When we feel all dried up
Isaiah 35:6b-7a
“For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The parched ground shall become a pool,
and the thirsty land springs of water.
In the last few months as I have prayed for several people I have seen a picture in my Sprit of dry, parched ground. While in the Bad Lands recently I saw the same parched ground. For the people I had been praying for I knew it represented a place in their lives, a dry season they were walking through, which God desired to water and bring back to life.
So many times we go through seasons where it feels just like this picture, dry, cracked and lifeless. We can feel like God flew to Tahiti and we missed our flight!!! Our prayers seem to hit an invisible ceiling, and we just can’t seem to find joy in anything. It’s like swimming upstream.
Then a little further down the path I saw something; another piece of dry ground but something living was growing out of it. I realize it was a weed but it was alive! We need to take what we can get sometimes! It was just a visual (and I’m a very visual person) of a lesson God was showing me.
Our lives are not one amazing life giving event after another; have you noticed? If it weren’t for the dry spells and trying times we face, the good times and wonderful seasons could not be appreciated as much. Spring is my all time favorite season, why? Because I hate winter with all of my soul!! I’m always cold; I think I my furnace is broken! So when warm breezes start to blow and the grass gets green I can feel my entire being light up. It changes my whole outlook.
But, even in a dry season, He causes something to grow. It doesn’t always look like the thing we want or think we need but it’s life. I have found that I really don’t know what I need. God knows me far better than I know myself and sees into those dry cracked and often hidden places in me that need some work. So in the wilderness when I feel like everything dries up, God is working. He’s working on something below the surface, digging and fertilizing, exposing and healing. It’s usually when life is tuff that things come out in my attitude or of my mouth, help me Jesus, that reveal the very problem God wants to work on. He takes us through a difficulty, which exposes to us our issue, then gives us the opportunity to let Him work on that.
If not for the hard place, my hidden and unhealed issue would never be exposed. If I’m always happy and everything is peachy I never see the very thing that is broken and in need of fixing. Often those things are a hindrance to our destiny, our growth and our relationship with God.
I don’t want anything to stand in my way of becoming completely healed, and of being able to do all that God has planned for me. But, He never forces us to deal with our junk. He only gives us the opportunity; we must embrace the change we need. So many times that process is so painful, like surgery with no anesthesia. But the results are so worth it. I’ve experienced this so many times. I hate it every time but I know its part of becoming who I need to be. When it’s over I’m always shocked to see how I’ve changed and grown and I’m always thankful for the very thing I wanted to run from.
Don’t run from His dealings in your life. Lean into the pain; it won’t last forever. God has so much for you that you cannot imagine but you must get there His way. His ways are perfect. After it’s over His healing waters will flow over all the dry cracked places and bring new life and growth.
Isaiah 35:6-7, Deuteronomy 8:15, Proverbs 3:5-6