“It’s raining ashes in Tulsa.”
That was the tweet from a Christian sister who lives in Oklahoma. Wildfires have struck that state the last few days and there is much damage.
We’re scorched from one end of the nation to the other. We are experiencing heat, drought, fires, ash, dust, dryness and thirst…
Why is this? Because our hearts are hot for satan, we’re drought-ridden from not being in the Word, and our consciences are seared as if with a hot iron. So it is no wonder, my glorious God, that You manifest on the outside what is on the inside of your people. You are the Living Water, but we refuse it. You are the refreshing dew but we don’t want it. You give to us that is athirst the fountain of the water of life freely but we turn away. (Revelation 21:6).
“but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ( John 4:14 ).
But your people say NO!
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| Corn plants damaged by extreme heat and drought conditions in Carmi, Illinois. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg. source |
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| Marion Kujawa looks over a pond he uses to water the cattle on his farm on in Ashley, Ill. Kujawa has been digging the pond deeper after it began to dry up during the current drought. |
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| In Luther, Okla., at least two dozen homes, a day care center and other businesses have been destroyed by a wind-driven fire. source |
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| A horse, which was eventually rescued, tries to escape a wildfire Friday in central Oklahoma. Photo: Jerry Laizure, AP. source |
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| Medina County: cisterns drying up in drought. source |
I like to see the metaphors in how the LORD presents Himself to us. One of those ways is as the Living water, refreshing rain, a fountain of truth. Water, water, water. I also like to see His promises. We often focus on the ‘good’ promises, of eternal life, treasure in heaven, unconditional love. But He made other promises too. Like this one that He promises His people the Jews-
“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments…Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase.” (Leviticus 26:3,4)
Although our covenant with Him as the grafted-in Gentiles is not the same as the covenant above, the principles are the same. We are still to walk in His ways and follow His statutes. If we do, then another of His promises will be fulfilled:
“And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Isaiah 58:11).
Barnes’ Notes closes beautifully with an explanation of the Isaiah verse above. Man, those 1800’s writers could write:
“But in the supplies which God makes for his people there is no such deception. The fountains of pardon, peace, and joy are ever open and ever full. The streams of salvation are always flowing. The weary pilgrim may go there at any season of the year, and from any part of a desolate world, and find them always full, refreshing, and free. However far may be the pilgrimage to them from amidst the waste and burning climes of sin, however many come to slake their thirst, and however frequently they come, they find them always the same. They never fail; and they will continue to flow on to the end of time.”
the-end-time.org 