity is to be stretched. And stretching is never comfortable. And it is never linear.

It is the place where His love begins to press against what has always limited us. Where the drops that once only healed now start to widen the vessel, pushing at the edges of our hearts. And in that holy pressure, what has been hidden is brought into the light.

Stretching means the pain must surface. Grief that has lived in silence begins to find its voice. Memories long buried rise again. The lies we leaned on for safety are exposed for what they are, fragile bandages that cannot hold under His weighty love.

Agreements we made with fear, shame, or unworthiness tremble under His gaze. And it hurts. It feels as though the love that comes to heal is instead breaking us apart.

But it is not destruction. It is deliverance. His stretching is not punishment; it is preparation. Just as muscles must tear to grow stronger, as skin must expand to carry new life, as wineskins must be softened to hold fresh wine, so too must our hearts be stretched to contain more of Him (Luke 5:37–38).

Stretching always feels like too much. We feel pushed to the edges of what we can bear. But He knows exactly how far to take us. He is not careless with His love. He is not stretching us to break us, but to enlarge us. To make space within us for more of Himself.

And here is the mystery: we cannot stretch ourselves. We do not know where the cracks run deepest. We do not see the places He is most intent on healing. So we surrender. We let Him do the stretching. Our only role is to yield, to keep our eyes on Him, to trust that He is faithful in what He is doing.

It is a holy ache. The deep pull of capacity being enlarged. And though it feels painful, it is always tethered to His presence. The same love that presses also comforts. The same hands that stretch also hold. He never pulls us beyond His grace.

We may not understand the moment. We may only feel the tearing. But if we trust the process, if we surrender to His hand, we will discover something astonishing: the places that once broke under His love now expand to contain it. What once leaked away now begins to hold. And what once felt unbearable now becomes the very place of overflow.

The stretching is painful. But the stretching is holy. It is the Father making room in us for Himself.

Life itself costs us. Every day, we are poured out. Sometimes in obvious ways, through work, responsibility, and the demands of those who need us. Other times in hidden ways, the silent weight of disappointment, the fatigue of carrying things alone, the thousand tiny drains of living in a world that does not run on love.

Even joy, when not rooted in Him, can leave us weary because it depends on circumstances we cannot control. But the fruit of the Spirit is different. It does not cost us; it is given. True joy is His gift, flowing as an overflow of His love. But until our roots grow deep into Him, even joy feels fleeting, because we are still trying to live on what drains us rather than on what fills us.

This is why Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15:4). He was not giving us a rule to keep; He was revealing the only way we can survive. Apart from Him, we run dry. Apart from Him, life empties us faster than we can be filled.

But connected to Him, there is always supply. His life flows like sap through the vine, like living water through hidden roots, like breath filling tired lungs. Where life drains, He replenishes. Where life takes, He restores. Remaining in Him is not an obligation, it is survival. It is the lifeline of love that turns exhaustion into rest, striving into surrender, lack into overflow.

And in this continual exchange, capacity grows. For every cost of life, He offers renewal. For every drain, He gives flow. For every ache, He releases comfort. When we remain in Him, the constant demands of life no longer deplete us beyond repair. They become the very places where His love proves itself faithful.

It is not wrong that life costs us. That is the nature of living in this world. But the miracle is this: life’s cost is not the final word. The final word is His love, always flowing, always renewing, always enough.

As our capacity grows, something begins to shift within us. Where once we struggled to hold even a drop, now there is space enough for streams. And streams always leave evidence.

The fruit of His Spirit begins to appear, often quietly, almost unnoticed at first. A love that surprises us with its tenderness. A joy that no circumstance can shake. A peace that holds us steady in the storm. Patience where there used to be frustration. Kindness where there used to be self-protection. Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The fruit is not something we strive for. A tree does not grit its branches and try harder to grow fruit. It simply abides where it is planted. So it is with us. The fruit of the Spirit is not the result of our effort, but the overflow of His life in us (Galatians 5:22–23). It is the evidence of His love saturating every part of our being.

And just as fruit ripens in secret, unseen, slow, steady, so His work ripens in us. Until one day, what He has been doing quietly within becomes visible without. The fruit declares to the world that His love is alive inside us.

We are not left to grow ourselves. We are trees planted in His finished work. And He is the Gardener.

He prunes us, yes, and the pruning hurts, because we do not understand. We only feel the loss. We only see what is being cut away. But His hands are never careless. Every cut is precise. Every pruning is purposeful. Every act of removing is rooted in love.

He is not only a pruner. He is also the One who waters, who tends, who shields us from what would scorch and dehydrate. He watches over the soil. He nourishes the roots. He delights in the slow growth we cannot yet see.

And as we learn to trust the Gardener, our striving ceases. We realise we were never meant to hold ourselves together, never meant to force fruit, never meant to demand growth. Our part is to abide, to yield, to remain planted in Him. His part is to tend us with love until we flourish.

And so we yield. We surrender. We allow Him to stretch us, mend us, enlarge us, fill us.

Until the drops become streams. The streams become rivers. And the rivers become the very atmosphere in which we live.

His love is no longer a fleeting moment, but a continual dwelling. No longer a taste, but a feast. No longer a drop, but an ocean.

This is the invitation: to let the ache draw you to Him, to let the drops heal you, to let the stretching enlarge you, to let the Gardener tend you, until His love is the atmosphere you breathe.