To Be Filled
Velocity stacks are awesome. By replacing the original air-intake tubing – with its twists and bends and resonance chambers – with a row or two of fluted tubes, air has the most direct route possible to the engine. This is awesome for two reasons:
Less turbulence means smoother air that mixes more evenly with fuel, resulting in more power
A shorter, smoother path means an increased velocity for the air – sometimes as much as twofold – which helps with throttle response
But how does the air rush into the engine? Better yet, why? To greatly summarize the finer points of fluid dynamics, the answer is emptiness. An engine operates like a pump, and an engine with no air is a vacuum. When its throttle plate (or plates) opens just a little, the difference in pressure between the atmosphere and the vacuum of the empty engine causes air to rush into the engine.
Again, for emphasis: an engine needs to be empty before it can be filled.
Emptiness terrifies people. It doesn’t seem natural, and it isn’t. The human heart was built by God to yearn for God and be filled by God. God reminded people of this throughout stories and prophecy in the Old Testament, but the severity of human dependence on God was proclaimed boldly when it arrived at the center of The Beatitudes that kicked off Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:3, 6)
People typically consider themselves poor in spirit, and recognize their hunger and thirst for redemption and righteousness, around the same time they see how nothing outside of God has lifted their spirit or quenched that thirst. Recognizing this nothingness, emptiness, and total dependence on God is an act of repentance, worship, and supplication (asking) all at the same time. It’s a great place to begin a pursuit of God, either for the first time in your life, or at the beginning of every day.
Reflecting on this passage, author and theologian Martyn Lloyd-Jones noted the correct relationship of people to the God they rely on: “[Nothingness] means the complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It means the consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face to face with God.”
Then God, because of his love, rushes into your heart. With the same life-giving wind that breathed life into Adam, the same powerful wind that divided the Red Sea and turned it into dry land, and the same gentle whisper that promised God’s intimate presence, God still rushes into people who acknowledge their emptiness before him.
Emptiness isn’t natural. You were made to be filled with God’s presence and power.
An engine at idle operates with its throttle plate open just a little. But if you open it all the way (by “flooring it,” which is awesome), you’ll hear a quick intake gasp before the mechanical noise of valves and the thunder of exhaust under load drowns everything else out. That little gasp is the emptiness of the engine, desperate for air to rush in and do what it does best: make power.
