"Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness." ( Isaiah 35:7-8 )
..."whoever drinks of the water I give them, will never be thirsty again." ( John 4:14 )
After walking through an unusually dry season here at the farm, it was such a pleasant surprise to wake up yesterday morning to the sound of refreshing raindrops tap dancing on the tin roof of our little cabin.
As we drove and worked and coughed through the clouds of thick dust surrounding our daily chore routines, I knew eventually, as the sun faithfully rises each day in the east, the rains too would return. They did. And we were better for it.
When we first come to faith in Christ, we experience such an euphoria of spiritual awakenings and joy in our salvation that we can't possible imagine God ever allowing us to walk through a dry season. We feel now all of life will be these breath-taking, mountain summit views. No desert wildernesses, no dry bone valleys.
And yet journeys through the parched, sun-baked terrains of life are ironically the exact thing God uses to grow us into lush orchard trees bearing healthy, ripe fruit. If we had never tasted from the streams of living water, how would we know we were dry? How would we know what we are missing?
You see the simple fact that we have been united to Christ in the first place and tasted his goodness, walked by the Spirit, enjoyed sweet fellowship; the fact that we have experienced his love is proof that we are in him. And he will return us to those sweet waters. In this world we have troubles Jesus taught us, and sometimes it seems disciples of Jesus encounter more than most.
God allows us to thirst.
Why?
One day my grandson Jonah asked for more juice in his cup at breakfast, and I told him that he could have water because Daddy said only one cup of juice is allowed. He is familiar with the family rules, but you know grandkids and grandparents. The two are forever bending parental stipulations into shimmering rainbows of fun.
"I don't like water," he said.
"I bet if you were very thirsty you would love water," I responded.
I could tell he was thinking.
When we get thirsty we remember and long for those living waters, and we should be willing to dig through all sorts of mud and sediment to get back to them. These dry times of drilling through scorched soil can usher in some of our most meaningful conversations with our Father through tears and questions and waiting.
They can also strengthen our orthodoxy as we press into the Scriptures with a new tenacity and determination to understand. They cause us to rely on our church family instead of carrying the burdens alone. Strong bonds begin to form out of our loneliness and within our local body.
More than anything perhaps, dry seasons with God are meant to be growth seasons if we submit to him through the dust and the thorns and thistles instead of collapsing into despair or playing the blame game.
Dry seasons prepare us for ministry. Like Elijah, we learn a deeper trust in God waiting on the ravens to bring our nourishment in the midst of the drought.
If we lived out our entire lives in plenty, we would not learn to depend on God. The truth, the reality, that God is our sole provider, protector, and preparer, not just in the wilderness years, but in all our years, would never be found otherwise.
So in the wilderness we find our humility. We realize that God is not just a bigger version of us.
The dry earth we walk upon spiritually is Son-baked. This is the most crucial truth to remember in the dry seasons. Jesus has gone before us, so he understands every temptation and feeling of loneliness, rejection, and abandonment.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, choosing their way over God's, their sin was imputed to all mankind from that moment on, to every human. We are all born condemned. ( John 3:18 ) Jesus Christ, the perfect lamb of God, came from Heaven and imputed himself with our sin, the sin that resulted from the fall and kept us from the Holy God.
He lived the perfect life we should have lived, and then dies the death we should have died, in our place, penal, substitutionary atonement. He takes our punishment, satisfying the wrath of God. He is raised from the dead, and all those who come to him, he imputes, by the power of the Holy Spirit, his perfect righteousness.
Jesus takes our sin, and then in return gives us his perfect righteousness, known as the "glorious exchange." We will never truly thirst again. Why?
On the cross, God allowed his son to thirst to death.
"My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" ( Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34, Psalm 22:1 )
In the dry seasons, it only feels like God has abandoned us; when in fact, the living water has never left us. His Word promises that in deed he has not and never will.
Why?
He abandoned Jesus, so he wouldn't have to abandon us.
This Gospel truth received into our hearts is the strength that pushes us through the dry seasons and into the refreshing waters no matter what we are walking through. We grieve in the wilderness, but with a godly grief, a grief that always ends in hope.
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"Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, would die for me!
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee."
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