I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name. (Ex. 33:17)
Last year the farms around us were panting in drought. The corn was stilted and yellow, not the vibrant green of watered husks. Farmers looked to heaven and prayed. We prayed. Others prayed. Just when it seemed like they would lose the crops, God sent a refreshing rain that ran in all the dry rivers of ground, saturating the powdered soil and feeding the crops. Farmers rejoiced in that rain.
There are times when our hearts feel like parched ground. Clouds of dry soil fill our souls, and the fruit of the Spirit’s growth is stilted. It is during those times we look to heaven and pray for a fresh outpouring of God’s glory. “Water our hearts with your presence, Lord.” We have God’s glory in the form of Jesus Christ. His Spirit lives in our hearts. Daily pressures, nonattendance to his Word, an absence in our prayer time, or a focus on what the world can give us can suck the moisture of God’s presence from our lives.
Yet when we come to him in humbleness, when we fall on our faces before his glory, we fill him with joy. And in the joy, we find him. Our Bible reading reveals new truths, we pray with fervor, our eyes once again focus upward instead of outward. And like the farmers, we can rejoice in the outpouring God rains on us.
Ask God to water your heart with his presence.
Pamela Kuhn’s favorite word is joy, and her favorite place is anywhere that holds books and sells tea.
© 2020 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
