What’s In Your Cup?

Tun with me to 2 Corinthians 1. We are going to read the first part of verse 4. “[God] Who comforteth us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.”

In one of his messages last year, my brother read an illustration from “Barbara O’Neill Health Tricks” that caused me to think about what I want flowing out of my life in 2025. She writes:

“You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee? ‘Because someone bumped into me!!!’ Wrong answer. You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea. Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.

“Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which will happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It’s easy to fake it, until you are rattled. So, we have to ask ourselves... ‘What’s in my cup?’

“When life gets tough, what spills over? Joy, gratitude, peace and humility? Anger, bitterness, victim mentality and quitting tendencies? Life provides the cup; YOU choose how to fill it. Today, let’s work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation, resilience, positivity; and kindness, gentleness and love for others.”

Reading this reminded me of what Jesus says in Matthew 12:33-35.

(33) Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

(34) O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

(35) A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

Our hearts are our cups ...

... and just like the cup from the illustration, when we are bumped or shaken, whatever is in our hearts, whatever is in our cups will come spilling out.

I drink coffee every morning and have a collection of cups to choose from. But I have one favorite cup. Even if that cup is dirty and I can choose a clean one, I will wash my favorite cup and use it. Why? Because it is my favorite cup! I know exactly how much coffee, honey and half and half creamer to use. With my favorite cup I am on automatic; I know what will fill it and I can make my coffee without thinking about it.

Before we were born again, when someone or some situation “bumped into us” and caused us to spill what was in our cup, most of the time we wouldn’t know what our cup was holding until it came out.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus changed our tree. Jesus changed our cup.

When we face inconvenient or unpleasant situations, what flows out of us should be what we received because of the spiritual life that lives inside of us. We are now good trees thanks to Jesus. We are now good cups thanks to Jesus. When we are bumped what comes out of us should reflect what God has placed on the inside of us and for that to happen, we must yield to who we have become as God’s sons and daughters and fill our cups (hearts) with something different than what we had before Jesus.

Let’s talk about our lives “Before Jesus.”

My spiritual cup was filled with what we would call vegetable soup, which contains different types of vegetables. Before Jesus, my spiritual cup was filled with anger, bitterness, love, hurt, jealousy, envy, regret, lust and every emotion present in this world. On any given day, if you bumped into me, whatever emotion was at the top of my cup was going to spill out on you. If anger was at the top, it came spilling out. If jealousy or envy was riding high, that is what came spilling out.

Whatever our cups, our hearts are filled with will come flowing out of us when we are bumped. So, I had to reassess what was in my cup. Even though there is a lot of good in my cup, there were still some lingering things that needed to be removed. So, I asked God to help me remove them and I smiled when He said, “My grace is sufficient.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) And with that word of comfort, two passages came to mind.

The first was Romans 2:13-15.

(13) (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

(14) For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: